RuPaul Charles has fundamentally changed the world of drag. That much is undeniable. The world’s most famous drag queen built an empire around self-love and self-expression, transforming this once-niche art form into a global industry in the process. That’s the good part. The bad part is, of course, the fracking, which eroded the LGBTQIA+ community’s trust in RuPaul to the extent that a lot of people were ready to believe a recent social-media rumor that Stop! That Train!, the “first movie set within the RuPaul’s Drag Race universe,” used generative AI as part of its process.
The film’s director, Adam Shankman, denies the allegations, and much of the confusion seems to have come from the fact that one of the companies involved with the film, Acme AI & VFX, has “AI” in its name. Even after seeing the movie, however, it’s difficult to say with certainty how some of its interstitial bits — specifically, a series of shots of the titular train speeding through various digital landscapes — were accomplished. One likely explanation is this: Those shots were, in fact, made by human artists working with a minimal budget on a tight turnaround. That’s why they look like crap.
