Nothing is more amusing than watching people paid to comment on what others do (and I am one of those) smugly assuming they know know best while they underestimate the doers.
This was everywhere in the summer of 2015 when Donald Trump announced his run for president. Almost everyone in the media and in establishment politics had a big laugh without ever once sitting back and looking at how much Trump had already accomplished. Here was a guy who remained a pop culture figure for (at the time) over 30 years — how many people have done that? He’d conquered the most savagely competitive real estate market in the world (Manhattan). He’d recovered from bankruptcy. He’d top-lined a wildly successful prime-time TV show for 14 years. But har, har, he wants to be president?
More recently, this was everywhere this summer right up until the box office numbers arrived showing that The Odyessy is a major hit. How do you underestimate a director like Christopher Nolan who has an a near-perfect record when it comes to delivering critical and box office triumphs? His previous movie, Oppenheimer (2023), not only won a slew of well-deserved Oscars, it is an R-rated biopic mostly filmed in black and white about a guy no one heard of that made nearly a billion dollars.
This week…? Here we go again…
Now that Elon Musk has promised to deliver an AI version of The Odyssey by the end of the year that’s faithful to the original, we’re seeing it again:
It’s silly to go over Musk’s successes, almost as silly as underestimating our first trillionaire who catches rocketships with chopsticks. And if that’s not impressive enough, call Starlink’s customer service line and talk to the AI operator, who will be more helpful than any human being you have ever spoken to.
People seem to think Musk will sit down at a computer and order Grok to make a movie.
While I have no inside information on Musk’s thinking, what seems much more likely is that Musk will do what most every executive producer does with a property they want to see on the big screen, and that’s hire the best people he can get to write and direct it, to work on the AI graphics, and to bring his vision to life.
Granted, that’s a simplistic look at how movies work, but that is how movies work. That’s how today’s computer animated movies work, and guess what…? An AI movie is no different than a computer animated movie.
And I promise that there are plenty of talented people available for Musk to hire.
What’s more, Musk is up to something beyond an AI version of The Odyssey. If he pulls this off, it will be seen as the biggest threat to Hollywood since arrival of television. We’re talking about lightbulbs popping off over the heads of everyone, from those already established in the entertainment world to everyday people. Wait, this really can be done!
This being the ability to create your own movies and TV shows on your computer.
Even if Musk doesn’t succeed, pretty soon someone will. This, from InstaPundit, perfectly states it:
I would not be surprised — and I’d put my money on — hit movies and serials hitting platforms like YouTube that are completely AI-generated, and made by people like little Timmy, who put the film together between homework and dino nuggies. A housewife may create one of the greatest rom-coms ever after she puts her kids to bed for the night. A sitcom created by a blue-collar worker could spring up that takes the world by storm.
Hollywood will have nothing to do with it. It’ll be all regular people like you and me.
Margaret Mitchell wrote and published exactly one novel in her life, a little Pulitzer winner called Gone with the Wind. Sure, prior to that, she’d written short stories and worked as a reporter in Georgia. Still, she basically came out of nowhere with a story that has enthralled hundreds of millions for 90 years.
There are Margaret Mitchells out there today who don’t even know they are Margaret Mitchells, and would never know were it not for the power of AI. No longer will a budding storyteller give up before he begins because he doesn’t know where to begin to convince a producer to finance his project. No more will a budding storyteller have to convince a left-wing studio to distribute his project. All the bottlenecks that keep the gatekeepers guarding the gate will be swept away by AI and YouTube.
Look at how giving Normal People access to national distribution (via the internet) disrupted and disgraced the national media.
Look at how the music and publishing industries have changed for the same reasons.
True movie fans should be ecstatic over competing versions of The Odyssey. Competition breeds greatness and Hollywood has become a groupthink cult with no cultural or political competition. For that reason alone, people should be encouraging Musk, not laughing at him.