Perhaps something good will come from the death of cinema as we know it.
Maybe a rebirth of some kind will happen. A resurrection. A reboot.
When you look at the decline of the movie industry over the last five years, you see that it’s not just one thing. It's a bunch of things. I wish I could say it was just one, so we could fix it. But this downfall started many, many years ago and has snowballed into a problem that’s become unfixable. And the inclusion of artificial intelligence into the film industry will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back to end cinema as we know it.
As a film lover, it’s discouraging to see the fall of a pastime you enjoy so much. It’s a reflection of time progressing, a commencement of something ending, and something new taking its place. As technology rises at a geometric rate each year, faster than society can keep up with, actually, I think the decrease in cinema as a continued entertainment is very worrisome.
Not just because the actual pastime is disappearing, which it is (going to the cinema is a dying outlet of fun), but of what it means to the billions of people, like me and you, who truly appreciate it and now must watch it go.
The rise of A.I. is troublesome in many ways because it brings with it storytelling that is not completely man-made. Whereas similar feelings of dread were expressed with the rise of the internet, smartphones, and even the Kindle for book lovers, those inventions didn’t have the power people had thought to kill storytelling.
But A.I. does because, although it can only learn what humans teach it, A.I. reproduces stories of its own. They may not be original stories, but society doesn’t care.
For the last 20 years or so, there’s been nothing but remakes and reboots. Audiences have no problem watching the same origin story again and again. As advanced as A.I. is right now, it will be far better in a few years when its level of storytelling is indistinguishable from that of human storytelling. At least, that’s what some people think.
As more movie theatres close and streaming platforms increase and Skynet takes over the world, we’re left with the realization that the entire movie industry is morphing into something else, and not necessarily for the better.
What does the changing of cinema suggest? What are we left with if not human-made storytelling? Will something else replace it? What would it be? Will it be as fun to experience?
