WEEKLY RECAP #52: AI "Civil War" Posters, Tarantino Scraps "The Movie Critic" & MORE!

4/14/24 -- 4/20/24

AI24

Yeah, I have no idea why they thought this would be a good idea. In case any of you guys haven’t already seen them floating around on Instagram or Twitter, A24 has released some new posters to promote Alex Garland’s Civil War, a movie that is still in theaters at the time of this article’s publishing. Since Civil War explores a scenario in which the United States breaks out into a (wait for it) civil war, the posters feature various famous American tourist locations now barren and war-torn. The posters feature haunting sights such as a decimated Lag Vegas sphere, military patrol boats cruising through Echo Park in Los Angeles, and… buildings meshing into each other? Weird objects that are completely indiscernible? Yep, that’s right: the images were created using AI.

While it’s admittedly super difficult to tell at a passing glance, studying these new posters gives way to more artificially-generated characteristics the longer you stare at them. Civil War is already becoming a divisive movie, and this has only poisoned the well of online discourse even further. I have to admit that a part of me was amused to see the rage start solely because they got the look of the Marina City towers wrong, and triggered Chicago residents were accusing the artists at A24 for having “New York brain”. (Sorry our city’s landmarks are more recognizable than yours!) The other part of me, though, is worried. While, again, few of the images do have that signature “stare at it long enough and you’ll notice errors” trademark to them, most of the posters were pretty convincing upon a first glance.

It’s getting concerning that most companies in the entertainment industry are now openly using AI for designs. Just this week, we also learned that Netflix straight up used an AI-generated photo of the subject of a true crime documentary, depicting her smiling during a party to imply that she was happier and more confident in her life prior to committing a murder. (That case is honestly WAY more terrifying than the Civil War posters, if we’re being honest.) I think we’re still a long ways away from AI-generated scenes and performances being used for film, but advertising and small designs like the title cards in Late Night with the Devil are definitely free game at this point. The hesitancy so many people had with recognizing the phony qualities of these posters confirms that the whole “AI hasn’t cracked photorealism” rebuttal will only become less and less relevant, based on how rapidly this technology is advancing. Soon, AI images will be indistinguishable from real photography, and it’ll just be a matter of determining which images are actually compelling and which feel void of human creativity. While this prospect might scare some of you, it actually doesn’t worry me too much. Unless the eggheads typing in all these prompts can also write industry-standard screenplays, it won’t be much of a fight on the narrative storytelling side of things.

“I am going out of my way to fuck myself.”

Not gonna lie to you guys — I was actually in shock when I saw this news drop. It’s been known for several months now that Quentin Tarantino’s next project would be titled The Movie Critic, and would center around a real-life (wait for it) movie critic from the seventies. There were even people in line for casting, with Paul Walter Hauser of Richard Jewell fame announced to be playing the lead, and other Tarantino regulars like Brad Pitt and Samuel L. Jackson confirmed to be in it too. If anybody is or has already been excited by this news, sorry to be the one to break this news to you, but, uh… the movie’s cancelled. Like, straight up, it’s not happening anymore. The Hollywood Reporter reported from Hollywood on Wednesday this week that Tarantino simply changed his mind and is now working on a different project that will be his tenth and final film.

So, to quote Tarantino himself in the funniest video ever recorded: “What’s going on here?” For those who don’t know, Quentin Tarantino has gone on record explaining how he wants to stop making movies at a certain point, because directors supposedly don’t get better as they age, and he wants to finish strong instead of continuing to make movies that peter out in quality:

“I want to stop at a certain point. Directors don’t get better as they get older. Usually the worst films in their filmography are those last four at the end. I am all about my filmography, and one bad film fucks up three good ones. I don’t want that bad, out-of-touch comedy in my filmography, the movie that makes people think, ‘Oh man, he still thinks it’s 20 years ago.’ When directors get out-of-date, it’s not pretty.”

