The main thing I learned was that Cronenberg was offered the directing job for ROTJ. Cronenberg was at one time in line to direct Totall Recall, and he wrote a draft of the screenplay. Totall Recall certainly includes a bit of the trademark body horror.
Cronenberg made The Fly in Hollywood, and I think it's it's great, but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs.
In some alternate history timeline Cronenberg's name would have been attached to several big time Hollywood properties, and the world would be mostly the same just a little bit grosser. Of course, I'm happy with Cronenberg's mostly Canadian produced oeuvre the way it is, I just like to wonder.
I also used to wonder what the world would look like if Lynch has directed ROTJ, but I came to realize it was a ridiculous premise, Lynch needed far more creative elbow room than what the 3rd instalment of an established franchise could possibly afford, and there was no chance Lynch would ever agree to such a thing. So we got Dune instead and I'm happy with that too.
> Lynch would author the look of Dune.
This is so true. The recent films and the spinoff series all look like his Dune.
And Lynch's Dune looks like it does, probably in no small part due to Jodorowsky, Giger and Mobius.
I recommend everyone interested in Dune to take a look at Jodorowsky's Dune [0], the documentary which explains how they did the preproduction of Dune, and pitched it to the studios. All the deals eventually fell through, but the pitch decks circulated all the studios for years afterwards, and inspired countless other movie makers.
The best things about the new Dune installments imo is the art, but all, or most of it feels like copy pasted ideas from what came before them. CGI is a huge asset to actually get it working though.
Mœbius probably has the greatest influence to obscurity ratio of any artist I can think of - his fingerprints are on so, so many things - and irony of ironies Jodorowsky’s Dune was probably one of the greatest catapults for further promulgating his aesthetic into the mainstream through the vessel of Giger. I doubt Giger would have been Giger without their collaboration on Dune. The unmade movie penetrates the popular psyche.
I remember finding Metal Hurlant and The Incal at a vide grenier in France as a kid, well before the days of the web, and just being blown away by the visions of this guy - only years later did I realise that I wasn’t alone in that sentiment. He’s the unseen foundation on which so much has been built. A creator’s creator, if you like.
If you love the Moebius asthetic and are a gamer, do yourself a favor and checkout Sable. The game perfectly captures the vibe and spirit of his works, and was just a joy to play. [0]
If you havent seen it already, I would recommend watching Scavengers Reign. It has a similar style to Mœbius.
>The series has received critical acclaim.
>the first season has a 100% approval score with an average rating of 8.7/10, based on 22 critic reviews.
>Andrew Webster of The Verge deemed it to be "equal parts beautiful and brutal, and it might be the most original piece of science fiction of the year"
>In May 2024, the series was canceled by Max
This is so confusing. Making good art must not be profitable.
No, it's profitable.
The problem is the schism of media. If I already have 3 streaming service providers but the greatest show on earth is only watchable on "kufuzu neon plus", I'm just not going to watch it.
Consumers care more about convenience. What they should have done is to integrate into Netflix, stop worrying about exclusive premiere content, and instead focus on outcompeting the others in a common marketplace.
Instead they all conspired to fall on netflix like a pack of hyenas, rip off whatever chunks they could get and then retreat to their dens to enjoy the spoils.
So yeah, screw them. If you're a creative, don't sell your original valuable ideas to companies that are not built on original valuable ideas.
Be warned it wasn’t renewed for a second season, it didn’t have enough people talking about and watching. The creators do have something new going on, called “Common Side Effects”.
The most relevant artists aren't those best regarded by popular audiences or critics, but the ones that do the most to inspire and influence other artists. Both Moebius and Lynch are huge in that regard.
This specifically reminded me of how many popular genre fiction writers point to Gene Wolfe as an inspiration and influence, while he still remains unknown to the fans of these popular writers' work.
Also worth mentioning the comic story “A Long Tomorrow” by Moebius which was an inspiration for the visuals in Blade Runner.
+1 for Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a fascinating study of "the greatest sci fi movie never made". You can see its DNA in Star Wars, Bladerunner, Alien and more.
I hope some day Moebius and Jodorowsky's storyboards are published in the public domain
Regardless of whether the storyboards are in the public domain, I'm sure that someone will eventually "make" Jodorowsky's Dune using AI tools. Feed in the artwork, novels, and actors to get a complete movie out. This will be technically possible within a few years. It will probably look good (at least for casual viewing) but the human performances will still seem a little odd.
I'm not claiming that this will necessarily be a good thing from an artistic or legal perspective. But there are enough Dune fans out there with access to AI video tools that someone will eventually do it.
I'd definitely be more interested in seeing the storyboard than the AI generated movie. I guess that says something about how I/we value of AI generated content
I love how this slop is something you think we should be looking forward to.
The thing about slop, is if it is continuously improving slop, maybe one day it won’t be slop any more
quote:
> not claiming that this will necessarily be a good thing
Lynch Dune is so underrated. The creativity on display was immense. The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI, almost every move and visual predictable.
That’s such a great way to put it. Maybe I’ve just seen TOO many films, but there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films that is installed as safety guardrails so that audiences aren’t too turned off. It’s visual predictable. I like that. Lynch said bollocks to that.
> there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films
A lot of that is due to the nature of studios milking franchise properties like the MCU or SW. Directors of big budget films are now often selected to be a caretaker of one franchise episode. They inherit a pre-existing style from the franchise while also having a bunch more 'input' (aka supervision) from an army of executive producers who work across more than one film and are focused on "don't fuck up the franchise."
Another part of the modern decline in the diversity of cinematic looks is from the economics of streaming. Streamers like Netflix, Apple and Prime are focused on risk reduction by funding either "big name star" properties where the stars make more by being their own executive producers or "big name IP" properties with built-in audiences from books, games, etc. In neither instance is the director usually a central element in packaging the deal. The role of these directors is to be more of a journeymen shepherd like Marquand than a visionary like Lynch, Kubrick or Coppola.
It's a worrying trend because many "bankable name" directors like Lynch whose name at the top of the movie poster could guarantee an audience are dying and not being replaced by new directors that have broad name recognition.
As it turns out, having just one blockbuster sci-fi franchise wherein Anya Taylor Joy fights Milk Boys in the sand is not enough for the 21st century. Villeneuve needed an Anya Taylor Joy Milk Boy sand fight sci-fi blockbuster he could call his own.
I wonder if it might also be tech related. Like how aaa games these days all have the same “default unreal engine look” thanks to its out-of-box settings being good enough to not motivate further tinkering, your run-of-the-mill Hollywood big budget action films also use the same de-facto default equipment and out-of-box setups?
I think there is a lot to be said about the technology factor to it. On the movie side special effects heavy stuff is still largely the wall-to-wall green or blue screen sound stages. Motion capture and motion tracking tools have all got insanely good so studios can do a lot more than say in the days of Lucas' Star Wars prequels (which were notorious wall-to-wall green screen films of their era), but also the budgets and time constraints and "crunch" still provide a lot of barriers to how well the digital/analog integration is and the overall look of all the effects. Also, there's only so many ways to light a green or blue soundstage so that things are readable and you don't get extra ugly color spill that the special effects have to work even harder to remove. (I think the base lighting options being so mostly homogeneous is a subtle but huge factor in the overall things always feeling that way. Differences in lighting have always been one of the biggest "cinematic languages".)
Special Effects houses working on those sorts of movies are probably using heavier, slower renderers than Unreal Engine today, but given the average life span of an effects house is still appallingly close to 2 years and scenes scattered across 1.5 movies, those renderers are still generally off-the-shelf or borrowed from other companies. Industrial Light and Magic is about the only effects house that no one wants to kill, so also becomes something of a homogenizing factor in whatever tools it white labels for sale/rents to other effects houses. Disney owning ILM seems to be like an obvious factor that almost everyone working on an MCU film is trying to rent or ape the ILM house style at all times.
