> The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies

I don't think so.

Part of the downfall of movies -- blockbusters movies anyway, the kind where being a box office hit matters -- is that they have seemed produced like AI slop even before AI. Making it easier to produce more slop isn't going to fix this.

Then there's one thing making noise in my brain. It's not polite to say it, but here it is anyway: should movies be democratized? And art in general? Maybe people without the means of making art that reaches millions shouldn't be enabled by AI. Maybe it's ok that not everyone can produce this kind of art. Maybe the world is saved from a crapton of, well, garbage. More than what's currently being produced, anyway.

As for non-blockbuster art, it's already democratic. Everyone can grab a phone camera or a paintbrush and create art for their friends and family. And that's ok.

Anton Ego in Ratatouille gives this take on what democratization should mean:

Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

For me the "blockbuster" movies use so much CGI that it's impossible to suspend disbelief. They've gone too far and ruined the experience. AI will only make it worse.

Democratization is a specious argument. The artistry in an AI assisted work is the part that the human contributes as opposed to the the part that the AI contributes. If the human contribution is negligible, the artistry is negligible and there is no meaningful democratization because there was only token artistic intent in the first place.

And what's actually happening with AI? Someone mentioned in another submission that 7500 new books _per day_ are being released on Amazon Kindle. The wave of low quality AI submissions to HN was so severe that the HN mods had to restrict them. Whatever democratization is actually happening is drowned out by those taking advantage of the low cost of AI slop for profit.

In the end people have limited number of hours to watch content, and only a few things bubble up to the popular attention.

What I meant is that I don't see truly indie-produced feature films reach the zeitgeist anymore.

I don't mean AI slop, but the next gen of creative tools that will allow people to make cool and creative and compelling stuff without the backing of 100's of millions of dollars.

It seems like movies are just another cyclical creative industry and this has already happened multiple times before- with each new technology and distribution platform there's the potential to get a wave of creative output that wasn't possible before.

Another aspect could be that the hollowing out of the top / polarization of the industry is another catalyst.

It could be enough that people who don't work on 100's of million dollar budget films get funding to do the next 1 million dollar film that looks great and is amazing.

That's more analogous to the SaaS startup boom that happened in the previous gen of tech startups. Initial costs went down and platform access went up.