‘Mad Max’ Director George Miller Says ‘AI Is Here to Stay and Change Things’
When a majority of people in Hollywood seem to be fearful of the AI transformation in the industry, “Mad Max” director George Miller likes it for how the Renaissance movement has been affecting painting.
While speaking to The Guardian ahead of leading a jury at the Omni AI Film Festival, organized in Australia, Miller referred to AI by saying, “echoes earlier moments in art history.”
Miller further said, “That shift sparked controversy – some argued that true artists should be able to commit to the canvas without corrections, others embraced the new flexibility. A similar debate unfolded in the mid-19th century with the arrival of photography. Art has to evolve. And while photography became its own form, painting continued. Both changed, but both endured. Art changed.”.
According to Miller, AI is way more egalitarian. Referring to the same, he said, “It will make screen storytelling available to anyone who has a calling to it. I know kids not yet in their teens using AI. They don’t have to raise money. They’re making films – or at least putting footage together.”
Miller also said that artificial intelligence is represented as “the most dynamically evolving tool in making moving images.” “As a filmmaker, I’ve always been driven by the tools. AI is here to stay and change things. The balance between human creativity and machine capability, that’s what the debate and the anxiety are about.”
However, Miller also said with full confidence that AI is not a threat as it can never replace the “human essence”. During the conversation, he also referred to the previous conversation that he had with the filmmakers about “Listen to Me Marlon”, a 2015 British documentary that recreated Marlon Brando in 3D with software. Miller said that AI can easily review or replace the actor truthfully, as the specificity of a human performance can not be generated artificially.
He also recalled a quote from the young director that said, “In the future, you may have a character who looks like Marlon Brando, but you’ll have nothing close to Marlon Brando. You won’t have the engagement that performances arise out of the collaborative effort between other actors and directors and writers, and so on. You will not have the essence of Brando.”
The latest film from Miller, “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” world-premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024 and successfully grossed $174.3 million at the worldwide box office.
