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'This Film Does Not Exist': AI Imagines Jodorowsky's 'Tron' (nytimes.com) 37

Posted by EditorDavid from the light-cycles dept.
In the mid-1970s, Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to film Dune (working with artists including H.R. Giger). A documentary about that attempt was filmed by Frank Pavich, who now writes in the New York Times that "The cast would have included Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, Salvador Dalí and Alejandro's 12-year-old son, Brontis, in the lead role. The soundtrack would have been composed and recorded by Pink Floyd.... It will forever be the greatest film never made, because it exists solely in our imaginations."

Just because you cannot watch Alejandro's "Dune" doesn't mean it didn't change the world. This unfilmed film's influence on our culture is nothing short of astounding. Specific ideas and images from the "Dune" art bible have escaped into the world. They can be experienced in movies such as "Blade Runner," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Prometheus," "The Terminator" and even the original "Star Wars." His "Dune" does not exist, yet it's all around us.
Nearly half a century later... I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1976 version of "Tron." The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker, never tried to make "Tron." I'm not even sure he knows what "Tron" is. And Disney's original "Tron" was released in 1982. So what 1970s film were these gorgeous stills from...? The truth is that these weren't stills from a long-lost movie. They weren't photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.
The article notes that the real Jodorowsky is now almost 94 — and is planning to direct a new film. But it also points out that in the early 1970s Jodorowsky's team put in "two years of pure analog struggle to create his Dune," — while Canadian film director Johnny Darrell generated the Tron images in less than a minute using an A.I. program called Midjourney. Pavich says this raises several questions. "Has Alejandro been robbed? Is the training of this A.I. model the greatest art heist in history? How much of art-making is theft, anyway?"

In his great documentary F for Fake Orson Welles intones wrly that "A forgery — is still a painting." So Pavich's piece concludes with perhaps the ultimate question. "What will it mean when directors, concept artists and film students... can paint using all the digitally archived visual material of human civilization? When our culture starts to be influenced by scenes, sets and images from old films that never existed or that haven't yet even been imagined?

"I have a feeling we're all about to find out."
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'This Film Does Not Exist': AI Imagines Jodorowsky's 'Tron' More

'This Film Does Not Exist': AI Imagines Jodorowsky's 'Tron'

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  • Where is the link in the summary to the images discussed, that does not require dodging the N.Y.T. (sic) paywall ?

  • Smart article made dumb (Score:3)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Saturday January 14, 2023 @12:14PM (#63208276)

    I happen to have a nytimes account so I could see the article. Yes the images are fantastic but I have no idea why the name Jodorowsky even appears. I wish feature writers wouldn't do stupid clickbait like this.

    One of the very first dates I took a girl on was to see the real Jodorowsky film El Topo. This is a very gory film at parts and she spent those times curled up against me, unable to watch. The rupturing bodies effect was created in real time by throwing watermelon flesh at the bodies of the actors to simulate exit wounds and it was pretty effective. But that's not what the film was really about. I only understood what I was watching years later when I read an essay about it.

    If you want to write an article about AI images fine -- write that. If you want to write an article about the style of some movie director also fine -- write that. Trying to tease the two together to get clicks is tiresome and a waste of time.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shess ( 31691 )

      If you want to write an article about AI images fine -- write that. If you want to write an article about the style of some movie director also fine -- write that. Trying to tease the two together to get clicks is tiresome and a waste of time.

      The algorithm told them to!

      I mean that as only half snarky. The reason things like ChatGPT are so concerning is that it slots in so well with the existing systems of algorithmically-generated content. Just because humans are running the existing algorithms doesn't mean that they are engaging in inherently worthwhile creative endeavors.

    • It's not clickbait to mention Jodorowsky if you actually RTFA instead of just look at the pictures...

      i.e., the midjourney prompts were, among others, “production still from 1976 of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tron”

      give midjourney a shot sometime, it's still free I believe and just requires a login to the discord channel - pretty scary how well it works

      • i.e., the midjourney prompts were, among others, “production still from 1976 of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tron”

        Can you square your statement with this one from the article?

        However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker, never tried to make "Tron." I'm not even sure he knows what "Tron" is. And Disney's original "Tron" was released in 1982.

        • dude, the article is about an AI (i.e., artificial intelligence) based application that generates still images based on instructions ("prompts") called Midjourney

          Someone wanted to see what Tron would look like had Jodorowsky made it so it asked the AI to generate said stills with prompts such as “production still from 1976 of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Tron” - NO SUCH MOVIE ACTUALLY EXISTS - THAT's THE POINT

          These pictures were made by an AI, none of the people/sets/etc. in the pictures are re

        • here's the first few paragraphs from the article which I suspect you didn't read:

          "I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of “Tron.” The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

          However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean film

    • The name Jodorowsky appears because that's what the AI was asked to do: generate images from a Tron movie in the style of Jodorowsky. A critic expert on Jodorowsky viewed them to evaluate how Jodorowskyesque they are, and answered “very”. That's what this whole thing is about, not pretty pictures.

      RTFA before you rant, please, it's all that us humans have left to tell us apart from bots.

  • The images are beautiful, but make no sense in the context of the movie. The idea of being computer generated in 1976 was clean lines and generated shapes. Why in the world would there be hair then a clear helmet over it ? It's not generating his version of Dune in 1976 , it's merging his style with the 1980's style of Tron and generating a Hybrid that looks wonderful, but is a narrative mess.

  • "What will it mean when directors, concept artists and film students... can paint using all the digitally archived visual material of human civilization?

    Doesn't that fear run counter to the reality that a lot of it's lock in the copyright vaults waiting for the next chance to make a buck? A.I. runs into the same barriers that real people do.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vivian ( 156520 )

      Throughout art history, there are always some artists that put out works that are of a similar style as their contemporaries, and others who will push the boundaries, often being met with resistance by those more established in the field.
      Computer generated art may pose a threat to a certain extent to those artists who do not push new boundaries, but art is more than the final image or creation - it is also about the process used to create it.
      At one time artists used to make their own pigments, canvasess and

  • Someone's actually using webp format.

  • ...and wow, a long lost Dickens novel he never wrote, generated in seconds. We have now reached the nadir of culture, when people publicicize how proud they are of the simple command they gave to A.I. software.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It seems there is an FB user/page with the imagery on it. I'm not too bothered about the prose in the NYT article. https://www.facebook.com/johnn... [facebook.com]

  • ...should Prometheus really be in that list? I'm a big Sci-Fi fan...but I found it completely forgettable. Considering how often it gets referenced...I feel like I watched a completely different movie than others did. Aside from a moderately-interesting-but-not-original concept of "humanity seeding"...it just seemed lame. I'm just curious what other Sci-Fi nerds think...vs 'normies".

    Maybe I need to re-watch it...but it left a bad enough taste, that I'm not super excited to do so.

  • I would be so in to see another pink floyd album. I wonder if they were contacted at the time and expressed an interest
  • So was Prometheus thrown in there to say some of their ideas were truly shit as well?

  • But even if this film doesn't exist, it simply HAS to be better than that crap-show of an attempt from 1984.

  • https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

    Supposed footage of the 1933 Long Beach, CA earthquake as W.C. Fields was in the middle of a film shoot.

    Read the comments section, people are deep analysing this frame by frame, checking to see how every object in the room shakes, the reactions of the actors, etc.

    Apparently, W.C. Fields said that this was set up as a publicity stunt for the movie "San Fransisco" which depicted the 1906 SF quake.

    This is supposedly fake, but I saw "San Fransisco", and t

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