“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking over the world” is a sentence you can’t avoid these days.
Well, with Jackie Chan’s latest film, A Legend, it seems we are yet another step closer to that world order.
The film, which is a sequel to 2004’s The Myth had many discussing the 70-year-old’s youthful appearance when the trailer dropped in early June.
The martial arts icon is seen looking about 27 years old in the film due to the use of AI. The movie reportedly has a 300mil yuan (S$55.6mil) production budget.
The Stanley Tong-directed film which also stars Lay Zhang, Gulnazar, and Li Chen follows Jackie’s character who dreams of ancient world.
However, audiences who were given first dips to early screenings (the film is set to premiere in Singapore on July 12) were not impressed, calling out the AI used to de-age Jackie.
“He looked like he was laughing when he was crying,” commented a netizen.
Another felt that the use of AI was taken a little too far, saying they couldn’t tell if it was Jackie or not.
Considering Jackie built his career based on doing all, if not most of his stunts, it is quite understandable the disconnect with fans.
Upon closer look at the trailer, we did feel Jackie looked more natural than some other AI-rendered films and dramas in recent years.
When A Legend’s trailer was released in early June, netizens tore the movie apart with many denouncing the film as looking “tacky” and “outdated”.
Some even went as far as to say that even after two decades, A Legend falls short of its predecessor, and looks like a straight-to-streaming movie.