Guy Ritchie's Harry Potter Movie Is Too Good To Be True

AI presents an existential threat to numerous industries and remains a major component of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Still, people will try to showcase its capabilities, often in the form of copying other artists' styles. Wes Anderson AI creations have been done to death thanks to the director's unique aesthetic sensibilities, but now, Guy Ritchie has gotten in on the fun. 

Ritchie's movies also tend to have similarities across the board, particularly when looking at his early work. The likes of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" are British crime films with a penchant for fast cuts and snappy character introductions. It was only a matter of time until someone paired his style with another popular British property — "Harry Potter." TikTok user Yellow Medusa uploaded a video of "Harry Potter" in the style of Guy Ritchie. Harry narrates the entire thing, establishing that criminal wizard Voldemort murdered his parents, forcing him to live with his terrible aunt and uncle until Hagrid came to whisk him away to Hogwarts. It also wouldn't be a Ritchie parody without drug references, and in this world, Fred and George Weasley are the ones who have that on lock. 

In a weird way, Harry being in a Guy Ritchie movie kind of works. He's a rapscallion on the wrong side of the tracks who gets a crew together to take down bigger crime bosses. But it also showcases the limitations of AI and how it can't replicate actual human writers. 

The AI creation takes Guy Ritchie-style dialogue into the world of "Harry Potter." There's ample profanity with references to drugs and crime, in addition to the characters looking directly at the camera to spout off their lines. The "Harry Potter" characters have certain Ritchie flourishes, like Hagrid brandishing a gun and Harry being tatted up to the nines. It's fun (if not a bit uncanny) to an extent, but when compared to another Harry Potter and Guy Ritchie blend, it also shows how AI can only go so far. 

Several months prior to Yellow Medusa's video, the YouTube channel Scheiffer Bates uploaded a sketch titled "Guy Ritchie directs HARRY POTTER." It's similar in style, where it's pretty much a trailer introducing all of the main "Harry Potter" characters as if they were in a Guy Ritchie movie. This also comes with Ritchie-inspired title cards for the characters with delightful nicknames for each introduction, something lacking in the AI version. There's Volder "The Dark Lord" Mort and Ron "Ginge" Weasley to start. Scheiffer Bates' video includes Harry Potter lines with a Ritchie twist, often adding swear words in the middle of dialogue. But there's also a humorous bit where Ron mistakenly refers to a "horcrux" as a part of the female anatomy, which is also very much within Ritchie's wheelhouse. 

AI "Harry Potter" may look a bit more polished, but with actual human writers, you get more memorable moments that don't just steal from what's come before. While AI may work as a gimmick, human ingenuity will always win out.