Every once in a while, a fancy looking mini movie comes along and gets a lot of flack for extremely dumb reasons. Now, it’s A24’s turn to endure AI-related criticism just because Isaiah Saxon’s The Legend of Ochi seems adorably blank.
The film, starring Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe, follows a woman on the run who discovers an unusual mini-man of an unprecedented animal species that is feared by northern natives and hunted sick in the view. It seems kind of cute and harmless, like the old Amblin and Wes Anderson, but the generative AI-produced concoction we’ve been exposed to for about two years has damaged many people’s perceptions. Add to this the fact that engagement/rabid farming is an occupation option for many, and a shit storm has ensued!
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The Legend of Ochi began filming in Romania in late 2021, and they were already in the works long before that, with writer-director Isaiah Saxon claiming he’s been cooking it for six years on a $10 million budget. In fact, he’s very lunatic (although surprisingly educated about it) because armchair moviegoers are now randomly setting up ‘AI witch hunts’.
Before we go any further, check out the cute first look at the film below:
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Sure, the narrative on display here doesn’t seem innovative, but I personally enjoy all kinds of stories as long as they’re well told and seem engaging, and The Legend of Ochi certainly has a unique look and feel. cheerful in some ways that stands apart from his moderately obese blockbuster.
The worst guys you recognized on what we love to call Movie Twitter, however, jumped at the opportunity to believe, without knowing anything else, that generative AI was old in film, basically because the cinematography and lighting look cool. It looks blank and the camera movements are slow and methodical overall. It’s a little complicated to phrase correctly, but if you’ve been watching AI-generated garbage in your feed, you know what I’m talking about. He was given a little that It really feels strange. The thing that’s too obese is that it doesn’t look like shit. A little bit the other.
I suppose the fact that the movies center on some sort of Grogu-little monkey hybrid also makes paranoid moviegoers suspicious, but once again, Saxon proved that it’s the result of puppets and animatronics. Likewise, everything within the film is a mix of real locations, matte artwork (which we like), and some conventional three-dimensional paintings. Saxon previously directed musical films for Björk, Grizzly Undergo, Grimy Projectors and Kanye West. He is also the co-founder of the animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura, so he could be described as a craftsman.
The Legend of Ochi is expected to hit theaters on February 28, 2025, at least in the United States. We are not sure that this silly dialogue will harm his theatrical career. In any case, it is independent advertising. We are more concerned about the public’s (in)ability to explore fantasy and art without becoming unstable as we enter a cultural hell poisoned by technology.
