Niu Lai, or Why Human Art is Always Superior to Generative AI
You have probably heard of Tommy Wiseau's The Room, a B-movie that everyone mocked upon its release, only for people to return to it years later and admire its lack of quality and horrible dialogue, making it a cult classic as something so bad it is good. Niu Lai (牛来) perhaps is the Chinese version of The Room, with one outstanding difference: while The Room was a massive flop at the box office, Niu Lai is not only becoming one of the best-selling movies of the year in China, but is actually challenging The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, all thanks to the power of social media and word of mouth when it comes to an enjoyable cinematic experience.
I remember seeing a post two weeks ago about how nobody was watching Niu Lai in cinemas, and in Dalian, one of China's big cities, they even pulled it from the schedule to save the city's reputation. Fast-forward, the movie became a sensation solely because of how bad it is and the experience of people laughing at every scene. The situation kinda reminds me of perhaps one of my favorite cinema experiences, watching Dariush Mehrjui's A Minor (لامینور) in cinema. I watched it with two of my friends, all of us knowing the movie would be so trash just based on the trailers. Mehrjui himself was one of the most prominent Iranian directors, but at that point, he was on a remarkable streak of producing terrible movies that even his die-hard fans could not defend, something similar to Coppola's career post-The Rainmaker. Everyone in the salon was genuinely flabbergasted by how awful the movie was. The dialogue, sequencing, and acting were all so bad that you really could not stop laughing for more than a few seconds. I always refer to that night as one of my favorite movie experiences, solely because I love watching people having fun in the cinema, and they obviously had a lot of fun.
With Niu Lai, however, some underlying sentiments make it even more impressive. First of all, China is one of the most pro-generative AI countries, and you have excellent directors like Jia Zhangke promoting the use of it in their most recent movies with little to no shame. Apart from how a technology like generative AI is heavily against the environment and basically steals from real artists, it is sad to see one of the most significant sources of art in the world falling for one of the most disgusting tools in history. Niu Lai was made with basic tools for animatography. Does it look perfect? No. Do I think it is visually acceptable? Definitely not. What makes me support an obviously bad animation, compared to all the AI directors and AI-generated movies, is simply the presence of human effort. A passion project like Niu Lai, which is made by a mother and son over a couple of years and with little to no budget, is much more respectable, artistic, and human than whatever generative AI can offer.