It's also interesting that right now TV can't afford as much time with the motion tracking/motion capture tools and studio spaces of wall-to-wall green screen, so in the effects heavy shows we're seeing a lot more experimentation, some of which I'd argue look better than the movies currently. For big instances, right now ILM's TV efforts with The Volume (and CBS Paramount's copycat AR Wall and other studios have copycats now too) are fast changing the look of TV. Because these LED walls are their own light source which dynamically reflects what the background should be doing it seems like there's a ton more options for lighting scenes in these rooms/volumes/spaces or doing shots that would be tricky or expensive even with how great motion tracking and motion capture have gotten. Of course the trade-off there is that the real-time background rendering requires a rendering engine more in the vein of Unreal Engine, and allegedly in most cases is definitely Unreal Engine, so "default unreal engine look" starts to apply literally to background elements in TV shows.
It's not just CGI, background replacement and other effects work. Some cinematographers have been noting that the increasingly flat, uninspiring look of much modern content is partly due to the amazing dynamic range of modern camera imagers as well as HDR production workflows. While wonderful, this also enables a kind of laziness (or expediency) when shooting. You don't have to specially light many scenes as much (or at all) as long as there's enough ambient light. While this can enable styles like cinema verite to be higher-quality, it also lets film-makers just go with ensuring there's enough flat light overall and call it good enough. Intentional lighting is hard and time-consuming but it's also one of the most expressive visual elements of film-making.
Another factor is that dramatic lighting tends to dance closer to the edge in terms of quality. Lighting a high contrast scene with inky blacks in one area and your hero elements in moody shadow means that those very dark areas are at risk of slipping into the floor of imager noise. The same is true when there are extremely bright elements near the upper-bound of clipping. While modern imagers and HDR capture give film-makers more latitude than ever to avoid these problems, perversely, the same luxuries seem to be making younger film-makers less skilled, or at least less confident, in their ability to dance close to the edges of too dark or too bright.
Newer post-production color grading tools also enable new degrees of what's possible to "just fix in post." Once again, this is wonderful when we need to fix a mistake or for amateur and hobby productions which don't have the time, budget, gear or even knowledge to do creative lighting. The downside is it creates an ever-present temptation when under time and/or budget pressure to take the shortcut and just bounce a key light off the ceiling and a fill off the wall and call it done. It's sad because modern imager sensitivity and battery-powered, micro-sized lighting instruments now make it easier, cheaper and faster than ever to do intentional lighting at a Vittorio Storaro level. Storaro might spend half a day with a crew of six gaffers lighting one scene that a four person indie crew could largely recreate today in an hour with $1k of lights, clamps and stands from Amazon.
Were they asleep while filming the more recent star wars films?
That's a great example of each director being given too much freedom, or alternatively, creating a trilogy sequel without writing the story beforehand. I have no idea how they managed or allowed to mess that up so bad. It feels like they were just winging it, a creative outlet more than making up for the interesting choices they made in the prequels or the backdrop of the next decade of a multi-billion merchandise franchise.
To be fair, the original trilogy winged it just as much, including a very similar pattern of writer and director shifts with the original director coming back for the third part as a last minute fill-in, and a lot of people at the time complained Empire Strikes Back to Ewoks was a tonal shift as bad or worse than people complain about Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi.
Contrary to all of George's talk of a "grand plan", Star Wars was always an adventure serial where winging it was the plan. (Also, George's "grand plan" itself still cracks me up as a kid who guessed to much of it reading the weird novelization, especially since Ars Technica got him to admit to it. Have you heard about the Whills?)
At least that was before those studio guys even existed. No excuse now though.
For me the nadir was the prequel series although I also think The Phantom Menace poisoned the well for the other two which weren't terrible. The more recent films have been a mixed bag with them generally being better the further they are from the original story arc.
For me at least, there's also a certain fatigue factor. While I like The Mandalorian and Rogue One, I'm pretty much done with the franchise. See also Star Trek and MCU. That said, I know that there are a lot of fans who will take pretty much anything you throw out even if they like to belly-ache about it.
Well I was phantom menace as a kid and I liked it :D
> I was phantom menace as a kid
That's good. Most kids are menaces to your face /s
the entire sequence of scenes on Giedi Prime were far from visually predictable. Denis is a master and flexed it a number of times in Dune. i think a fair take is Dune 1 and 2 are doing more creatively than any other big budget blockbuster franchise has since Avatar 1
It was gladiator in black and white with the contrast cranked to 11. Take away the overexposure and … just like everything else the sci fi bad guys build in the last three decades of film. The Lynch Giedi Prime was terrifying.
But that’s probably because I’ve been watching sci fi films for fifty years.
I mean I'm fairly sure it's the first/only infrared shot on imax, which is neat and gives it that unique look.
If you read scifi from the 50s you'll find that there was no original idea in any scifi film.
Sigh.
Asimov didn’t write EVERYTHING.
He didn’t write about gender and politics like LeGuin
He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD.
He didnt write about dimensional fragments and gravitation wave communication and laws of existence like Liu.
Even the grandfather of it all HG Wells didn’t ….
You trolled me and I fell for it. Damn.
Sigh… there's more than one scifi writer.
You've read ONE out of HUNDREDS!
Wow you're so cultured and intellectual!
> He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD.
Read the first stories on mars colonization, long before philip k dick.
It's not a moral fault to not have read something. But perhaps don't go lecturing people who have?
You don't see me going to china to lecture about chinese literature while I don't even speak chinese. Don't do that. It's sad.
Giedi Prime was the only sequence that held me transfixed during the movie. Funny, I was considering mentioning it as an exception with my first comment lest someone point it out.
Inception would be another one that springs to mind, I notice that came out the year after Avatar, although I think Inception probably took it's lead from the Matrix.
if i throw out the "franchise" qualifier then Nolan's a great example of visual novelty in big budget blockbusters. i enjoyed TENET more than anyone ive met
Lynch hated Dune. Lynch's name is removed from the credits of the original cut (replaced with Alan Smithee) because it's so embarrassing. It's still a Lynch movie, so it's interesting to watch. I would not call it underrated.
The tempo of the movie is completely off, and no cut has been able to fix that. The characters and scenes just run trough the story.
Lynch wanted Salvador Dali to design the set. Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984).
He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
You got most of your facts mixed up. Lynch's name proudly sits on top of the theatrical cut, the only cut he supervised. Alan Smithee is used for all other cuts, since he supervised none of those and refuses, as is his right, not to be credited for a cut he didn't watch himself.
> Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer
My understanding is that Conan reused Dune sets, not the other way round. The Dune sets were extremely intricate and expensive, and are definitely one of the few highlights of the film.
> He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
Not sure how Toto ended up doing the music for that film. That film was an absolute mess.
The Toto soundtrack is an atrocious fit, completely bizarre choice given the tone.
Lynch hated Dune because DeLaurentis meddled with it so hard (Jodorowsky famously said they only way Lynch could have made a movie so bad, is if the producers ruined it).
>Lynch Dune is so underrated.
I don't know ... I think it's 'properly rated'. The movie is deeply flawed but it has stayed in public consciousness and is (fondly) remembered. The first half is pretty good. The second half is a total mess and makes the entire plot, characterization and pacing unsalvageable. The visual art style is generally great, but there are some glaring misses.
It's a mess, but it feels alien, which is what you want with sci-fi and especially Dune.
The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis.
They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG.
I believe the film run aground on the special effects for the worms, it just goes to show that critics will feast on the weak points.
I utterly relished the scene with the Emperor meeting the navigator; Mr PlansWithinPlans.
Is there enough film to make the purported mini-series of Lynch’s Dune, I take it there was only the film.
