If you’re a Wes Anderson fan, someone’s likely sent you a link to one of the many fake Wes Anderson movie trailers recently. They’re supposedly completely generated by AI and tackle the question, “What if Wes Anderson completely sacrificed his artistic integrity and hopped aboard a franchise machine?”

Don’t worry too much if the very mention of artificial intelligence gives you that creeping sense of existential dread that humanity is about to be outpaced by technology. In this video, I dive into artificial intelligence as it relates to storytelling and we’ll learn about nightmarish faces, unnerving stares, and one soulless newscaster. Hopefully, it will help you be a more proactive viewer the next time you watch another Wes Anderson AI trailer.

The video essay is below, but please, for the love of all you hold dear, don’t look at the faces in the background too long…