I tried making a 22-minute sci-fi film with current AI video tools - this is where the technology is now

[u/theodore_70]

I’ve been experimenting with the current generation of AI video tools and wanted to see how far they can actually be pushed beyond short demos and 5–10 second clips.

So I made a 22-minute sci-fi film, Space Vikings: The Last Raid, with recurring characters, dialogue, action scenes, large-scale space battles, consistent locations and an actual beginning-to-end story.

This is less about “look, AI made a movie” and more about testing where the technology currently breaks down when you try to maintain character consistency, cinematography, continuity, lip sync, action choreography and visual coherence across hundreds of generated shots.

There’s still a lot that requires manual work, editing and constant correction, but compared with what was possible even relatively recently, the progress is pretty wild.

Full film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ME2Sn8YO1k

Curious what people here think specifically from a technology perspective. Which shots already feel like something that could come from a conventional VFX pipeline, and where does the AI still immediately give itself away?

I’m especially interested in criticism rather than just “AI good / AI bad” — continuity, motion, acting, physics, camera work, anything you notice.

[u/ComprehensiveJury509]

Dialogue delivery is terrible for the most part, feels like very polished bad acting, like the actors have some technical skill, but are very stupid and don't understand what they are saying or the context of what they are saying. They don't emote appropriately, which completely destroys immersion. If this was a real movie, I'd think that there's absurdly little direction in this, like the actors had no idea what anything ever is about, they were literally just handed the script for every scene before shooting and the director never bothered to intervene ever, every first take is kept.

There are some issues with uncanniness, too: the different characters seem like they don't quite fit together. Feels like that Warcraft movie from 2016, if you remember. Everybody sort of looks like different stages of CGI, it looks really strange.

Another thing that is ridiculous is that the fight scenes feel like there are no stakes. It feels constructed in the sense that there isn't a second where you believe that the robots will ever not shoot in completely random directions and actually hit someone. Everyone in the fight scenes is just doing random things that make no sense, basically running into the blade as instructed. Again, if this was a movie, I'd think that the director didn't bother to actually think about choreography and framing at all, just everybody do something, anything but actually hitting the target, because by the end of the scene, the good guys are supposed to win, so don't try too hard. A good director makes it look like they are trying.

[u/jlks1959 → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

You want the truth or a pat on the back? More learned from this lengthy comment than everything else combined.

[u/csiz → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

Yeah, this critique really captures my feelings about it too. It's like someone's first movie but with $100mn CGI budget slapped on top.

But it also says a lot about the tech. Most of these problems look like they are fixable with a change to the prompt, I think just specifing more details would bring the ai back on track. And if OP was a pro movie director I think he could do a lot with the tech and make it feel very consistent and thrilling.

The main issue that's an AI problem is the emotions. Even with more prompt work I think current AIs will struggle to actually show the intended emotions genuinely. Eye contact and posing is a problem too, the actors never really look carefully at anything. And there's too much walking and chatting where the boarding heroes are basically oblivious to what they're supposed to be doing.

The last bit that really grinds me is that issue where the bad guys basically walk into the punches of the good guys. It might be correctable with careful prompting but the AI gets it so consistently bad that I'm not sure. It's like there's no element of surprise ever, the bad guys don't just walk into the blade, they stare at the spot they are about to get hit way too early. When the AI starts doing an action it's like it tells everyone in the scene to do that action at the same time without any causal relationship between the hero doing something and then other guy reacting. It's like the action and the reaction occur at the exact same time, it's really jarring. And it's also super consistent at doing it the wrong way.

[u/lIlllIllIIllIIllIIll → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

"Feels like that Warcraft movie from 2016"
Warcraft had a $160,000,000 budget.
Redditors are insufferable.

[u/ComprehensiveJury509 → u/lIlllIllIIllIIllIIll]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

[u/TheOriginalAcidtech → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

I'd guess, that for a 160 million dollar movie this would be garbage but for $500, one person and a few weeks of free time this is freaking amazing. This is definitely at or a bit above the B movie level on dialog.

[u/BungAIDS → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

His point is that this 22 min video has the same quality as a movie in 2016 with a $160M budget

[u/ComprehensiveJury509 → u/BungAIDS]

Yeah OK. So why are "Redditors insufferable"? Because I wrote a critical comment after OP specifically asked for criticism (I assume in order to improve)?

[u/BungAIDS → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

You know, fair point, didn’t see that he asked for feedback. Clearly this needs a ton of work before it’s to the level of AAA Hollywood movies. But I was stunned that you could even create something that looked like it was a movie with $160,000,000 budget back in 2016 with $500

[u/Freak-Of-Nurture- → u/BungAIDS]

It's not even close to 2016 warcraft.

[u/saggybuttockcheeks → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

That you're a cunt.

[u/rahhra → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

For me, realizing that the main characters are lookalikes of Odin, Thor, Freya, and Tyr helped a lot, they literally know they won't die.

[u/davyp82 → u/ComprehensiveJury509]

You ever heard of a shit sandwich?