The Congress’ live action, animation, and AI combo makes it the most 2023 movie
It feels like you can’t go a day without hearing about some new and bewildering application of AI technology.
From online personalities like Twitch streamer Amouranth creating a companion chatbot modeled after her to James Earl Jones’ iconic portrayal of Darth Vader being immortalized by a Ukrainian AI firm, the rise of these technologies has caused a schism throughout the entertainment industry. The current Writers Guild of America strike is owed in part to fears that AI will be used to undermine the labor of writers and directors. That’s not even getting into the concerns of how these technologies coalesce with deepfake technology designed to undermine our concept of shared reality and weaponize our biases and preferences, or how AI is being used to create lackluster imitations of artists’ work on a whim.
All of this has me thinking about The Congress, Ari Folman’s 2013 hybrid-animated sci-fi drama starring Robin Wright. Based on Stanisław Lem’s 1971 novel The Futurological Congress, Wright plays a fictionalized version of herself who, 23 years after her breakout role in The Princess Bride, is in the downslope of her career. Strapped for money to care for her ailing son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and with no one willing to hire her, Robin is offered a one-time deal to sell her likeness to the fictional “Miramount Studios” and quit acting. The alternative is to be consigned to the ash heap of history and virtually not “exist” from that point on, as studios will outright refuse to employ flesh-and-blood actors.
When the deal is pitched, Miramount executive Jeff Green (Danny Huston) tells Robin they want to scan “all of” her. “Your body, your face, your emotion, your laughter, your tears, your climaxing, your happiness,
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