> The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis.
> They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG.
Ever notice how much it looks like Lucas directly took the Dune 1984 imagery of the landing on Arrakis and turned it into the Trade Federation landing on Naboo?
For me the best film of recent years is Hundreds of Beavers - not because it will revolutionise cinema or human thought, but because it was clearly made by people who love what they are doing and had nothing to lose but a tiny budget, so went absolutely hogswild on the creativity. It fills me with joy.
There is an argument to be made that the new movies are better visually than they are as a complete package. That was certainly my reaction the first time through #1. I now am inclined to think that's not really fair and I do think they're clearly the best entries in the Dune movie list.
>The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI
Except for Arrival which owes a lot of its humanism to Ted Chiang's source material that's something that I've noticed about Villeneuve's work. Technically well made but there's something inhuman and cold about how he writes characters and scenes, as if they're surgically made. I think it really stands out too if you watch the old and new Blade Runner back to back.
I see the same cold and surgical nature to Christopher Nolan films. They all seem the same to me.
What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with. He has to be very efficient with how he uses the time, every shot and dialogue carries some information that is useful in some way, there's little spare space or idling. In a way I wonder if it's a bit deliberate to overwhelm the view a little on the first viewing so they can't take it all in and analyze as they go so late revelations have the impact they do, if it was spaced out as a TV series the writing would need to adjust.
I’m a big fan of Lynch’s Dune. Have you seen the Spicediver fan edit? That’s quite fun, too. (It was hanging out on YT for the longest time, but the Villeneuve Dune sort of muscled it off the platform.)
At what point with AI transformers could we generate different versions of films:
I’m thinking about a Carry On version of Dune, of Star Wars, The Matrix, Fight Club.
I guess at some point some AI might generate these just for fun for itself, or maybe it’ll be smart enough not to bother.
First it’ll be animation upscaling. Using the current season of The Simpson, South Park, Toy Story 4 along with the first season or movie as a controlnet. Then will come applying an aesthetic like Star Wars or Mad Max to an extinct movie.
> but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs.
I think a History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) are really great, even if it's a different Cronenberg from "The Fly".
A History of Violence is phenomenal. Cronenberg might be one of those filmmakers who actually benefitted from the structure of Hollywood - even as far as “gross” Cronenberg is concerned, The Fly is probably his apex (even if Videodrome is cooler).
Naked Lunch! To quote Nelson Munz: “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.”
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What if Lucas had directed Apocalypse Now? That was a possibility.
Lucas wrote (or cowrote) Apocalypse Now. Had long planned on directing it but Star Wars got in the way. He and Coppola had a long working relationship together through American Zeotrope, both encouraging each other (and competing) in their respective projects. You can't tell the story of Lucas without talking about Coppola. A lot of this is detailed in Droidmaker. [0]
Cronenberg also turned down an offer to direct Top Gun believe it or not
This painfully long and meandering piece is about how David Lynch chose to not direct Return of the Jedi. If that interests you, you will enjoy it more than I did!
This painfully dull and inane comment is about how op didnt like the article. If that interests you, you will enjoy it more than I did!
I gave up on the piece after a bit. It's purposefully and painfully obtuse and has far too much misdirection that serves no real purpose:
SOMEHOW MY FATHER CONVINCED MY mother to squander a date night and watch David Lynch’s Dune when it was in the theaters in 1984. I was seven; my sister, five. When we asked about the movie, my mother or my father or both—they may’ve coordinated their anecdote—told me they knew they were in trouble when the theater manager handed out to everyone in the audience a one-sheet that attempted to explain the intricacies of the film’s logic.
Now I am the theater manager. What’s worse, the production I hope to untangle is my own.
So:
In 1977, George Lucas released Star Wars. In 1980, he released a sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and, in 1983, another sequel, Return of the Jedi. During Jedi’s production, and even after its release, Jedi was often referred to as Star Wars III. This is not to be confused with Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith, a Star Wars prequel released in 2005. Also, until the end of 1982, Return of the Jedi was titled Revenge of the Jedi. This is not to be confused with Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith.
And:
I write about two directors named David. David Lynch, who wrote and directed Blue Velvet and co-created/directed Twin Peaks, and David Cronenberg, who wrote and directed Videodrome and the 1986 remake of The Fly. I don’t mean for this to be confusing.
And:
Two excerpts from the screenplay for David Lynch’s Revenge of the Jedi appear in this essay. The first begins, “INTERIOR: DEATH STAR—MAIN DOCKING BAY”; the second begins, “INTERIOR: JABBA’S PALACE—HALLWAY.”
Okay. Let’s begin.
This, to me, is not an enjoyable read.
There are far too many attention sinks in the world, and unfortunately we're only alive for a geologically infinitesimal instant.
These are film wonks doing film wonk things. It's ok if that's not interesting to you. Just like how they probably wouldn't be interested in a detailed story about the creation of a certain programming language.
Inventing details of film history and attributing fanfic to the subject is not what I would consider typical "film wonk things."
I'm happy to see the decline of the self-indulgent, cognoscente literary tradition.
I love words and language and reading, but rarely is expository writing the correct place for word orgies.
I remember as a kid seeing ads on TV for some contest where you could win tickets to be the first to see Revenge of the Jedi. I also remember the name changing when it finally came out.
As a kid, I thought Revenge of the Jedi was so much better of a title. As an adult, of course I get how it doesn't fit well with the idea of a Jedi. But I still have to say, Revenge of the Jedi was a kick ass title and Return of the Jedi was very milquetoast.
They could always go even milder with “Response of the Jedi” — or perhaps take the polite British approach with “Request of the Jedi.”
My understanding is that “Revenge” was used during the whole production to capture any leaks. Lucas’ idea was to call it “Return” since the beginning, but everything was labelled “Revenge” so any counterfeit merchandising will be easily spotted.
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> the back of Threepio’s golden head: the reflected light fills the screen, dims as the giant metal door closes behind them—just before we hear the sound of the door’s teeth meet, the light goes—for a long second, we see nothing but the faint, oval-shape of Threepio’s head, then on either side of Threepio’s head, appear the grotesque faces of the palace guards: skin the texture of a slug’s and slick with a sweat of mucus, pink-rimmed snouts, stupid-marble eyes, and yellowed tusks protruding from their lower lip.
It's not long before we can feed that script to one of the AI engines and tell it to make a Lynch movie out of it. For other directors I don't know, but for Lynch that would be quite something.
This actually seems far less likely than for other directors. Lynch's style is so idiosyncratic it has its own name. AI has predominantly been good at synthesizing a broad gesture at a wide range of styles. Not really suited for recreating the effect of such a singular artist.
That's why I think it's a better challenge. AIs can create generic looking scenes but trying to do something that looks like a unique director style is more interesting.
A lot of people in this thread have an extremely facile understanding of art, David Lynch, and the capabilities of generative AI, but I look forward to someone returning to this thread in 10 or 100 years or whatever to link me to a convincing example.
> A lot of people in this thread have an extremely facile understanding of art,
I don't think anyone would deny Lynch had his own, distinct Lynch-ian stye. A lot of people probably can't describe it clearly in words but they'll recognize when they see it. So I think it's plausible LLMs "getting the gist" of the style and asking them to generate something "Lynch-ian" might just work.
I propose a Turing test for it. Show a bunch of people unfamiliar with most of his work some of his works mixed in with some generated, and see if they could tell which is which. It will fail today, but I think in 10 years we'll get there, even if not sooner.
His style is being ambiguous and surreal, making everything dream like. It has a pattern just lie anything else and I think AI would be able to emulate and apply it just fine.
Well that's one of the wonderful things about saying "one day AI will be able to do x," you don't really need to have any evidence for some segment of the population to believe it's not just plausible but inevitable.
