Why Not AI Actors?
By Dan Brown One AI-generated actress tries to get an agent, and all of sudden Hollywood loses its mind. That’s what happened over the last couple weeks when the company behind Tilly Norwood, the AI performer, shopped its creation around Tinseltown to talent agencies in hopes of attracting representation – as reported in outlets like the Hollywood Reporter. Tilly buys iced coffee on the street. Tilly has money problems. And even though Tilly has an Instagram account like other celebrities, she’s not a real person. It’s a character, a program that could even be a useful tool in the hands of the right filmmaker. (Tilly also waves a lot, I think to show that her hands don't have any extra digits.) Among those speaking out against Norwood was SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents the human actors who appear in movies and on television in the U.S. “It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience,” the union huffed in a statement, “It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’ — it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.” Does this union know anything about movie history? At its most basic, Tilly Norwood is just the latest special effect in an industry whose trade is making unbelievable things look real. And computer-generated characters have been on our screens since at least the early 1990s, when George Lucas used them as background actors in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, paving the way for his Star Wars prequel trilogy. It’s funny, because when Lucas debuted the character Jar-Jar Binks in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, I remember a lot of griping about the Gungan by critics, but no one complained the alien was putting anybody out of work due to his being a CGI creation. Animation itself goes back several decades deeper into the past. Has SAG-AFTRA ever objected that Foghorn Leghorn was a danger to its members? As for the charge that Norwood was trained on the performances of human actors without compensation, that holds water. It’s also what flesh-and-blood performers have been doing since acting was invented. Did Christian Slater ever pay Jack Nicholson for being the basis of his character in the 1988 film Heathers? No, because there’s a time-honoured tradition that younger actors study classic performances – by Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, take your pick – and then swipe the mannerisms of their elders, incorporating them into their own work. No doubt the union heads are working on a way to outlaw that “theft,” too. Also, I hate to break it to SAG, but agreeing to represent an AI isn’t the sleaziest thing a Hollywood agent has ever done to make a buck. Me, I’m old school. I happen to believe no AI or CGI or any other character brought to life by means of technological trickery will ever be able to approximate what the best actors can do on the movie or TV screen, or on stage for that matter. From what I’ve seen so far, they won’t even be able to come close. But if audiences decide they want to watch Tilly Norwood over the real thing, who am I to say they’re wrong? Here’s a novel idea: Let’s let the market decide. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
It’s A Golden Age For Animation
By Dan Brown A quick glance in the rearview mirror before we get any deeper into 2025. As last year drew to a close, there was the usual wall-to-wall news coverage in December recapping the highlights and low points from the last 12 months. As all of those stories were airing on TV and running in the papers or online, I noticed something interesting that had happened in the entertainment world, specifically something about the top-grossing movies in 2024. Maybe you noticed it, too. There’s no denying it: We are now living in a new golden age of animation. Long gone are the days when animated stories were relegated to the ghetto of Saturday-morning TV cartoons for children. Also long gone are the days when decent animated movies were rare. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at 2024’s Top 10 films (according to Box Office Mojo) worldwide:1/ Inside Out 2 2/ Deadpool & Wolverine3/ Moana 24/ Despicable Me 45/ Dune: Part Two6/ Wicked7/ Mufasa: The Lion King8/ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire9/ Kung Fu Panda 4 10/ Venom: The Last Dance The first thing that jumped out at me: The biggest movie of the year, Inside Out 2, is animated. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’m the one person on the planet who didn’t like the original Inside Out, it was hard for me to sit through it. Gimme Ratatouille any day.) But wait, there’s more. A full four out of the Top 10 movies are animated. Almost half the titles on the list!And if you consider computer-generated imagery to be a form of animation, which I do, then every movie in the Top 10 was an animated story to one degree or another. There are other signs of this new golden age. For example, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem came out two years ago, the creators leaned into its roots as a comic – reviewers said it looked like a comic book come to life. That's how good it looks. And those animated multiverse Spider-Man movies from the last few years have been better than many of the live-action superhero movies made in the same periodAnd don’t get me started on the popularity of anime!This is why it’s an exciting time for animation fans. It was Walt Disney’s dream for cartoons to be taken seriously, so he created the first full-length animated feature back in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Fast-forward to our current era, in which animation is an element used in nearly every film with mass appeal. This new breed of animated movie is even getting critical respect. The quality of these films has improved so much that in 2002, the Academy Awards set aside a category for the best animated feature. Pixar’s 2020 picture Soul won in that category, and some observers came up with convincing arguments that it deserved to be nominated as the overall best picture, animated or otherwise. All of which has me tingling. Now, I don’t know if comic fans are automatically animation fans.But I am confident that the shift I’ve noticed means something positive for those of us who love graphics. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
