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I finally got some time to watch Duyung: Legenda Aurora, the sequel to Duyung that came out 16 years ago and was Not Good At All Really, aside from Maya Karin playing a mermaid to otherworldly perfection. Legenda Aurora is not a good movie either, but it's high camp, stuff at least happens in it, and one joke made me laugh out loud.

However Legenda Aurora is being raked over hot coals because it uses generative AI. Not like "uses AI to make interstitials or background art or a character's voice", but uses AI to make a whole goddamn action sequence with a dozen main cast members. I hadn't been keeping up with the criticism on social media but a friend did tell me about the AI complaints beforehand and I wondered if I would be able to notice.

OH BOY I SURE DID NOTICE. Almost the entire fight scene in film's climax was primarily AI because the colour grading immediately changed and everyone got that slightly blurry outline that was the norm in the genAI artwork style that was all over about 6 months ago. I think my brain immediately refused to parse any of it as relevant, the way that I seem to clear my mental cache whenever I see something obviously AI in my social media browsing, so although I watched the movie only 4 hours ago I already can barely remember what happened during that entire sequence.

Luckily social media reviewers are absolutely not having with any of this, though mainstream news outlets, if they do mention the generative AI, seem to be primarily reporting on AI being used to "enhance" the film, and that it was "only 2%" of the film. Which (tangent) made me remember that time when there was a controversy about a local publication printing a photo of an inaccurate national flag, and as soon as I saw the photo myself I knew that the image was genAI, but absolutely NONE of the mainstream news outlets mentioned this. A friend suggested this is because news outlets are/were already using generative AI, so it's in their interest not to highlight its mistakes.

Is this the future of our filmmaking, let alone filmmaking in general? Will we slowly be normalized to it, or will we keep resisting? What about when the technology keeps getting better?

Happy New Year!

I think I shall start the year with another post about Aryana which I am now 55 of 189 episodes in and I feel like we've hit the first doldrums of a drama hamster wheel. When Aryana was in school the drama with Megan and Hubert did go in circles but there was a slightly different drama each time with slightly different stakes and different characters getting involved. But now that Aryana is a bedbound mermaid, the show no longer has school shenanigans but takes place mainly in her home with her family hiding her condition and waving off people's concern, and the past three episodes ended with Marlon seemingly discovering Aryana's secret -- but the first two were fakeouts before the real thing.

I feel like I'm poking at the show with my foot like, please do something interesting? Something different that isn't a close call where Character A/B/C/D/E almost discovers that Aryana's a mermaid, and then they don't? (Except Marlon, who just found out.) Two decent underwater scenes do not make a plot.

However this section of the show had what is possibly the FUNNIEST two dynamic swerves. It doesn't save the rest of the episodes, but it is funny that, firstly, Marlon is all up in Aryana's business despite no one in her family wanting him there, and he is SO MAD that Hubert is on Aryana's secret and that he, Marlon who is Aryana's actual best friend, is not. This was especially funny after Marlon and Aryana had a convo where Aryana said that she has forgiven Hubert for lying to her but can't forget what he's done, and then in the same dang episode Marlon walks in on Hubert and Aryana hanging out together and Aryana's grandmother kicks Marlon out of the house while Marlon's going, "But why does HUBERT get to stay!"

Secondly, Victor's mom Elnora saw Aryana while she was sick and had a change of heart, and now suspects that Aryana may actually be Victor's daughter, and Ofelia's claim that Aryana is Victor's isn't just a ploy by Ofelia to get in on Victor's fortune. So now Elnora is ALL for Victor doing a DNA test to confirm Aryana's identity, and when Stella and Megan predictably freak out about this, Elnora is like, your pain means nothing to me💅. After all she was NOT kind to Ofelia when Ofelia was her daughter-in-law, so why would she be kind to Stella who is her current daughter-in-law? It's consistent! And funny.