Twenty Years Countdown: The Old Film Being Updated with Artificial Intelligence?

By: Andrew Bermudez

(Mustache Maniacs Film Co. Headquarters; July 18, 2023)

    Twenty Years Young is still several months away, but we're continuing this countdown series with another look at an upcoming film, which this time is actually a re-release. Yes, we're talking about the one film that was never properly addressed during From the Vaults and the DVD Archival Project: Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island!

What is Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island?

    Before we dive in, let's step back and first introduce this film, which is only first being released online through this celebration. Long story short, Com 50-3: Raid on Central Island is the final film in the Com 50 Trilogy, after Com 50 and Com 50 & 007. It's the longest film in the saga (the original cut hovers around 30 minutes, with a whopping 45 minute runtime expected for the special edition) and features the most intrigue, humor, and characters. It was also the last film of ours to be improvised (our next film would be Mystery at Shady Acres, which standardized our use of scripts), with only a rough outline covering what would happen in each scene. There is, however, a kaiju in the room that needs to be addressed.

    The film also brought to life the character of Godzilla as a part of Cal Pada's final plot, but the character was added through footage from King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla 1985, and Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, which are copyrighted and not our property. This was the real reason that the film was never re-released during Ten Years of Going Crazy!: removing copyrighted material meant compromising the story. So, how are we going about redoing the film this time to remove this issue? It's not an answer any one of us would have ever thought to have given.

The Artificial Intelligence Revolution and How it Relates to this Film: a New Godzilla

The reimagined Godzilla, which was created using prompts from the existing film and story bible in Canva.

    Artificial intelligence has been making headline news recently as striving to reshape civilization as we know it, for better or worse. Indeed, the technology has made such leaps and bounds in the last six months that we were able to recover from our lack of auditions for Bradford Rant: Beginnings by generating the dialogue using Speechify's AI technology.

    We're going to go several steps further for the re-release of this film by creating entire sequences of video with artificial intelligence that depict Godzilla in a whole new light. In the cinematic universe, Godzilla is still recognized as a fictional character, so that gives us some room to play with the character design for this Godzilla, and while we can only guide AI loosely and have to work with what it gives us (we're going in knowing that keeping Godzilla on-model is going to be a pain), this does allow us to bring this character back into the film in an original way!

A Brand-New Opening Mixes Stock Footage and AI-Generated Content

Iguana sketches by Andrew Bermudez; These are being used to guide the AI technology in designing the reimagined version of Godzilla

    So how does our Godzilla work in a world where Godzilla is known as a fictional character? We do have a rough background about Godzilla being a mutant iguana, but we never fully realized this concept. However, when covering this film for its reimagining, we discovered something that we had never realized before: Godzilla literally appears from nowhere, with no mention prior to Cal Pada's meeting. Therefore, we constructed a brand-new opening title sequence that tells the story of our Godzilla and why he's in the film, what his personality is, and why such an enormous monster has stayed out of the public eye. This sequence is also our testing ground for mixing stock footage and artificial intelligence to bring this one-of-a-kind interpretation of this character to life!

Why We Will Never Use AI to Replace Our Affiliates

    You might have heard about the AI revolution that is upon us (mainly as a reaction to the recent surge in interest in AI-generated content) and how it is going to replace human agency in the creative process. While there are several articles out on the internet covering this topic, ranging from the ethics behind AI to the general consensus that AI is NOT replacing human creativity anytime soon, we wanted to cover how we are implementing this and assure you that this will never spell the end of our story team or affiliate network. We value human perspectives when it comes to our content, and while AI can and will become a major and important tool in the near future, we must also recognize that the intelligence in AI is not actually intelligence as we understand it, but rather a machine program that interprets commands that are given and provides numerical results. It does not calculate emotions, narrative structure, spontaneity, or world-building. Those are things best left to people. Smart as far as computers go? Yes. Smart as far as humans go? No. Again, this implementation is just a test of the technology, nothing more.

The Other Ways That This Film is Being Reimagined!

    But artificial intelligence is not the only way that we're updating this film for Twenty Years Young. Since most of the original film is original footage shot for the production, that is still going to form the core of this film. However, since we were able to recover the raw footage from the original shoot during a recently-completed audit of the studio archives, we're basically rebuilding this film from the ground-up. And while this does give us more room to implement artificial intelligence, here are the other ways that we're updating this newly-reimagined film.

• New, harmonized, titles now indicate the passage of time and change in location.
• The official Stabe, Inc. logo (with enhanced image quality and sound) now appears after the Mustache Maniacs Film Co. logo. Due to their inactivity with later productions, the Hoxie Enterprises and Cherry Pie Productions logos have been removed and their brands are being absorbed into the main Mustache Maniacs Film Co. brand.
• The film's entire sound mixing has been overhauled to not only reimagine certain moments, but to also breathe life into each location.
• A brand-new score by Dylan Johnson has been composed for the film, including a brand-new song for the opening titles.
• Deleted shots that add to the film's plot have been edited back in.
• Muzzle flash effects have been added to the prologue and the final confrontation.
• The chroma keying is now cleaner compared to the original cut.
• The fighter dogfight has been expanded with new footage, more effects for the dying Cal Pada Pilot #1 shot, and stronger adherence to continuity.
• Any lines of dialogue or shots that contradict the official canon or refer to events that never happen have been removed.
• The slow motion shots now also contain slowed-down audio.
• The truck sequence is now twice as long, with an entirely new sequence of comedy. The trio are also now shown exiting the truck at the sequence's end.
• As a part of our on-going inclusion initiative and the fact that this film allows us to do this, the characters of Mondo Hugo, Tai Manchi, and Cal Pada Spy are being re-named to Lieutenant Hugo Finnegan, Professor Boris II (clone of the original Boris), and Hayman Talon.
• The Cal Pada meeting has been greatly expanded with more exposition and definitely more comedy!
• The voiceover dialogue recorded for Com 50's dubbing gag is being re-recorded. In addition to this, Daniel and Andrew Bermudez are recording all-new dialogue for the AI-generated sequences!
• Godzilla's destruction of the Cal Pada base has been overhauled with particle effects that were first used in Pharaoh's Quest: The Curse of Amset-Ra.
• While similar in execution, the teleporter remote effects have been updated and modernized.
• The end credits have been scrapped and rebuilt.

As with the rest of Twenty Years Young, it's a work in progress, but we're hoping to have the film ready to go by the end of the year, ahead of its debut on March 10, 2024.

Get Ready for Twenty Years Young!

    We can't believe that we're already less than 6 months away from the start of this celebration, but there is still plenty to talk about and tease! Stay tuned for more that we'll be covering throughout the rest of the year!