It's not just wild speculation, it's based on the observation that Lynch's style of films all fit a pattern and have certain traits, which is exactly why AI would be able to learn it and imitate it.
Besides this just... not really being true of Lynch's films, it also misses how a Lynch film came to be. David Lynch didn't pull out a notepad and go, "Okay, time to write a Lynch film." He just decided to make a film and made it the way that made the most sense to him. His perspective on film-making, on people, compassion, curiosity etc. led the creation. At best (and this is seriously stretching the definition of "not just wild speculation") I think it's more likely you get something that exhibits formal qualities that remind someone of some of David Lynch's works, probably a fairly incoherent and incongruous mash of tropes, like a particularly bad episode of Family Guy. I don't know if I'd even credit that with praise as dismal as "imitation", it would be more like a visual laundry list. I'd love to see something that would cause someone to believe otherwise besides "AI learned how to string a sentence together, therefore one day it will be able to learn and produce literally anything," but it eludes me.
> Besides this just... not really being true of Lynch's films,
I'd say it is, although I can understand it is anti-thetical to what his fans get out of his films. Objectively though, I think you can certainly make a list of defining traits and show a pattern.
> David Lynch didn't pull out a notepad and go, "Okay, time to write a Lynch film." He just decided to make a film and made it the way that made the most sense to him.
I'm well aware, but it doesn't mean there isn't consistency or a pattern in his results. Plenty of filmmakers have a particular style and have elements that show up in anything they make allowing people to recognize their influence.
> At best (and this is seriously stretching the definition of "not just wild speculation") I think it's more likely you get something that exhibits formal qualities that remind someone of some of David Lynch's works, probably a fairly incoherent and incongruous mash of tropes, like a particularly bad episode of Family Guy.
So to discuss this further in detail, I think you'd need to at least try and define the ineffable qualities you think an AI wouldn't be able to recognize (keeping in mind eventually AI will be able to take things like your comment history into account to help it 'understand') to help it create something that could have been made by the man himself.
Just to note in case it's not obvious: there is no David Lynch Revenge of the Jedi script, because he didn't take the job (and probably wouldn't have been the writer even if he had?).
The "excerpts" here are snippets of the Dune and Return of the Jedi screenplays, with the bulk of the material, including the part you quoted, being the author's own work.
It was obvious, but seemed wildly out of place in the article. Was it supposed to be funny? Was the rest of the article factual?
> It's not long before we can feed that script to one of the AI engines and tell it to make a Lynch movie out of it.
This is both, I suspect, literally true and substantively false: it will not ne long until you can ask for that and get something recognizable as audiovisual output. It will, OTOH, be long before you can do that and get anything that would satisfy anyone as a movie worth watching, and even longer if you want something satisfying to anyone with a reason for including Lynch in the prompt other than that he was a specific filmmaker who the model might recognize and do something with.
> It will, OTOH, be long before you can do that and get anything that would satisfy anyone as a movie worth watching, and even longer if you want something satisfying to anyone with a reason for including Lynch in the prompt other than that he was a specific filmmaker who the model might recognize and do something with.
I think soonish we'll get to clips that look Lynchian so that an average person might recognize it as such. Kind of like DALL-E can emulate styles and people might say "aha, looks like it was painted by such and such". But with a full movie, not sure, will the true fans accept it as anything connected to Lynch? Probably never, and will even hate it with a passion...
But then there are fan edits of Dune, for instance: https://fanedit.org/dune-1984-the-alternative-edition-redux-.... Ok what if the edits were made by the AI? I can see accepting that. Next step is what if it's not a pure cut, but maybe it corrected a few scenes which looked odd, or the character wasn't fitting it gets spliced out of the move altogether, I really don't know, I might like that I suppose.
I just want simple things, like transforming the stop-motion shots in Terminator 1 to motion shots. I don't want upscale or anything, just light touches. It's the only thing in the movie which doesn't look gorgeous.
> like transforming the stop-motion shots in Terminator 1 to motion shots.
Oh yeah, or RoboCop!
Yes, this came to my mind. That all this AI work will someday culminate in a generated Lynch Return of the Jedi.
> for Lynch that would be quite something
It would be very easy: add some randomness to the prompts and keep the visual hallucinations.
This will not be a Lynch movie.
Buddy. You are seeing the future of the internet.
And after that, the future of film,as they figure out how to work around various rights.
I am here for it. Season 1 of Futurama, but live action with the cast and production values of the '77 Star Wars? It's coming. You wait and see.
Why not make something new instead? Why is the impulse to use AI to generate more of the same old stuff we’ve already seen, just with a different look?
Don't ask me; I'm just a guy on the internet.
But - if I was tempted to answer: The trend recently has been to invest in IP's which previously have performed well financially.
Me, what I want most is new stuff I haven't seen before. Mostly, they don't make movies and TV for people like me.
Sign me up for photorealistic Rick & Morty.
endlessly entertaining is lynch describing "next to zero interest" in directing starwars:
Tony Gilroy has expressed similar sentiment, which is apparently a superpower that has enabled him to create some of the best Star Wars to date.
I love the part where he describes getting a massive headache. Its so relatable when your body is even telling you it doesn't want to do some big complicated thing.
> next door to zero interest
I now use this a few times a month, thanks to this anecdote
Cronenberg’s best film after Videodrome is Existenz; it’s not as we’ll know as The Fly which has always puzzled me.
It was before it's time. I don't think audiences understood it.
There are several explanations for why Lynch turned down Lucas’ offer. Kazanjian implied—in either an interview [..] that Lynch turned down the offer because Dino De Laurentiis offered him Dune, an offer Lynch accepted. More recently, Kazanjian said, at a Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, that Lynch wasn’t hired because, “Ah, he didn’t want Johnny Williams to do the music and he didn’t want Ben Burtt—Academy Award winner like three times—to do the sound.” [..] Incredible, yes—as in hard to believe. Kazanjian’s original claim, that Lynch weighed the pros and cons of Lucas’s offer and chose Dune instead, is more credible.
Not so much. Lynch already had the idea before Dune that he wanted more creative control because he was afraid what a studio exec would do to his vision. After Dune, he resolved to never give up creative control ever again, and repeated that time and again to anyone who would listen.
Sound was incredibly important to Lynch. He produced his own music and partnered with other artists on many of his projects, to get the exact sound he wanted. Lynch having to work with Williams and Burtt would be like Aphex Twin having to work with Walt Disney.
I stopped reading as they keep trying to probe what Lynch's Return would be like. It's like asking what David Cronenberg's Toy Story 2 would be like (though obviously that would end up like MAD GOD). Why speculate about something clearly unsuitable, other than for a grim chuckle?
The growing headache Lynch mentions is such a great metaphor for the sinking feeling he must have felt as Lucas showed him things that had already been decided for him before he even agreed to direct. Lynch is known not only for paying close attention to sound design, but also for building many props himself to ensure they were exactly as he envisioned.
The issues are frustratingly undated, except the first. It strives to publish twice a year.
I asked Gemini to pretend that David Lynch directed the only existing version of ROTJ and write Roger Ebert's review. It got four stars, and I'd definitely go see it.
I had to ask the same. You got me interested.
Three and a half stars...
No-one ever squanders anything by going to see David Lynch's Dune.
I want to see the Terry Gilliam version. I guess someday I will.
Maybe a bittersweet documentary Lost under Force ?
Wonder if we'll get a full page ad demanding the studio release his movie? again
Pet peeve: people saying "A New Hope" when referring to the original 1977 film, which was actually called "Star Wars", dammit.
About 15 years ago, I was at a Goodwill store, looking around, and saw a VHS of of Star Wars. It wasn't "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope", it was just called "Star Wars".
I knew that that was how it was released, even at the time, but I had thought that by the time it was released on VHS that it would have adopted the new branding. I told my dad about it when I got home, and he was comparably surprised.
