The notion of adapting John Milton's Paradise Lost for the big screen has long been considered a daunting task, yet Roger Avary, co-writer of Pulp Fiction, now intends to tackle it using artificial intelligence. However, this approach fundamentally misunderstands what makes the 17th-century epic poem a masterpiece.
The Challenge of Filming Unfilmable Works
History shows that many so-called unfilmable books have eventually been successfully adapted. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was initially a mess in rotoscope but later won Oscars under Peter Jackson. Similarly, Frank Herbert's Dune suffered in David Lynch's 1984 version but triumphed in Denis Villeneuve's 2021 adaptation. Yet Paradise Lost remains an outlier—too religious for pure fantasy, yet too wildly imaginative for pious reverence. Its lines contain more drama than the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
AI's Limitations in Art
Avary's plan to use AI raises questions about technology's ability to create genuine art. Despite predictions of AI-generated movies, current examples rely heavily on human curation to produce coherent results. The phenomenon known as "AI slop" often yields clichéd and over-polished visuals, lacking the soul of true creativity. While Avary might use AI to generate cosmic spectacle at lower costs, the result risks being mere imitation.
It is ironic that if Satan himself were asked, he might approve of outsourcing creation and dissolving human authorship. But the dark liturgy of imitation cannot produce a work with soul. Paradise Lost is too great, too bizarre, and too excessive to be handed over to a construct that merely finds the most likely outcome. No matter how skilled the prompter, AI cannot capture the thunderous iambic pentameter or the profound themes of fall and redemption.
Avary's ambition is noteworthy, but the epic poem deserves a human touch. Until AI can truly understand and replicate the depth of Milton's vision, this adaptation will remain fundamentally unworthy of one of the great works of art.
