"Consider M3GAN, a campy horror flick about an artificially intelligent doll who starts killing people, released just a week after the debut of ChatGPT in 2022: It was a surprise box-office smash. Last year's sequel? A critical and commercial flop. Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning (2023) introduced a rogue AI called The Entity as a final adversary for Ethan Hunt and crew."
"The latest AI-themed bomb is Mercy, a crime thriller starring Chris Pratt as an LAPD detective strapped into a chair who has 90 minutes to pull enough evidence from security cameras and phone records to convince a stern judge bot (Rebecca Ferguson) that he didn't kill his wife-or else face instant execution. Despite releasing in January, one reviewer has already declared it " the worst movie of 2026," and judging by its mediocre ticket sales, many US moviegoers decided as much from the trailer alone."
Iconic films imagined AI as existential threats, from Metropolis’s robot to HAL 9000 and Skynet. The growing prevalence of real-world AI and studio reliance on the topic have diluted cinematic innovation and compromised the genre. Industry debate and labor concerns, including 2023 strikes tied to AI’s impact on creative jobs, have driven frequent returns to AI stories, but audience interest has waned. Recent examples show mixed results: M3GAN’s initial box-office success was followed by a failed sequel; Mission: Impossible’s AI antagonist and resolution underperformed; Mercy suffered poor reviews and weak ticket sales despite a provocative premise.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]