I didn't (and don't) have a VCR, so I didn't pick it up, but a small part of me wishes I had just as an interesting thing to put on my shelf.
The main thing I learned was that Cronenberg was offered the directing job for ROTJ. Cronenberg was at one time in line to direct Totall Recall, and he wrote a draft of the screenplay. Totall Recall certainly includes a bit of the trademark body horror.
Cronenberg made The Fly in Hollywood, and I think it's it's great, but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs.
In some alternate history timeline Cronenberg's name would have been attached to several big time Hollywood properties, and the world would be mostly the same just a little bit grosser. Of course, I'm happy with Cronenberg's mostly Canadian produced oeuvre the way it is, I just like to wonder.
I also used to wonder what the world would look like if Lynch has directed ROTJ, but I came to realize it was a ridiculous premise, Lynch needed far more creative elbow room than what the 3rd instalment of an established franchise could possibly afford, and there was no chance Lynch would ever agree to such a thing. So we got Dune instead and I'm happy with that too.
> Lynch would author the look of Dune.
This is so true. The recent films and the spinoff series all look like his Dune.
And Lynch's Dune looks like it does, probably in no small part due to Jodorowsky, Giger and Mobius.
I recommend everyone interested in Dune to take a look at Jodorowsky's Dune [0], the documentary which explains how they did the preproduction of Dune, and pitched it to the studios. All the deals eventually fell through, but the pitch decks circulated all the studios for years afterwards, and inspired countless other movie makers.
The best things about the new Dune installments imo is the art, but all, or most of it feels like copy pasted ideas from what came before them. CGI is a huge asset to actually get it working though.
0: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1935156
Mœbius probably has the greatest influence to obscurity ratio of any artist I can think of - his fingerprints are on so, so many things - and irony of ironies Jodorowsky’s Dune was probably one of the greatest catapults for further promulgating his aesthetic into the mainstream through the vessel of Giger. I doubt Giger would have been Giger without their collaboration on Dune. The unmade movie penetrates the popular psyche.
I remember finding Metal Hurlant and The Incal at a vide grenier in France as a kid, well before the days of the web, and just being blown away by the visions of this guy - only years later did I realise that I wasn’t alone in that sentiment. He’s the unseen foundation on which so much has been built. A creator’s creator, if you like.
If you love the Moebius asthetic and are a gamer, do yourself a favor and checkout Sable. The game perfectly captures the vibe and spirit of his works, and was just a joy to play. [0]
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a0evJUp7-aw
If you havent seen it already, I would recommend watching Scavengers Reign. It has a similar style to Mœbius.
>The series has received critical acclaim.
>the first season has a 100% approval score with an average rating of 8.7/10, based on 22 critic reviews.
>Andrew Webster of The Verge deemed it to be "equal parts beautiful and brutal, and it might be the most original piece of science fiction of the year"
>In May 2024, the series was canceled by Max
This is so confusing. Making good art must not be profitable.
No, it's profitable.
The problem is the schism of media. If I already have 3 streaming service providers but the greatest show on earth is only watchable on "kufuzu neon plus", I'm just not going to watch it.
Consumers care more about convenience. What they should have done is to integrate into Netflix, stop worrying about exclusive premiere content, and instead focus on outcompeting the others in a common marketplace.
Instead they all conspired to fall on netflix like a pack of hyenas, rip off whatever chunks they could get and then retreat to their dens to enjoy the spoils.
So yeah, screw them. If you're a creative, don't sell your original valuable ideas to companies that are not built on original valuable ideas.
I recommend the original short to anyone.
https://vimeo.com/179779722
If you like that, you’ll like the more recent show (Scavengers Reign, the parent comment’s recommendation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavengers_Reign
Be warned it wasn’t renewed for a second season, it didn’t have enough people talking about and watching. The creators do have something new going on, called “Common Side Effects”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Side_Effects
I recently found out that Mœbius was a huge influence on Hayao Miyazaki that is particularly evident in his Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Geof Darrow is one of my fav Moebius-influenced artists. Among his own projects, he created concept art for The Matrix.
Example here, down a bit: https://www.vulture.com/2015/05/geof-darrow-shaolin-cowboy-z...
The most relevant artists aren't those best regarded by popular audiences or critics, but the ones that do the most to inspire and influence other artists. Both Moebius and Lynch are huge in that regard.
This specifically reminded me of how many popular genre fiction writers point to Gene Wolfe as an inspiration and influence, while he still remains unknown to the fans of these popular writers' work.
Also worth mentioning the comic story “A Long Tomorrow” by Moebius which was an inspiration for the visuals in Blade Runner.
+1 for Jodorowsky's Dune. It's a fascinating study of "the greatest sci fi movie never made". You can see its DNA in Star Wars, Bladerunner, Alien and more.
I hope some day Moebius and Jodorowsky's storyboards are published in the public domain
Regardless of whether the storyboards are in the public domain, I'm sure that someone will eventually "make" Jodorowsky's Dune using AI tools. Feed in the artwork, novels, and actors to get a complete movie out. This will be technically possible within a few years. It will probably look good (at least for casual viewing) but the human performances will still seem a little odd.
I'm not claiming that this will necessarily be a good thing from an artistic or legal perspective. But there are enough Dune fans out there with access to AI video tools that someone will eventually do it.
I'd definitely be more interested in seeing the storyboard than the AI generated movie. I guess that says something about how I/we value of AI generated content
I love how this slop is something you think we should be looking forward to.
The thing about slop, is if it is continuously improving slop, maybe one day it won’t be slop any more
quote:
> not claiming that this will necessarily be a good thing
Lynch Dune is so underrated. The creativity on display was immense. The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI, almost every move and visual predictable.
That’s such a great way to put it. Maybe I’ve just seen TOO many films, but there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films that is installed as safety guardrails so that audiences aren’t too turned off. It’s visual predictable. I like that. Lynch said bollocks to that.
> there’s a modern homogeneity in big budget films
A lot of that is due to the nature of studios milking franchise properties like the MCU or SW. Directors of big budget films are now often selected to be a caretaker of one franchise episode. They inherit a pre-existing style from the franchise while also having a bunch more 'input' (aka supervision) from an army of executive producers who work across more than one film and are focused on "don't fuck up the franchise."
Another part of the modern decline in the diversity of cinematic looks is from the economics of streaming. Streamers like Netflix, Apple and Prime are focused on risk reduction by funding either "big name star" properties where the stars make more by being their own executive producers or "big name IP" properties with built-in audiences from books, games, etc. In neither instance is the director usually a central element in packaging the deal. The role of these directors is to be more of a journeymen shepherd like Marquand than a visionary like Lynch, Kubrick or Coppola.
It's a worrying trend because many "bankable name" directors like Lynch whose name at the top of the movie poster could guarantee an audience are dying and not being replaced by new directors that have broad name recognition.
As it turns out, having just one blockbuster sci-fi franchise wherein Anya Taylor Joy fights Milk Boys in the sand is not enough for the 21st century. Villeneuve needed an Anya Taylor Joy Milk Boy sand fight sci-fi blockbuster he could call his own.
I wonder if it might also be tech related. Like how aaa games these days all have the same “default unreal engine look” thanks to its out-of-box settings being good enough to not motivate further tinkering, your run-of-the-mill Hollywood big budget action films also use the same de-facto default equipment and out-of-box setups?
