AI Casts Amazon's The Boys Into The 1950s With A Haunting Vintage Trailer
"The Boys" Season 4 is bound to blow everyone away, following up on the explosive Season 3 finale as well as the incredibly well-received "Gen V." Its brand of hyper-violence and political commentary feels like it could only exist today, and if one were to show even one clip of the series to someone living in the 1950s, they'd probably faint. However, YouTuber Multiverse Wizard has used AI to create a vintage trailer for "The Boys" to make it suitable for 1950s sensibilities, as far as from what we can see.
The main cast are adorned with a retro aesthetic, especially Homelander (Antony Starr) who's outfitted with a classic all-American look. YouTube user @mohitsawant956 actually puts it best: "I like how homelander looks like that one man on every Soviet Union propaganda poster." While the images are fun, there's also something haunting at play. There's a juxtaposition between the all-American visage and the inherent nihilistic attitude the show revels in that comes across via the narration.
One thing missing from the AI trailer is the ample gore that's ever-present within the show. Many fans worry about "The Boys" overemphasizing shock value over plot, and it seems this trailer has done away with it all, wisely choosing to ignore some of the show's more disturbing moments. Outside of some characters holding guns or swords, the trailer's fairly tame, which it would likely would've needed to be in the age of McCarthyism.
The Boys set in the '50s is a popular AI prompt
The central conceit of "The Boys," namely pushing back against the U.S. government and corporations, works in a postmodernist era and seems at odds with the general economic prosperity that occurred throughout the '50s. That's undoubtedly a big reason why the juxtaposition is so fun to play with. In reality, something like "The Boys" could only exist in this day and age, building off what audiences have become accustomed to seeing in superhero media and then deviating from that perception.
Multiverse Wizard is far from the only YouTuber to have the idea to use AI to create a '50s-set "Boys" show. The channel Screen AI has their own trailer that's relatively the same, putting a vintage coat of paint on the characters fans have come to know. Strange Planet has a trailer of their own, complete with a version of Homelander that looks remarkably similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is bizarre since he wasn't a star in the '50s. Of course, AI's going to take odd liberties with its designs, as all of them have issues with characters not having the right number of fingers or having their faces change mid-shot.
"The Boys," which is filled with countless disturbing scenes, is far from the only show to get a '50s-era AI trailer, as many others exist, from "The Big Bang Theory" to "South Park." They all call to mind a simpler time and serve as a reminder of just how much more TV shows can get away with these days compared to decades ago.