The renowned director Guillermo del Toro left no doubt about his feelings for artificial intelligence, yelling ‘F—k AI” at the tail end of remarks at the Gotham Awards accepting a Vanguard Tribute for of Frankenstein with stars Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac.
He praised the Netflix film’s cast and crew and everyone who brings films to life from designers, builders, makeup artists and cinematographers to composers and editors. “The artistry of all of them shines on every single frame of this film that was willfully made by humans, for humans.”
“It belongs to all of them, and I would like to extend our gratitude and say, F*ck AI.”
Del Toro said he first read Mary Shelley’s classic when he was 11 and it shaped his life. Fifty years later he made the movie.
“I understood … through her work and the first glimpse of Boris Karloff, that I did not belong in the world the way my parents, the way the world, expected me to fit. That my place was in a far away land inhabited only by monsters and misfits. They have been my kin ever since,” he said.
“Working with artists as extraordinary as Oscar and Jacob, has been truly one of the greatest privileges of my life and in them, I found another family. They don’t play archetypes. They dramatize the human condition and longing for a connection in a world that misunderstands them, both of them, and a world where pain only begets pain, which is, sadly, so urgent now, until someone decides to stop it.”