Just Culture #17: Movie Review; Furiosa
What does it take to build a movie like this and could that happen differently?
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The following review appeared in Just Thoughts #27: Know Who You Are and Build It. We're bringing it up because we’re considering building in the entertainment space. If you create anything, remember how it relates to you. Why do you care about the problem you’re solving? Is it authentic? Do you care about the problem, or are you motivated by something else? If you want to revisit these thoughts, this point is covered in more detail in Just Thoughts #27.
To add to this review, Furiosa has a 7.5 rating on IMDB at the time of writing, 90% on the Tomatometer, and 88% on the popcorn meter.
The review
THIS IS WHY YOU STILL GO TO THE MOVIES. End of review… ok, a few more words.
Immaculate cinematography. It has a witty screenplay and an origin story so good that even Marvel should take a few notes. In the first few minutes, you find many fully computer-generated scenes that make you wonder if the rest of the movie will feel artificial, but it doesn’t. There is a reason the creator is labeled a Mastermind.
The protagonist, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, makes you want to see her survive, but you know it will get gruesome—and it does. The antagonist, Chris Hemsworth, is not a one-sided character, and it’s refreshing to see him play a villain for once. The movie's last scenes are soul-crushing, leading into the prequel (Mad Max: Fury Road) so nicely that you want to watch it again. What a way to be entertained.
This is one of the few movies you don’t want to watch at home if you don’t have a movie theatre in your garage. If you do, lucky you, but if you don’t, you rent one and watch it with the crew because it’s 2020’s cinema at its finest. You might want to book a whole day and watch the Mad Max movies back to back. If you’ve seen neither, you’re in for a treat.
The Afterthought
According to Screenrant, a movie like this requires 168 million to 233 million dollars. For it to succeed, it must earn 336 million to 466 million at the box office. That equation is brutal.
Imagine coming up with an idea, jamming on it based on external data points, the taste of professionals, and maybe some alpha testers. Still, when you release your product, you need to make 3-5X revenue compared to the time cost of developing your product during the release of your product. Does that happen in software these days?
The demand for rapid development and release of AI-enabled software products has created an entire industry. Lovable covered here on Just Thoughts is a testament to that.
Where’s the equivalent for stories and movies? Yes, there are products such as “events” or “rockets” that you can’t really “iterate” your way forward the same way you can with software. However, do movies and games follow the same rules for launching?
Additionally, what is possible when the likes of Jussi Kemppainen have built an entire Mad Max world-inspired game as a hobby project with the help of AI within just 200 hours all by himself?!
Jussi has been meticulously testing and deploying work within his field using AI, and he’s achieving ridiculous speeds. What has taken weeks now takes hours.
Jussi is probably the best in his field. I first encountered him when we asked him to help with a project for Slush in 2015, when he was part of the VAU company. We combined VAU:s 's design skills with one of Jarno Saarinen's inventions, taking pictures of speakers backstage and featuring them in videos shown on screen 15 minutes later. As we discussed with Jarno, Just Products #3 & #4 didn’t work until the very last second it had to work.
Without too much digging into old content, the question still stands: can’t we create movie-making much faster with the technology? With so many people starting out solving this problem, what’s worth solving, and in what order?
While we keep going back and forth around the solution and the order to implement things, one thing is abundantly clear after watching Hollywood movies & series at least every week for 20 years: nothing beats a good story, no matter the technology you use to create the story, and the good thing about stories is that everyone has a story to be told.
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Until next time! In future editions of Just Thoughts, we will cover light festivals and our product's pitch deck. As promised for the subscriber audience, the owl at the light festival, LUX Helsinki, is making funny sounds.