Pop Culture
How 2013 film The Congress predicted Hollywood’s current AI crisis
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The Congress was partially based on Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 sci-fi novel The Futurological Congress, but the Hollywood AI plot, which takes up roughly the first third of the film, is entirely Folman’s. After Robin is scanned – in a remarkable performance, Wright stands inside a glass globe filled with lights and scanners and goes through emotions from sadness to laughter – the film leaps 20 years ahead and becomes fully animated, with Robin entering a boldly-drawn world of primary colours. The story begins to echo Lem’s vision of a hero who visits a conference where hallucinogenic drugs in the water make him question reality. Here, the animated Robin is set to speak at a conference as a prime example of an AI movie star.
Even as the film shifts to focus on the broader issue of fantasy vs reality, though, Folman predicts further into Hollywood’s future. Now the animated Green says movies themselves are about to be eliminated, replaced by a chemical that will allow users to experience life as if they were their favourite actors like Robin. The script writers and animators who are creating the very world Robin and Green are in will lose their jobs to AI, he says, reflecting yet another potent, real-life fear.
The Congress tells us that it was entirely possible to have seen the AI crisis coming. If only both sides on Hollywood’s faultline today had paid more attention to that obscure little film from a decade ago.
The Congress is available to stream on Peacock, The Roku Channel, Pluto, and Amazon in the US and on Amazon and ITVX in the UK.
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