Luca Guadagnino has entered the awards chat

Just yesterday I mentioned Luca Gudagnino’s upcoming film Artificial, about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and lo, we have a teaser. This film is apparently critical of Altman, and coming from Guadagnino, a director who likes to push buttons, and writer Simon Rich, who finds the sublime in the ridiculous, I can easily see Artificial being a Social Network-style harpooning of a tech titan (who can’t take criticism).

The teaser, however, is not leaning into subversion so much as classic prestige fall drama vibes—NEON is clearly positioning Artificial to be a major awards contender.

Honestly, this teaser is more of what I expected from The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s long-lead follow-up to The Social Network. However, Reckoning looks quite flat, while Artificial is showing the same electric writer-director pairing matching with an actor ready to give a banger performance that we saw with The Social Network. I am stoked for Andrew Garfield’s performance here—another Social Network connection!—but I am also excited by the whole cast, which is loaded with Oscar nominees, and Emmy winner Ike Barinholtz.

He’s playing Elon Musk, and I legit cannot wait to see his performance. Barinholtz is a veteran of MADtv, and like Mo Collins, he was always SO good on that show it was lowkey mindboggling SNL missed him. I can only assume that with Seth Meyers in the cast, Lorne Micahels felt his “Boom Chicago” quota had been filled. Anyway, Barinholtz is a good actor—better than he was given credit for until he won an Emmy earlier this year—and I love how The Studio has revitalized his career. I know he’ll do something deranged and/or scathing with his performance. Honestly, the only other person I can imagine playing Musk is Sebastian Stan, with his knack for making rich people look simultaneously like losers and weirdos.

Of course, Artificial comes complete with controversy, as Amazon MGM dropped the film for unspecific but probably financial/billionaire motivated reasons. The film is supposedly critical of Altman, generative AI, and OpenAI, which you can grasp in the teaser as Garfield-as-Altman provides voiceover revealing that “Altman” believes gen AI will be the downfall of society and hey, isn’t it great WE get to capitalize on it?

These people are psychopaths rooting against the human condition, actively working toward humanity’s destruction, via brainrot, war, and socio-political instability. I love that we are getting a bunch of films from excellent filmmakers making no bones about who are the heroes and villains of this era. Whatever happens, someday someone will look back on the cinema of the 2020s and see that yes, some people DID see the writing on the wall and made some art about the manufactured doompocalypse of the post-pandemic era.

We can stop pretending these people are geniuses at any moment, and I really hope these films help some people see past the marketing and start asking more questions about who is really benefitting from all this, because it certainly isn’t regular people. Film has always had an ability to communicate ideas better than any other artistic medium, now maybe the idea that we do not have to let a handful of tech bros ruin everyone’s lives can take root and bear some fruit.

Here is Andrew Garfield at Kimmel last night in LA.