Kenneth Glad
Technology promises to bring the past back to life with a single click. Filmmakers constantly test the limits of these new digital tools on set. Sometimes, the human touch simply refuses to be replaced.
Actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal recently tried to recreate a Hollywood icon using artificial intelligence. She cast Dakota Johnson as Marilyn Monroe in a new short film called Flesh Impact.
Genesis commissioned the project to mark the hundredth anniversary of Monroe’s birth. Backers asked Gyllenhaal to test AI technology during production.
She trained the software on old clips of the late star. Eventually, the team hoped to map Monroe’s historic face directly onto Johnson.
That ambitious plan quickly fell apart. The director scrapped the digital version entirely, according to TV 2.
Missing the magic
“It basically did not work,” Gyllenhaal explained at the Venice International Film Festival last week, as reported by Variety.
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She felt the digital overlay stripped away the core reasons for making the film. Hours of technical adjustments could not match a real performance.
“What Dakota conveyed in the role of Marilyn Monroe was so much more touching, human and alive,” the director said.
The authenticity problem
This surprised Kim Toft Hansen, a researcher at Aalborg University. He notes that Hollywood has successfully used computers to recreate people for decades.
When Brandon Lee died filming The Crow in 1993, the crew used stand-ins and visual effects to finish it.
Hansen believes the current backlash against generative software runs deeper than the raw technology itself.
“I think it basically comes down to authenticity,” he told TV 2. The researcher explained that audiences still crave something natural and believable.
Fighting for survival
Traditional visual effects demand specialized workers and large budgets. Software generators allow almost anyone to create video cheaply, which might explain the lack of industry respect.
Soon, Hansen expects major copyright fights over voices to explode. He pointed to Scarlett Johansson, who clashed with OpenAI in 2024 over a chatbot sounding a lot like her.
Gyllenhaal is terrified. She heard that a massive production could eventually cost a fraction of the usual price using software:
“But the thing is, if you can make a good enough commercial film for 40,000 dollars or just four million dollars, who will give you ten million to do it the old way? Nobody. Maybe there is a very, very small market for it. But it worries me.”
Sources: TV2, Variety
