SAN FRANCISCO — Fans of the 1995 action film Virtuosity reacted to a series of bold, visionary AI stills that dared to reimagine the movie as if it were produced in the year 1994.
“It truly is a marvel what we can achieve with technology these days,” said AI enthusiast Ted Reeves, who entered the prompt into Midjourney. “Take this, for example: see the car Denzel Washington is driving in this shot? That’s a brand new Honda Civic, right? Wrong! It’s the 1994 model. Virtuosity? Made in nineteen ninety motherfuckin’ five. This car wasn’t even current when this film was made. Do you understand the magnitude of that? Could the meager human mind even conceive of it? I think not.”
Hollywood leading man and co-star of the film, Russell Crowe, was also enamored with the prospects of the application.
“I can’t really get my mind around this shit, but I’ll be damned if I’m not intrigued,” Crowe said. “In 1995, I was in the ballpark of 200 pounds. But looking at me in these stills? I’m an easy 175, 180. Sure, a couple extra dozen rows of teeth, but it’s a give and take. I’m a fan. In fact, I’m already plotting out how it’ll tie into my line of exclusive Master and Commander NFTs dropping this year. You heard of those things? I think they’re gonna be big. Websites are now battlefields.”
When reached for comment, Virtuosity director Brett Leonard expressed mixed feelings on the project.
“I’m all for adaptation and artistic freedom, but let me be clear when I say I always intended my movies to reflect the exact year they were made, and also for the characters to have a maximum of 10 fingers,” said Leonard after reviewing a few of the images. “There’s certainly a neat novelty charm to this, but something about seeing a film I’d worked so hard on at the peak of my career like this is… uncanny, to say the least. And that’s coming from the guy that made The Lawnmower Man.”
At press time, Reeves briefly teased an even more absurd AI reimagining project: an alternate timeline where Super Mario Bros. was adapted into a gritty sci-fi action movie in the early 1990s.