I think there is a lot to be said about the technology factor to it. On the movie side special effects heavy stuff is still largely the wall-to-wall green or blue screen sound stages. Motion capture and motion tracking tools have all got insanely good so studios can do a lot more than say in the days of Lucas' Star Wars prequels (which were notorious wall-to-wall green screen films of their era), but also the budgets and time constraints and "crunch" still provide a lot of barriers to how well the digital/analog integration is and the overall look of all the effects. Also, there's only so many ways to light a green or blue soundstage so that things are readable and you don't get extra ugly color spill that the special effects have to work even harder to remove. (I think the base lighting options being so mostly homogeneous is a subtle but huge factor in the overall things always feeling that way. Differences in lighting have always been one of the biggest "cinematic languages".)
Special Effects houses working on those sorts of movies are probably using heavier, slower renderers than Unreal Engine today, but given the average life span of an effects house is still appallingly close to 2 years and scenes scattered across 1.5 movies, those renderers are still generally off-the-shelf or borrowed from other companies. Industrial Light and Magic is about the only effects house that no one wants to kill, so also becomes something of a homogenizing factor in whatever tools it white labels for sale/rents to other effects houses. Disney owning ILM seems to be like an obvious factor that almost everyone working on an MCU film is trying to rent or ape the ILM house style at all times.
It's also interesting that right now TV can't afford as much time with the motion tracking/motion capture tools and studio spaces of wall-to-wall green screen, so in the effects heavy shows we're seeing a lot more experimentation, some of which I'd argue look better than the movies currently. For big instances, right now ILM's TV efforts with The Volume (and CBS Paramount's copycat AR Wall and other studios have copycats now too) are fast changing the look of TV. Because these LED walls are their own light source which dynamically reflects what the background should be doing it seems like there's a ton more options for lighting scenes in these rooms/volumes/spaces or doing shots that would be tricky or expensive even with how great motion tracking and motion capture have gotten. Of course the trade-off there is that the real-time background rendering requires a rendering engine more in the vein of Unreal Engine, and allegedly in most cases is definitely Unreal Engine, so "default unreal engine look" starts to apply literally to background elements in TV shows.
It's not just CGI, background replacement and other effects work. Some cinematographers have been noting that the increasingly flat, uninspiring look of much modern content is partly due to the amazing dynamic range of modern camera imagers as well as HDR production workflows. While wonderful, this also enables a kind of laziness (or expediency) when shooting. You don't have to specially light many scenes as much (or at all) as long as there's enough ambient light. While this can enable styles like cinema verite to be higher-quality, it also lets film-makers just go with ensuring there's enough flat light overall and call it good enough. Intentional lighting is hard and time-consuming but it's also one of the most expressive visual elements of film-making.
Another factor is that dramatic lighting tends to dance closer to the edge in terms of quality. Lighting a high contrast scene with inky blacks in one area and your hero elements in moody shadow means that those very dark areas are at risk of slipping into the floor of imager noise. The same is true when there are extremely bright elements near the upper-bound of clipping. While modern imagers and HDR capture give film-makers more latitude than ever to avoid these problems, perversely, the same luxuries seem to be making younger film-makers less skilled, or at least less confident, in their ability to dance close to the edges of too dark or too bright.
Newer post-production color grading tools also enable new degrees of what's possible to "just fix in post." Once again, this is wonderful when we need to fix a mistake or for amateur and hobby productions which don't have the time, budget, gear or even knowledge to do creative lighting. The downside is it creates an ever-present temptation when under time and/or budget pressure to take the shortcut and just bounce a key light off the ceiling and a fill off the wall and call it done. It's sad because modern imager sensitivity and battery-powered, micro-sized lighting instruments now make it easier, cheaper and faster than ever to do intentional lighting at a Vittorio Storaro level. Storaro might spend half a day with a crew of six gaffers lighting one scene that a four person indie crew could largely recreate today in an hour with $1k of lights, clamps and stands from Amazon.
This recent video discusses the problem from a cinematography perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo
> "don't fuck up the franchise."
Were they asleep while filming the more recent star wars films?
That's a great example of each director being given too much freedom, or alternatively, creating a trilogy sequel without writing the story beforehand. I have no idea how they managed or allowed to mess that up so bad. It feels like they were just winging it, a creative outlet more than making up for the interesting choices they made in the prequels or the backdrop of the next decade of a multi-billion merchandise franchise.
To be fair, the original trilogy winged it just as much, including a very similar pattern of writer and director shifts with the original director coming back for the third part as a last minute fill-in, and a lot of people at the time complained Empire Strikes Back to Ewoks was a tonal shift as bad or worse than people complain about Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi.
Contrary to all of George's talk of a "grand plan", Star Wars was always an adventure serial where winging it was the plan. (Also, George's "grand plan" itself still cracks me up as a kid who guessed to much of it reading the weird novelization, especially since Ars Technica got him to admit to it. Have you heard about the Whills?)
At least that was before those studio guys even existed. No excuse now though.
For me the nadir was the prequel series although I also think The Phantom Menace poisoned the well for the other two which weren't terrible. The more recent films have been a mixed bag with them generally being better the further they are from the original story arc.
For me at least, there's also a certain fatigue factor. While I like The Mandalorian and Rogue One, I'm pretty much done with the franchise. See also Star Trek and MCU. That said, I know that there are a lot of fans who will take pretty much anything you throw out even if they like to belly-ache about it.
Well I was phantom menace as a kid and I liked it :D
> I was phantom menace as a kid
That's good. Most kids are menaces to your face /s
the entire sequence of scenes on Giedi Prime were far from visually predictable. Denis is a master and flexed it a number of times in Dune. i think a fair take is Dune 1 and 2 are doing more creatively than any other big budget blockbuster franchise has since Avatar 1
It was gladiator in black and white with the contrast cranked to 11. Take away the overexposure and … just like everything else the sci fi bad guys build in the last three decades of film. The Lynch Giedi Prime was terrifying.
But that’s probably because I’ve been watching sci fi films for fifty years.
I mean I'm fairly sure it's the first/only infrared shot on imax, which is neat and gives it that unique look.
If you read scifi from the 50s you'll find that there was no original idea in any scifi film.
Sigh.
Asimov didn’t write EVERYTHING.
He didn’t write about gender and politics like LeGuin
He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD.
He didnt write about dimensional fragments and gravitation wave communication and laws of existence like Liu.
Even the grandfather of it all HG Wells didn’t ….
You trolled me and I fell for it. Damn.
Sigh… there's more than one scifi writer.
You've read ONE out of HUNDREDS!
Wow you're so cultured and intellectual!
> He didn’t write about drug addicted Mars settlers like PKD.
Read the first stories on mars colonization, long before philip k dick.
It's not a moral fault to not have read something. But perhaps don't go lecturing people who have?
You don't see me going to china to lecture about chinese literature while I don't even speak chinese. Don't do that. It's sad.
Giedi Prime was the only sequence that held me transfixed during the movie. Funny, I was considering mentioning it as an exception with my first comment lest someone point it out.
Inception would be another one that springs to mind, I notice that came out the year after Avatar, although I think Inception probably took it's lead from the Matrix.
if i throw out the "franchise" qualifier then Nolan's a great example of visual novelty in big budget blockbusters. i enjoyed TENET more than anyone ive met
Lynch hated Dune. Lynch's name is removed from the credits of the original cut (replaced with Alan Smithee) because it's so embarrassing. It's still a Lynch movie, so it's interesting to watch. I would not call it underrated.
The tempo of the movie is completely off, and no cut has been able to fix that. The characters and scenes just run trough the story.
Lynch wanted Salvador Dali to design the set. Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984).
He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
You got most of your facts mixed up. Lynch's name proudly sits on top of the theatrical cut, the only cut he supervised. Alan Smithee is used for all other cuts, since he supervised none of those and refuses, as is his right, not to be credited for a cut he didn't watch himself.
> Instead he had to reuses the set from the Conan the Destroyer
My understanding is that Conan reused Dune sets, not the other way round. The Dune sets were extremely intricate and expensive, and are definitely one of the few highlights of the film.
