The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online series
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f you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine’s YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn’t fully understand how the present works yet – then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.
On This Day… 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America’s revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky’s studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.
The first episode, which is three and a half minutes long, sees George Washington raise a new flag over Prospect Hill, in defiance of King George III. It is the moment, according to the video’s description, that ‘rebellion becomes resolve.’ And if that dollop of ChatGPT-sounding sloganeering terrifies the life out of you, wait until you actually watch the thing.
