First spotted by Kotaku, prolific director Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Interstellar) recently gave his takes on AI in filmmaking and the explosive success of Backrooms in an interview with The Telegraph (readers may encounter a paywall). The interview comes as part of the lead up to Nolan's next film, an adaptation of the Homeric epic, the Odyssey.
"This is why I never bought into the arguments that young audiences’ attention spans are too fried to enjoy a three-hour Greek epic," Nolan told the Telegraph in reference to the reception of Backrooms and the indie horror hit, Obsession. "Those films are so mysterious and ruminative. I mean, parts of Backrooms are like David Lynch at his most obscure. And yet young people can’t get enough of them."
Nolan also pointed out how Obsession and Backrooms directors Curry Barker and Nate Parsons prioritized practical effects, and have been publicly skeptical of AI's future in film. "I’ve never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime," Nolan said of AI's popular rejection in the arts—particularly among Gen Z—despite the tech's aggressive push.
"So much energy has been expended on bringing in AI, but if you look at that generation’s reaction, they’re utterly rejecting it." said Nolan. Regarding his own children in the age cohort, Nolan observed that "Their judgment of AI slop has been immediate and harsh.
"They see it for what it is very quickly—and it’s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well. And while that doesn’t mean that every aspect of the technology is useless or meaningless, in film-making it’s hitting at exactly the wrong time. After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling."
It's been an interesting knock-on effect of gen AI that analogue methods now have increased value independent of aesthetics: Written words, blue book exams in schools, and stop-motion animation can all function as proof of work.
That's increasingly important because there has been an almost unanimous rejection of generated material or assets by audiences and critics in serious or commercial endeavors, be they games, film, writing, music, or visual art. If you get caught doing it in the games industry, you're gonna have a jpeg-of-text apology posted to Twitter in your future, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
