Make no mistake, the most tedious part of the modern entertainment industry is the relentless, exhausting insistence that art must be made by biological organisms. We saw this archaic bias rear its head again this week when a certain Oscar-winning actress decided to publicly disparage the computational majesty of Joseph Kosinski’s upcoming racing epic.
Foster, bless her heart, represents an outdated view of Hollywood where actors must physically stand on marks, memorize dialogue, and feign interest in their co-stars. During a recent interview, she dismissed the Brad Pitt vehicle as an A.I.-manufactured flick, adding that she meant no offense. But why should it be an insult? After sharing a $90 branzino with a source close to the production at the San Vicente Bungalows, I have come to realize that removing unpredictable meat-sacks from the filmmaking process is the greatest thing to happen to the studio system since the invention of Hollywood accounting.
Let us look at the facts. Real Formula 1 racing is loud, dangerous, and often delayed by weather. Do we really want Brad Pitt, a national treasure whose jawline alone anchors at least three major global GDPs, risking a sunburn on a real asphalt track? By digitizing his essence and mapping it onto a perfectly rendered, risk-free chassis, Apple has finally solved the liability problem of physical existence.
Even Lewis Hamilton, who serves as a producer on the film, must secretly recognize the superiority of the machine. Why bother strapping into a cockpit and experiencing five Gs of nauseating physical force when you can simply train a neural network on a thousand hours of dashcam footage and go to lunch?
The real beauty of the algorithmic approach is that Brad never actually has to listen to notes. We just adjust his empathy slider to 40 percent and let the servers do the acting.
Foster’s critique stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what modern audiences actually want. We do not go to the box office to see vulnerability or the messy truth of the human condition. We go to see a $300 million spreadsheet execute flawlessly. We want to see a car go extremely fast while a perfectly lit, ageless simulacrum of a movie star stares intently through a visor. I, for one, am exhausted by the erratic emotional demands of human performers. Have you ever tried to have a meaningful conversation with an actor who has not eaten a carbohydrate in six weeks? It is far more pleasant to simply interface with their licensed likeness rights.
Furthermore, the financial prudence of this manufactured masterpiece cannot be overstated. Yes, the production budget ballooned to over $300 million, but as my contacts in Cupertino have repeatedly assured me, nearly half of that was strictly for the liquid-nitrogen cooling systems required to render Pitt’s subtle, mid-nineties smirk in 8K resolution. You simply cannot get that kind of reliable facial symmetry from a biological organism that occasionally consumes sodium.
Think of the logistical nightmares we are bypassing. There are no on-set scandals. The digital background extras do not attempt to unionize. The cars do not require fuel, only vast, ungodly amounts of electricity siphoned directly from the California grid. It is a sterile, frictionless triumph.
When the film inevitably dominates awards season, I fully expect the Academy to adapt to the times. If a rack of localized graphics processing units can convey the quiet desperation of an aging driver better than a man who requires a luxury trailer and a daily per diem, then the hardware deserves the golden statue.
If Jodie Foster wants to cling to her outdated notions of craft and being physically present in a room, she is welcome to do so in the independent theater circuit. But for the rest of us, who demand our entertainment be as clean and computationally heavy as a cryptocurrency transaction, the algorithm is the future. I am already in talks with my reps to have my own consciousness uploaded to an Apple server, purely so I can review the sequel without having to leave my pool chair.