> He didn't even get the music he wanted and that's big part of his movies.
Not sure how Toto ended up doing the music for that film. That film was an absolute mess.
The Toto soundtrack is an atrocious fit, completely bizarre choice given the tone.
Lynch hated Dune because DeLaurentis meddled with it so hard (Jodorowsky famously said they only way Lynch could have made a movie so bad, is if the producers ruined it).
>Lynch Dune is so underrated.
I don't know ... I think it's 'properly rated'. The movie is deeply flawed but it has stayed in public consciousness and is (fondly) remembered. The first half is pretty good. The second half is a total mess and makes the entire plot, characterization and pacing unsalvageable. The visual art style is generally great, but there are some glaring misses.
It's a mess, but it feels alien, which is what you want with sci-fi and especially Dune.
The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis.
They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG.
I believe the film run aground on the special effects for the worms, it just goes to show that critics will feast on the weak points.
I utterly relished the scene with the Emperor meeting the navigator; Mr PlansWithinPlans.
Is there enough film to make the purported mini-series of Lynch’s Dune, I take it there was only the film.
> The lengths they went to to mate in the landing of the Duke on Arrakis.
> They used a football stadium in Mexico, in order to get enough distance. The mind boggles as to what they did without CG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQG_Gt6-xpE
Ever notice how much it looks like Lucas directly took the Dune 1984 imagery of the landing on Arrakis and turned it into the Trade Federation landing on Naboo?
[1] Above Documentary, 1:23: https://youtu.be/pQG_Gt6-xpE?si=KZx9K1l1pZERaJ-R&t=83
[2] Trade Federation Craft Landing, 0:25: https://youtu.be/UD8tounIou4?si=-eCg60AvEr0eo3qa&t=25
For me the best film of recent years is Hundreds of Beavers - not because it will revolutionise cinema or human thought, but because it was clearly made by people who love what they are doing and had nothing to lose but a tiny budget, so went absolutely hogswild on the creativity. It fills me with joy.
There is an argument to be made that the new movies are better visually than they are as a complete package. That was certainly my reaction the first time through #1. I now am inclined to think that's not really fair and I do think they're clearly the best entries in the Dune movie list.
>The new Dune movies have amazing craftsmanship but feel as if they were generated by AI
Except for Arrival which owes a lot of its humanism to Ted Chiang's source material that's something that I've noticed about Villeneuve's work. Technically well made but there's something inhuman and cold about how he writes characters and scenes, as if they're surgically made. I think it really stands out too if you watch the old and new Blade Runner back to back.
I see the same cold and surgical nature to Christopher Nolan films. They all seem the same to me.
What I sense with the Nolan films that I've watched is that he packs a lot into the runtime, even accounting for how they generally are long films to start with. He has to be very efficient with how he uses the time, every shot and dialogue carries some information that is useful in some way, there's little spare space or idling. In a way I wonder if it's a bit deliberate to overwhelm the view a little on the first viewing so they can't take it all in and analyze as they go so late revelations have the impact they do, if it was spaced out as a TV series the writing would need to adjust.
I’m a big fan of Lynch’s Dune. Have you seen the Spicediver fan edit? That’s quite fun, too. (It was hanging out on YT for the longest time, but the Villeneuve Dune sort of muscled it off the platform.)
At what point with AI transformers could we generate different versions of films:
I’m thinking about a Carry On version of Dune, of Star Wars, The Matrix, Fight Club.
I guess at some point some AI might generate these just for fun for itself, or maybe it’ll be smart enough not to bother.
First it’ll be animation upscaling. Using the current season of The Simpson, South Park, Toy Story 4 along with the first season or movie as a controlnet. Then will come applying an aesthetic like Star Wars or Mad Max to an extinct movie.
> but he wasn't able to get much more than that on the go, even though he came close to landing several high profile gigs.
I think a History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) are really great, even if it's a different Cronenberg from "The Fly".
A History of Violence is phenomenal. Cronenberg might be one of those filmmakers who actually benefitted from the structure of Hollywood - even as far as “gross” Cronenberg is concerned, The Fly is probably his apex (even if Videodrome is cooler).
Naked Lunch! To quote Nelson Munz: “I can think of at least two things wrong with that title.”
What if Lucas had directed Apocalypse Now? That was a possibility.
Lucas wrote (or cowrote) Apocalypse Now. Had long planned on directing it but Star Wars got in the way. He and Coppola had a long working relationship together through American Zeotrope, both encouraging each other (and competing) in their respective projects. You can't tell the story of Lucas without talking about Coppola. A lot of this is detailed in Droidmaker. [0]
[0] https://www.droidmaker.com/
Cronenberg also turned down an offer to direct Top Gun believe it or not
This painfully long and meandering piece is about how David Lynch chose to not direct Return of the Jedi. If that interests you, you will enjoy it more than I did!
This painfully dull and inane comment is about how op didnt like the article. If that interests you, you will enjoy it more than I did!
I gave up on the piece after a bit. It's purposefully and painfully obtuse and has far too much misdirection that serves no real purpose:
This, to me, is not an enjoyable read.There are far too many attention sinks in the world, and unfortunately we're only alive for a geologically infinitesimal instant.
These are film wonks doing film wonk things. It's ok if that's not interesting to you. Just like how they probably wouldn't be interested in a detailed story about the creation of a certain programming language.
Inventing details of film history and attributing fanfic to the subject is not what I would consider typical "film wonk things."
I'm happy to see the decline of the self-indulgent, cognoscente literary tradition.
I love words and language and reading, but rarely is expository writing the correct place for word orgies.
I remember as a kid seeing ads on TV for some contest where you could win tickets to be the first to see Revenge of the Jedi. I also remember the name changing when it finally came out.
As a kid, I thought Revenge of the Jedi was so much better of a title. As an adult, of course I get how it doesn't fit well with the idea of a Jedi. But I still have to say, Revenge of the Jedi was a kick ass title and Return of the Jedi was very milquetoast.
They could always go even milder with “Response of the Jedi” — or perhaps take the polite British approach with “Request of the Jedi.”
My understanding is that “Revenge” was used during the whole production to capture any leaks. Lucas’ idea was to call it “Return” since the beginning, but everything was labelled “Revenge” so any counterfeit merchandising will be easily spotted.
> the back of Threepio’s golden head: the reflected light fills the screen, dims as the giant metal door closes behind them—just before we hear the sound of the door’s teeth meet, the light goes—for a long second, we see nothing but the faint, oval-shape of Threepio’s head, then on either side of Threepio’s head, appear the grotesque faces of the palace guards: skin the texture of a slug’s and slick with a sweat of mucus, pink-rimmed snouts, stupid-marble eyes, and yellowed tusks protruding from their lower lip.
It's not long before we can feed that script to one of the AI engines and tell it to make a Lynch movie out of it. For other directors I don't know, but for Lynch that would be quite something.
This actually seems far less likely than for other directors. Lynch's style is so idiosyncratic it has its own name. AI has predominantly been good at synthesizing a broad gesture at a wide range of styles. Not really suited for recreating the effect of such a singular artist.
That's why I think it's a better challenge. AIs can create generic looking scenes but trying to do something that looks like a unique director style is more interesting.
A lot of people in this thread have an extremely facile understanding of art, David Lynch, and the capabilities of generative AI, but I look forward to someone returning to this thread in 10 or 100 years or whatever to link me to a convincing example.
> A lot of people in this thread have an extremely facile understanding of art,
I don't think anyone would deny Lynch had his own, distinct Lynch-ian stye. A lot of people probably can't describe it clearly in words but they'll recognize when they see it. So I think it's plausible LLMs "getting the gist" of the style and asking them to generate something "Lynch-ian" might just work.
