Did ‘Stop! That! Train!’ use AI? Social media is suspicious—and the director’s comments aren’t helping
By all accounts, the new Ru Paul Charles-led movie Stop! That! Train! is meant to be nothing more than a stupid good time. The movie from Hairspray director Adam Shankman is a spiritual successor to disaster comedies like Airplane!, just with the queerness turned up to 11. Drag icon Charles stars as President Judy Gagwell, who’s tasked with stopping a runaway train—the Glamazonian Express—that’s headed straight for a deadly “Stormaganza.” The movie stars several Ru Paul’s Drag Race alumni, and early reviews say that Stop! That! Train! features the same camp comedy the reality show is known for. But among those pre-release reviews, some viewers couldn’t help but call out what they said looked like the use of AI-generated footage in the film. On film review platform Letterboxd, a user named Gloria Cook left a particularly scathing review that’s since gone viral. Cook didn’t love Stop! That! Train!’s comedy—but more offensive, she wrote, was what looked to her like shots obviously created with generative AI. “If the film wasn’t bad enough on its own, it’s one of the most conspicuous uses of AI I’ve seen in a film, with a lot of VFX looking like gen AI and doubt about how much of the obvious stock footage might also be,” Cook wrote. She added that in the film’s credits, Acme AI & FX, a visual effects studio that “fuses proprietary machine learning with cinematic artistry,” per its website, is listed as having worked on the film. That’s corroborated by a recent article on Acme from the Village Voice, which says the studio served as “VFX and AI partner” on Stop! That! Train! Cook wasn’t alone in her allegations, with other Letterboxd users writing that they’re “fully convinced that RuPaul invented something called GAY I” and asking, “Why is there AI slop in my 2-hour Drag Race comedy challenge?” ‘This is patently not true’: Shankman responds Ahead of Stop! That! Train!’s wide release on June 12, director Shankman issued a statement across