Since bursting onto the international stage in 1996 with Trainspotting, English filmmaker Danny Boyle has delivered exciting cinema that's thrilled audiences and critics alike, shifted the zombie horror subgenre (28 Days Later), and earned Academy Awards (Slumdog Millionaire). Last year, he had this critic positively gaga over his re-imagining of his fast-zombie franchise, 28 Years Later, which challenged expectations and delivered a compelling coming-of-age story studded with nightmare fuel.
This year, he's shifted away from genre and back into biopics. Following 2010's 127 Hours and 2015's Steve Jobs, here comes Ink, a drama about how Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Yorkshire-born Larry Lamb transformed a failing UK rag into the powerful — and arguably dangerous — tabloid The Sun.
With a cast that boasts celebrated stars like Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy, Ink had early buzz to be an Oscar contender. However, shortly after its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, Boyle unintentionally derailed award season discourse by revealing he employed generative AI for "about 30 seconds."
Those who oppose generative AI have been quick to denounce Ink sight unseen. Having now seen the film out of its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, I can confirm the AI scene that animates an old photograph is an eyesore and hurts the film as a whole.
Let's get into it.
Ink reveals the dirt behind The Sun.
Kicking off in 1969 London, Ink introduces Lamb (O'Connell) as a viciously ambitious newsman yearning to make his mark as an editor, and Murdoch (Pearce), who's years away from making Fox News a defining force in American democracy.
The two are posed like boxers ready for a fight, shoulders hunched in a dark, wood-paneled restaurant, which Lamb notes is the oldest in London. In Boyle's signature style, the film cuts swiftly to a dissonant image to underscore the scene. In this instance, it's a black-and-white photo of a line of men outside the restaurant, presumably celebrating its opening long, long ago. The implication is this old-hat establishment is storied but unpopular. Thus, it's the perfect place for these two to have a curious conversation away from the ears of Fleet Street's journalistic elite. Here, Murdoch reveals he wants to buy the failing paper The Sun and have Lamb turn it into a rival of the wildly popular Daily Mirror.
While the business of building a newspaper might seem dry, James Graham's screenplay treats Ink like a heist movie. A sequence of building the team is Boyle's spin on Ocean's Eleven, with punk rock playing over a montage of Lamb chasing down provocative reporters in a porn theater, a morgue, or a hotel bed, post-coital, in the case of saucy Jules (Foy).
The message is clear: Lamb sees himself as a punk shaking up the establishment, bringing sex, violence, and sport onto the front page.
Undeniably, Boyle's chosen a terrific leading man in O'Connell. The Irish actor who awed in Sinners, 28 Year Later, and Bone Temple, has a chaotic charisma that edges into wickedness. Here, that beguiling devil's charm is used to explore how Lamb chased scandal, flaunted female nudity, and exploited the fears of mankind to push his paper. When Murdoch pushes back, Lamb will argue he's only giving the people what they want — the truth, as ugly as it is.
However, in the film's final moments, this argument devolves into a montage that flashes images of Mark Zuckerberg, Elizabeth Holmes, and Elon Musk, with the graphics reading: "Move Fast and Break Things." This notorious Silicon Valley motto, coined by Zuckerberg, has arguably led to Facebook, Theranos, DOGE, and Grok, and, by extension, all the controversies that have arisen from them. But it feels too big an argument to make in the last 30 seconds of a 116-minute movie. So even if your politics might be aligned with Boyle's message, this conclusion feels like an afterthought — especially considering his use of AI.
What is AI in Ink?
Out of Ink's debut at the Telluride Film Festival (after Venice, but before TIFF), Boyle said the mice that are shown running around The Sun's crusty newsroom in the first act are AI. He also admitted, "We animate[d] a couple of old photographs."
At a Q&A post-premiere at TIFF, he added, "We try to be very responsible and make sure no actors were out of work because of it, so we would always employ actors if we were going to use a bit of it. There was about 30 seconds of it."
Among those 30 seconds is a callback to the photograph from the opening scene. The black-and-white snapshot of men in suits posing proudly before the newly opened restaurant is later animated. In a montage sequence showing The Sun's growing success through outrageous headlines, and a dreamy shot in which Lamb imagines Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher yelling at him, the photo appears again, this time with the men in motion, dancing and celebrating.
The image is immediately jarring, not so much because of Boyle's frenetic montage style but because, to be frank, it looks off. It looks like generative AI. And to Boyle's defense that no actors were harmed in the inclusion, well, presumably, actors could have been hired to shoot this scene to better effect. But really, this shot isn't needed at all.
The callback to the first scene is clear. Perhaps this letting loose of these stodgy black-and-white gentlemen is meant to reflect The Sun's rebranding as an outlet that's abandoned the rules of formality for a more free-for-all, fun approach, consequences be damned. But considering the series of headlines that come before, boasting murders, royal scandals, and flashy sweepstakes prizes, this AI shot is at best a hat on a hat. At worst, it undercuts Ink's message.
Why the AI in Ink actually hurts the movie.
In the climax, Boyle proposes that the Silicon Valley motto of "Move Fast and Break Things" might as well have been born from Lamb and Murdoch's rebrand of The Sun. Just because something is popular, Ink seems to argue, doesn't mean it's good, in quality or for mankind. Couldn't that also apply to generative AI?
Data centers used to fuel AI bots are harming the environment and the communities around them. Experts are saying AI Overviews on Google are failing kids in crisis. Hallucinations and inaccuracies are an intractable problem. And several Anthropic employees have come forward to warn that AI could lead to the end of humanity within 10 years. But none of this will be mentioned in Ink. Instead, Boyle uses the controversial tech for flourishes without commentary.
Ink is meant to play as a parable about blind ambition. Lamb is introduced as a small-town boy who desperately wants to prove himself to the posh London establishment that has long kept him on the fringe of real influence. Murdoch exploits this desire by handing him a tabloid and offering no rules. Within the film itself, Murdoch is paper-thin, his goals beyond wealth being vague at best. The man who would go on to inspire Succession is more an enabler here than a villain. So, Lamb's story is more about giving in to the temptation to exploit fears and our most primal desires for money.
Ink would have you believe such a path is deadly and possibly impossible to turn back from. The final barrage of controversial (and even criminal) tech giants was meant to urge the audience to think of this not as a story of the past, but as a reflection on our present. But how can that critique land when Boyle himself is falling to the temptation of generative AI? Spoilers: It won't.
Ink was reviewed out of the Toronto International Film Festival. Ink will play in select theaters Dec. 7 before hitting Netflix Dec. 11.