I propose a Turing test for it. Show a bunch of people unfamiliar with most of his work some of his works mixed in with some generated, and see if they could tell which is which. It will fail today, but I think in 10 years we'll get there, even if not sooner.
His style is being ambiguous and surreal, making everything dream like. It has a pattern just lie anything else and I think AI would be able to emulate and apply it just fine.
Well that's one of the wonderful things about saying "one day AI will be able to do x," you don't really need to have any evidence for some segment of the population to believe it's not just plausible but inevitable.
It's not just wild speculation, it's based on the observation that Lynch's style of films all fit a pattern and have certain traits, which is exactly why AI would be able to learn it and imitate it.
Besides this just... not really being true of Lynch's films, it also misses how a Lynch film came to be. David Lynch didn't pull out a notepad and go, "Okay, time to write a Lynch film." He just decided to make a film and made it the way that made the most sense to him. His perspective on film-making, on people, compassion, curiosity etc. led the creation. At best (and this is seriously stretching the definition of "not just wild speculation") I think it's more likely you get something that exhibits formal qualities that remind someone of some of David Lynch's works, probably a fairly incoherent and incongruous mash of tropes, like a particularly bad episode of Family Guy. I don't know if I'd even credit that with praise as dismal as "imitation", it would be more like a visual laundry list. I'd love to see something that would cause someone to believe otherwise besides "AI learned how to string a sentence together, therefore one day it will be able to learn and produce literally anything," but it eludes me.
> Besides this just... not really being true of Lynch's films,
I'd say it is, although I can understand it is anti-thetical to what his fans get out of his films. Objectively though, I think you can certainly make a list of defining traits and show a pattern.
> David Lynch didn't pull out a notepad and go, "Okay, time to write a Lynch film." He just decided to make a film and made it the way that made the most sense to him.
I'm well aware, but it doesn't mean there isn't consistency or a pattern in his results. Plenty of filmmakers have a particular style and have elements that show up in anything they make allowing people to recognize their influence.
> At best (and this is seriously stretching the definition of "not just wild speculation") I think it's more likely you get something that exhibits formal qualities that remind someone of some of David Lynch's works, probably a fairly incoherent and incongruous mash of tropes, like a particularly bad episode of Family Guy.
So to discuss this further in detail, I think you'd need to at least try and define the ineffable qualities you think an AI wouldn't be able to recognize (keeping in mind eventually AI will be able to take things like your comment history into account to help it 'understand') to help it create something that could have been made by the man himself.
Just to note in case it's not obvious: there is no David Lynch Revenge of the Jedi script, because he didn't take the job (and probably wouldn't have been the writer even if he had?).
The "excerpts" here are snippets of the Dune and Return of the Jedi screenplays, with the bulk of the material, including the part you quoted, being the author's own work.
It was obvious, but seemed wildly out of place in the article. Was it supposed to be funny? Was the rest of the article factual?
> It's not long before we can feed that script to one of the AI engines and tell it to make a Lynch movie out of it.
This is both, I suspect, literally true and substantively false: it will not ne long until you can ask for that and get something recognizable as audiovisual output. It will, OTOH, be long before you can do that and get anything that would satisfy anyone as a movie worth watching, and even longer if you want something satisfying to anyone with a reason for including Lynch in the prompt other than that he was a specific filmmaker who the model might recognize and do something with.
> It will, OTOH, be long before you can do that and get anything that would satisfy anyone as a movie worth watching, and even longer if you want something satisfying to anyone with a reason for including Lynch in the prompt other than that he was a specific filmmaker who the model might recognize and do something with.
I think soonish we'll get to clips that look Lynchian so that an average person might recognize it as such. Kind of like DALL-E can emulate styles and people might say "aha, looks like it was painted by such and such". But with a full movie, not sure, will the true fans accept it as anything connected to Lynch? Probably never, and will even hate it with a passion...
But then there are fan edits of Dune, for instance: https://fanedit.org/dune-1984-the-alternative-edition-redux-.... Ok what if the edits were made by the AI? I can see accepting that. Next step is what if it's not a pure cut, but maybe it corrected a few scenes which looked odd, or the character wasn't fitting it gets spliced out of the move altogether, I really don't know, I might like that I suppose.
I just want simple things, like transforming the stop-motion shots in Terminator 1 to motion shots. I don't want upscale or anything, just light touches. It's the only thing in the movie which doesn't look gorgeous.
> like transforming the stop-motion shots in Terminator 1 to motion shots.
Oh yeah, or RoboCop!
Yes, this came to my mind. That all this AI work will someday culminate in a generated Lynch Return of the Jedi.
> for Lynch that would be quite something
It would be very easy: add some randomness to the prompts and keep the visual hallucinations.
This will not be a Lynch movie.
Buddy. You are seeing the future of the internet.
And after that, the future of film,as they figure out how to work around various rights.
I am here for it. Season 1 of Futurama, but live action with the cast and production values of the '77 Star Wars? It's coming. You wait and see.
Why not make something new instead? Why is the impulse to use AI to generate more of the same old stuff we’ve already seen, just with a different look?
Don't ask me; I'm just a guy on the internet.
But - if I was tempted to answer: The trend recently has been to invest in IP's which previously have performed well financially.
Me, what I want most is new stuff I haven't seen before. Mostly, they don't make movies and TV for people like me.
Sign me up for photorealistic Rick & Morty.
endlessly entertaining is lynch describing "next to zero interest" in directing starwars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJQ4vCu-S0U
Tony Gilroy has expressed similar sentiment, which is apparently a superpower that has enabled him to create some of the best Star Wars to date.
I love the part where he describes getting a massive headache. Its so relatable when your body is even telling you it doesn't want to do some big complicated thing.
> next door to zero interest
I now use this a few times a month, thanks to this anecdote
Cronenberg’s best film after Videodrome is Existenz; it’s not as we’ll know as The Fly which has always puzzled me.
It was before it's time. I don't think audiences understood it.
Sound was incredibly important to Lynch. He produced his own music and partnered with other artists on many of his projects, to get the exact sound he wanted. Lynch having to work with Williams and Burtt would be like Aphex Twin having to work with Walt Disney.
I stopped reading as they keep trying to probe what Lynch's Return would be like. It's like asking what David Cronenberg's Toy Story 2 would be like (though obviously that would end up like MAD GOD). Why speculate about something clearly unsuitable, other than for a grim chuckle?
The growing headache Lynch mentions is such a great metaphor for the sinking feeling he must have felt as Lucas showed him things that had already been decided for him before he even agreed to direct. Lynch is known not only for paying close attention to sound design, but also for building many props himself to ensure they were exactly as he envisioned.
This was apparently published in 2018:
https://www.bennington.edu/news-and-features/bennington-revi...
The issues are frustratingly undated, except the first. It strives to publish twice a year.
I asked Gemini to pretend that David Lynch directed the only existing version of ROTJ and write Roger Ebert's review. It got four stars, and I'd definitely go see it.
I had to ask the same. You got me interested.
Three and a half stars...
No-one ever squanders anything by going to see David Lynch's Dune.
I want to see the Terry Gilliam version. I guess someday I will.
Maybe a bittersweet documentary Lost under Force ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_La_Mancha
Wonder if we'll get a full page ad demanding the studio release his movie? again
Pet peeve: people saying "A New Hope" when referring to the original 1977 film, which was actually called "Star Wars", dammit.
About 15 years ago, I was at a Goodwill store, looking around, and saw a VHS of of Star Wars. It wasn't "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope", it was just called "Star Wars".
I knew that that was how it was released, even at the time, but I had thought that by the time it was released on VHS that it would have adopted the new branding. I told my dad about it when I got home, and he was comparably surprised.
I didn't (and don't) have a VCR, so I didn't pick it up, but a small part of me wishes I had just as an interesting thing to put on my shelf.
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