God what an annoying thing to say. Suggesting that movies will essentially become games, or that future video games will be unimaginably better (presumably because they are driven by generative world models) betrays such a surface level appreciation for what makes art and culture and all this humanity so beautiful as it is.
The entire point of movies is the deliberate choices of the filmmakers! Movies will not be improved by our ability to choose what the main character looks like or add a style filter. Super Mario 64 is great because it is an expression of the very hardware that constrains it. Inevitable future versions where anything can happen because someone hooked the ROM up to a generative world model won't be better for it.
I agree that this technology is absolutely world changing, and am cautiously eager to see what comes of it, but it just bums me out, perhaps needlessly, that the people at the helm can be so artless, unreflective. Whatever.
This is something your average person can play around with. The filmmakers have been fumbling the ball a lot lately (not all the time, though) and I can't wait to see what rises out of the average populous. Lots of crap expected, for sure, but there will be gems in there that I'm willing to bet will blow away what we've seen in the industry. Kind of how indie game companies are eating AAA's lunch lately.
It turns out, some people like that. A lot of people like it, presumably because it's fast and stimulating, and everyone's a sucker for wowing FX even as movie FX have gotten worse and more or less converged with video games.
What's lacking in these movies isn't so much plot, it's character and thoughtfulness. They tell us nothing about ourselves.
From an art history class, long ago, I remember the explanation of how classical Greek culture degraded into depictions if "pathos", visible in changes in the sculpture, and how that heralded more or less the decline of the civilization. It seems obvious to me that we've undergone a similar transition. And the thing is, it's not the technology itself, which could be used to produce meaningful art. It's the lack of thought on the part of the creators and the audience.
The concept feels more like a video game than a movie in the show, but presumably you could program the simulation to happen around you instead of you moving through it.
Younger people I know, and market to sometimes, literally avoid "plot based media" in favor of brainrot. Akin to what my generation used to call "sooo random"
People catering to it earn a lot. They don't identify as directors, but they are. They don't identify as artists either. They identify as influencers and brands.
You will never be the generation they engage with. I don't expect to base any of my choices in following trends looking for opportunities to be contingent on your affinity for movies and first/third person games.
Even when it comes to spending, they are a powerhouse because parents nationwide and worldwide give them their weekly allowances in platform credits, with no further accountability on how it's spent. There is a large audience already, trends that are full economies within a few months instead of needing to wait an entire 12 to 20 year generation for the audience to have independent purchasing power.
That's what is happening and why someone with even greater perception than me would say things that seem out of touch, but are closer to reality than you'd realize.
An awful lot of mainstream movies do have fairly trite plots, with a predictable film style. That's not entirely hate, sometimes I really want to see Michael Bay blow up half of LA. I don't think the next Fast and Furious movie would suffer horribly from AI writing, it's never really been an "art" kind of series anyways.