There has been a constant battle of human vs AI in art as the technology now seems to be tempting to many artists. Sure, sometimes, AI does marvel bringing out the acute wonders our minds can imagine with prompts. But how can prompts be an art form? Fans now question Millennium Films’ President’ justification as he openly admitted using AI in the new Hellboy film.
The Hellboy franchise has a unique fanbase mostly attracted to Guillermo del Toro’s two Hellboy movies starring Ron Perlman as the titular title character. The third edition of the franchise attempted to revive the legacy of the movie series with Neil Marshall helming another Hellboy starring Stranger Things and MCU star David Harbour.
Millennium Films President Admits Using AI for New Hellboy Movie
Before his familiarity with the full potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Jonathan Yunger, President of Millennium Films, was not keen on jumping on the ship to create art, in this case, Hellboy. “I wasn’t a fan of AI,” he said at the 74th annual Berlin International Film Festival (via The Credits) reflecting his previous lack of enthusiasm for the technology. However, the President could not resist the temptation of AI after lacking the essence of the character’s design with handcrafted art.
“After shooting a demon character practically that didn’t look great, he turned to AI to come up with a new design, on a platform he built himself. “I was able to make 3000 creature designs in an hour. So now I can start to cherry-pick and edit those and then send it to visual effects,” he said.
The movie Yunger was referring to is titled Hellboy: The Crooked Man— expected to be comic-accurate— starring Jack Kesy as Hellboy/ Anung Un Rama with Brian Taylor directing the project. Produced by Millennium Media, Dark Horse Entertainment, Nu Boyana Film Studios, and Campbell Grobman Films with Ketchup Entertainment distributing the movie.
Fans Feel Betrayed By The Use Of AI In Hellboy
AI certainly has a negative connotation in this regard, at least among fans anyway. Guillermo del Toro’s two Hellboy movies did not require any assistance from any artificial tools to complement his cinematic vision mirroring the scenario of the demons and the creatures. Of course, del Toro is a master of his craft, specializing in his go-to genre, fantasy adventure but the new installment to the franchise seems to hinder the legacy of the director established with the original movies. This has certainly upset fans.
this franchise can’t catch a break
— Neb | 🏳️🌈 (@NebsGoodTakes) May 1, 2024
It seems cursed at this point.
— D@wnell 🏳️🌈🇺🇸🇺🇦🐕✊🏿♑ (@DawnellDo) May 1, 2024
Meanwhile Del Toro did a market scene in HellBoy 2 with characters designed by humans and it rocked. pic.twitter.com/mRzQvFDJvf
— Austin (@AustinPlanet) May 1, 2024
Jesus Christ this is like saying oh I copied the Mona Lisa just tweaked a few areas and boom here’s my “original” work
— Lee (@FilmItLee) May 1, 2024
This is embarrassing. There’s so many people who could do better than the ai route
— YungDagger (@YungDagger808) May 1, 2024
AI should be banned
— MXM (@mdxarm) May 1, 2024
Fans’ rants are not completely invalid, especially with the recurring debate of the hypothetical ‘Will AI replace humans?’ Younger further revealed that AI is far from replacing humans.
“And that’s why I think it’s important for places like film schools to start to learn how to use these tools and these new technologies to further storytelling. The emotion of a human being will never be replaced,” he said (via The Credits).
Still, the use of AI in a major production, as fans believe, is not appreciable. It will take a tremendous amount of training for AI to capture human emotions in art coming out of the generated images, or perhaps never will as in flaws and errors human emotions thrive.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man is scheduled for a 2024 release but doesn’t have a release date as of writing the piece.
