The only humans left in Hollywood will be copyright lawyers!
<quote> The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe. </quote>
I don't know why you have such a bad outlook about this.
I have wanted to direct epic fantasy films my entire life, and this is the first tangible shot I have at making something that might look like a "blockbuster". My chances of doing that without GenAI were slim to none. Hollywood is a steep pyramid.
I don't know how you can't be excited. This is the dreams-come-true timeline.
Yeah, I guess it would be awesome to just have an AI build your dream movie, but if you have a good script and a couple thousand bucks you can go out and find some actors and make something real right now. If it's good enough, you can get a shot at directing something massive where you actually have control over how your vision is executed, rather than sending your ideas into a "black box".
There's also the problem that visual fx are already pretty cheap, and no longer a reason to go see a movie. No one can even count the number of Viking shows or Lost Starship movies on streaming services, or tell them apart. It's not like when the original Jurassic Park came out and everyone was like I HAVE TO SEE THESE DINOSAURS. (My best friend recently described Avatar 2 as "that movie with the flying blue turds").
So my point is that the market is already oversaturated... just like mobile gaming. Chasing cool graphics, even if you get a monentary viral hit, you just end up lost in the flood of noise when everyone else has access to the same technology.
The pyramid is a good thing, actually, because it forces you to be imaginitive. The people at the top are less imaginative because they think their vast resources can compensate for bad writing. See: George Lucas.
Without a compelling story, a movie is worse than watching someone else play a video game. And with a compelling story, it doesn't matter if it's set on Mars or in your basement. I think it's also why the best games aren't the ones with the best rendering engines, but the ones with the best story and mechanics.
> the most interesting films involve interhuman drama that speaks to my own emotional experience, and often just consist of a lot of people talking with occasional plot twists and unexpected bursts of action
And, for that matter, the first few seasons of TNG.
(Far as Trek goes, I liked the original series.)
As someone who didn't see TOS in its original run but appreciated it in occasional reruns, and as a huge fan of the original cast movies, it was... weird. But good weird, mostly, weird in a way that somehow captured the zaniness weirdness of TOS, and which was somewhat glossed over in the original movies when they made the jump to Hollywood production values.
I'd check it out if you haven't, just to see what's out there. For that matter, I quite enjoyed Lower Decks, as the Star Trek universe really needed that kind of dedicated comedic outlet, but from a clearly fannish perspecitve that isn't afraid of making very niche in-universe inside-jokes but always from a place of kindness and respect to both the original source material and to the viewer.
In theory yes, but imagine having to fight with another 8 billions directors to find someone who watches your movie. The day we can make our films at home (read as: everyone can make their films at home), is probably the day we'll need to create our own virtual audience as well, as the chances of being watched by some real person will be lower than winning a lottery.
Afaik that arrangement works quite well by the standards of both the creatives and viewers (and presumably Google?)