If you know Jim Wright from his Stone Kettle blog he needs no introduction. If not he is an ex navy officer who started writing the truth about Trump and the military during that administration. He is also a wildlife photographer and Sci Fi writer.
Jim Wright
12h ·
I have many friends on the picket lines in Hollywood at the moment.
And I am reminded of this one scene in the film The Thirteenth Warrior.
The Vikings believe their fates were written long before their birth and so they face their death in battle with indifference and maybe even glee and, above all, courage. The movie takes a great deal of time describing how these warriors believe they'll go to Valhalla where "the brave may live forever" and so there is no point in fear or any attempt to avoid your fate. And so they don't. They don't fear and they don't try to avoid death.
And, yet, while there are many, many great scenes in this criminally underappreciated reimagining of Beowulf, there's this one moment, less than 3 seconds on film, that makes the movie for me.
The Vikings have met the monster, they've fought with great courage against overwhelming odds, and they are now trapped in the lair of the Wendol. Many of their number have died by this point and they make a fighting withdrawal, becoming spread out down a narrow tunnel deep, deep underground. The scene is dark and chaotic and fraught with danger. One of the warriors, Helfdane (played by the brilliant Clive Russell) is wounded and can't run any further. He orders the Arab, Ahmed (Antonio Banderas), to go on without him and turns to face the Wendol on his own.
Ahmed goes on down the tunnel and after moment you hear distant fighting and know that the Viking has fallen at last.
When Ahmed catches up to the rest of the band, Herger looks over the Arab's shoulder up the dark tunnel and asks "Helfdane?"
Ahmed shakes his head. No.
And there's this moment. This fleeting second. This tiny brief flicker of pain and loss and FATE on Herger's face. The Viking, this warrior who truly believes the brave will live forever in Valhalla, who joked about the loss of comrades in battle and who has faced his own death over and over throughout the narrative with laughter and fatalism and cheerful indifference, there's this moment where his Viking stoicism cracks and you see for just a fraction of a second his sorrow at the loss of his comrade in arms.
It's an absolutely stunning bit of acting on the part of Norwegian actor Dennis Storhoi, who plays Herger, and if you blink, you'll miss it. It makes the movie. It makes these Vikings human, instead of the cardboard cutouts of most films.
That's acting.
That's craft.
That's art.
No AI, no matter how advanced, could duplicate that moment, that brilliant moment of Storhoi's skill and craft and art. No bit of software no matter how cleverly coded and animated could duplicate that second of raw humanity and pain. No computer generated character could transcend its programming to achieve that moment of greatness.
And so it is for a thousand other moments in film. In writing. In music. In art.
AI might imitate humanity, but it can never BE human.
If the bean counters get their way and replace human creatives with software then the future of movies and television will be one of bland cartoon imitation without those moments of brilliance that transcend the art.
Pay the writers.
Pay the actors.
Pay the musicians.
Pay the grips and the gaffers and the camera operators and the animal wranglers and the location scouts and all those people whose names appear in the end credits and we never bother to know but without true art could not exist.
If you're worried about profit, well, you could always replace the executives with AI.
