They're Using AI to Restore 'The Magnificent Ambersons'

Orson Welles is a legendary filmmaker who helped shape Hollywood as we know it today. While many remember him for Citizen Kane, his second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons, is also incredibly important. And many think it could be as crucial as Kane, if we were able to see the movie as Welles originally intended.

See, RKO chopped 43 minutes from the movie and melted down the film for Nitrate.

For decades, that lost footage has been the Holy Grail of film preservation, a cinematic white whale that Welles himself said tore him apart.

Now, a streamer called Showrunner, which we've covered, is going to use artificial intelligence to recreate the lost 43 minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons.

Let's dive in.

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How AI Is Being Used on The Magnificent Ambersons

I have to admit, I hate this idea. But I want to go in without judgment. So let's take a peek at the process.

Showrunner isn’t just feeding a prompt into a machine and hoping for the best. They’re teaming up with Brian Rose, a Welles enthusiast who has spent the last five years painstakingly trying to reconstruct the lost scenes using charcoal drawings, physical set models, and recovered screenplay drafts. They're also bringing in Tom Clive, a digital artist who worked on Robert Zemeckis' Here.

The plan is to use AI with model motion and trajectory control, generate the settings from set photos, and then transpose the faces of the original stars onto live actors.

It’s an ambitious plan, one that Showrunner CEO Edward Saatchi says is starting with Welles because he’s “the greatest storyteller of the last 200 years.”

So, What Do We Think Of AI Being Used To Restore The Movie?

There are two ways to look at this...

On one hand, this is an incredible opportunity. It's a chance to see a version of a masterpiece that we thought was lost forever.

It’s a way to get closer to Welles’ original vision, to see the darker, more complex film that he intended.

On the other hand, this is terrifying. Is a machine-generated recreation of a lost film really the same as the real thing? No. Even at its best, it's an estimation of what an auteur might've wanted. That is far away from actually having an auteur film something.

It also will not have real performances or the nuance of actually figuring out what happens on set and making changes at the last minute due to obstacles or delays. There will be no happy accidents or real vision.

There will just be computer guesswork.

To me, this is wrong.

Yes, it's a tragedy that we lost the original ending. It sucks. But some ghosts are best left alone. Because the idea of resurrecting the film gives us the same moral as Frankenstein's Monster or Jurassic Park.

Just because you can...doesn't mean you should.

And just because it's alive doesn't mean it has a soul.

Summing It Up

The Magnificent Ambersons is a story about a family that fails to adapt to the rise of new technology. It’s a story about the automobile and progress, so maybe it's the perfect metaphor for what's happening here.

But I don't view AI as progress; I view it as a tool that should be used smartly.

I'm not sure this has the integrity they think.

And I cannot imagine Orson Welles would buy into a computer bastardizing his vision to the best of its ability.

But what do you think? Is this the future of film preservation, or the beginning of the end? Let me know in the comments below.