If you’re asking why he’s saying he’ll stop at ten movies if he already has ten movies made, the Kill Bill movies technically count as one full movie to him, since that’s what they were intended to be. Regardless, what seemed like a self-imposed rule to ensure that he’d go out known as one of the greats has now seemingly put so much pressure on him for his final entry into the medium of film that he’s reconsidering projects he’s already written and started pre-production for. For God’s sakes, he also was rumored to have started writing a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spinoff and then scrapped that too! What a mess!

It’s clear to just about everyone that this “no mistakes for the final film” methodology is fucking with Tarantino, and what’s crazy is that HE MADE IT UP HIMSELF! NO ONE IS HOLDING HIM TO IT! Even if, hypothetically, his tenth film is a flop, would people several decades down the line even care that much? He’s already made several of the most famous and popular films ever! Again, folks, I seriously cannot wrap my head around just up and cancelling a planned movie solely because the vibes shifted, or whatever the fuck he said. I suppose that’s something only a director with Wanton Tortellini’s level of influence can do. Oh well, it’s official: The Movie Critic will never see the light of day. As funny as this completely unnecessary switch-up is, it’s also annoying as fuck! I hate it when major directors completely abandon promising-sounding projects without warning… hopefully it doesn’t happen again within this very Substack post…

“I Just Talked to Jesus / He said, “What Up, Scorsesus?”

FUCK! IT DID HAPPEN AGAIN! I FUCKING KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN AGAIN!

As I’m sure everyone reading this can agree, there’s nothing more annoying than a bestie who keeps switching up their plans with you. Well, two of general moviegoers’ biggest besties, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, are some of the biggest offenders in this category. It is incredible that they’re both consistently making new movies at their age, but it’s hard to be excited about their upcoming projects when they keep announcing so many! Until this week, I (and many others) were under the impression that Scorsese’s next movie would be The Wager, an adaption of the novel covering the mutiny of the British warship HMS Wager, written by Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann. However, as it was announced this week, it turns out that Scorsese is actually working on a new movie about Jesus Christ that will potentially star Andrew Garfield in the lead role, as well as a Frank Sinatra biopic with Leo DiCaprio in the lead role. Spielberg has been switching up too: reports this week claim that his next film will be a UFO movie, when I could’ve sworn he was previously said to be making a Bullitt movie next. (Wow, Spielberg making a movie about aliens, and Scorsese making a movie about Italians and Christianity? Who could’ve foreseen this?)

Again, I have to give props to the two of these legends for being as old as they are and still pumping new films out — some directors are built for it, and most others simply aren’t. However, it’s kind of fucked up that so many potential projects with these guys keep getting announced and then dropped. You could argue that people shouldn’t be too surprised, because that is how the movie industry often works, with directors constantly having to choose between a plethora of good stories to adapt. That being said, you can’t blame people for feeling teased when so many fire pieces of source material are dangled in front of us and then dropped months later. I’m also not gonna pretend like my personal bias doesn’t play a factor in here as well. That Wager movie sounded sick as fuck! I’m way more interested in the premise of that than I am for ANOTHER FUCKING MUSICIAN BIOPIC! Like, okay, I get it — Scorsese is an Italian-American. Frank Sinatra is basically the music equivalent of Jesus for him. But do we really need ANOTHER rise-and-fall story about an iconic musician? That genre is so oversaturated that movies about completely different musicians are all following the exact same structure and falling into the same Dewey Cox-but-unironic cliches! I didn’t even bother seeing Bob Marley: One Love, and Back to Black looks terrible, and that Michael Jackson biopic is probably going to be the worst movie of 2025. (Calling it now.)

Am I saying Scorsese would make a movie on the level of Back to Black? No, but my point remains that this genre is exhausted, and since these guys are elderly, I feel like their last few projects should be more spicy. Hey, who knows? Maybe they’ll blow my crusty little cinephile socks off after all. They better, for the sake of my mental health. Andrew Garfield needs to start practicing that crucifixion pose immediately. Let’s hope his penis is as comically large as Willem Dafoe’s.