Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too.

In the past couple weeks, loads of different AI-generated tomfoolery has made the rounds. Whatever pleasures could be had from the computer-derived inventions was blunted by the tedious cheerleading of same digital universe sycophants who previously couldn’t shut up about bitcoin, NFTs, and all other manner of virtual detritus. More problematically, though, even the most impressive of those artifacts were pure surface, no soul or wit.

To emphasize my point, I’ll present an alternative to one of the bits I saw crop up most commonly, concocted versions of famed film stories as the might appear if Wes Anderson were in the director’s chair. The AI creations were fine (I concede that Bill Murray as Gandalf was uncanny and inspired), but they are utterly lifeless compared against a similar film made by, you know, human beings. This video by Patrick (H) Willems demonstrates a level understanding of both the aesthetic of Anderson and the fundamental lore of Marvel’s merry mutants, the X-Men, that pinging code never will.

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag.