‘The Old Stories: Moses’ Offers Up A Biblical Epic With An Artificial Soul
(REVIEW) Faith-based filmmakers are getting in the AI game. “The Old Stories: Moses” is a new Biblical miniseries by the team behind “House of David.” It also aggressively uses generative AI technology to make the show more cheaply. But while the show’s theological justification is surprisingly in line with the pope’s new AI principles, the execution proves that — as always — the devil is in the details.
Produced by Wonder Project and Amazon MGM Studios and from the world of House of David, “The Old Stories: Moses” is a three-part companion special that opens a window into the narratives that shaped Israel long before David took the throne.
This story follows Moses (played by Ben Kingsley), who must leave his peaceful shepherd life to confront the Pharaoh in order to save his people from slavery. As the past unfolds with epic force, David sees his own future reflected in the courage, failure and obedience of those who came before him.
READ: Pope Leo Declares AI The Moral Crisis Of The Modern Age
Jon Erwin has long been a star in the faith-based film industry, with his “I Can Only Imagine” film (co-directed with his brother Andrew Erwin) becoming the highest-grossing independent film of 2018. And he’s been making even more waves with the new “Wonder Project” company, which has already generated the hit show “House of David” with Amazon and is releasing “Young Washington” this July with Angel Studios.
Part of his bullish embrace of AI is that, without it, he says, some of his most recent work would not be possible. When he first pitched “House of Davied” to Amazon, he recounted, “I was told to just come up with a smaller idea.”
Instead, he used it to create massive battle sequences of epic scale. “The Old Stories: Moses” takes things to another level. The production took place almost entirely on a soundstage, with most of the locations, architecture, supernatural effects, and a massive amount of extras generated with AI in real time by the effects artists rather than waiting for post-production. Instead of shooting for months in multiple locations and spending additional months in post, the film was shot with a crew of 100 and never left Los Angeles.
This doesn’t sound like good news to everyone in the film industry. While many filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg have come out in favor of some version of AI, others are strongly against it. Kane Parsons, 20-year-old director of the massively successful “Backrooms” film, called it “cultural and economic rot” with “genuinely harmful consequences” and that like “most well-adjusted people … If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would”. To him, AI in the creative process takes away opportunities for artists and strips the soul from the art form.
“I think the greater threat of job loss in our industry is actually just how expensive things have gotten and how long they take to make,” Erwin said. “If you can make things quicker, and you can make things at a price point that studios will say ‘yes,’ you can employ more people in aggregate and create jobs.”
That said, he agrees with those who say there has to be some line you don’t cross. What is that line?
“The line in the sand for me is replacing an actor,” Erwin said. “I don’t want to be in the industry if I can’t work with actors.”
It’s worth noting that this justification of using AI is pretty much identical to Pope Leo XIV’s much-celebrated take on AI. AI, like any technology, can be good if it benefits humans, but it is bad if it replaces or exploits them. It’s worth celebrating that the Christian witness on this basic principle is fairly uniform. In an age where transhumanists like Peter Thiel openly question whether humanity is worth saving or should be replaced, this is not something to overlook.
The problem is that Erwin’s model of how AI will help people requires the end product to work artistically. Unfortunately, “The Old Stories: Moses” doesn’t help this case.
There are too many moments where the AI is obvious. Even though in other movies these AI creations would be extras, at least with the extras, I would feel like I was making a connection with a real soul in that one second of screen time. Instead, Erwin’s shot feels like a screensaver.
“The Old Stories” is problematic because you’re rarely quite sure which you’re dealing with. They make such an effort to blend the two together that – while many scenes are obviously real actors and others are obviously AI – there are many scenes where you’re not sure. So you spend a lot of time trying to figure out which is which. There are a lot of moments where I spend wondering if I’m really connecting to a real performance or person or not. And by the time I’m convinced it’s real, it’s over.
It’s ironic because what Jon Erwin said was that the red line for him was actors’ performances. And yet, that’s exactly what’s being sacrificed by how prevalent the use of AI is in his film.
The distance the AI put between me and the performance was not just reflective of the AI, but the storytelling as a whole. The decision to make the Moses story a story that David’s father was telling him and his siblings, while clever, constantly put his narration between us and the actual events taking place, and with them, the immersion we have.
There’s a slapdash and trivial feeling to the whole enterprise. After all, you’re literally taking one of the world’s greatest epics and rushing through it in three episodes. That’s a spirit that justifies AI critics who say it’s a lazy way to look at art that doesn’t take making art seriously.
This has long been a problem in faith-based films. Voiceover narration, or essentially pausing the story to spell out the lesson of the story with a sermon, serve to put distance between us and the story. Part of me is tempted to say this is baked into Evangelical culture: we’re so used to only experiencing Christian stories through The Bible and Sunday school that we don’t have as much of a framework for experiencing it firsthand rather than through a written-sounding medium.
How AI should or should not be used — in filmmaking or otherwise — is not a controversy that is going away anytime soon. It won’t be solved until more people make more attempts at creating art with it, so that we can, to quote Jesus, “Judge the tree by its fruit.” That’s going to involve being honest about what the fruit is. And in this case, the fruit being generated is more rot than not.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.