AI Makes The Tour De France A Gruesome Horror Movie You Can't Unsee
The Tour de France is about to get more chaotic. Every year, several high-profile cyclists take to France in July to be crowned the winner of Tour de France — the world's most prominent bicycle race. 2024's race kickstarted in Florence, Italy, and will wrap up in Nice, France on July 21. As fans wait to see who is deemed the winner, they can imagine what the event would look like if it was a horror film. No, seriously. Artificial intelligence has cooked up a ridiculous interpretation of the race, and the results are legitimately horrific, making them perfect for a filmmaker to adapt.
Taking to the r/ChatGPT subreddit, user u/Curious1556 asked AI to generate the Tour de France — and it's truly monstrous.
In the video, bicyclists are put through the wringer, colliding into one another and getting injured. The AI wasn't explicitly asked to turn the Tour de France into a horror movie, but the model's limitations have led to something that's actually scary. The video generating model obviously isn't perfect and doesn't get movement right, which leads to moments of bikers ramming into one another and turning into snowballing blobs of human flesh. One spine-tingling moment is when there are dozens of bikers stuck on the ground, collapsed, trying to get up, but failing (just imagine the screams). Other shots show several bikes and humans all attached together, creating something out of a twisted body horror movie that's perfect for David Cronenberg to tackle.
Let's imagine the Tour de France horror movie
Obviously, these clips don't have any plot or narrative threads, but let's imagine what a Tour de France horror flick could look like based on the visuals alone. Clearly, there's something afoot at this race. Perhaps a mad scientist has unleashed a virus or something that forces bikers to contort and physically merge and become one with their vehicles? That's sort of similar to the plot of "Titane," the horror film that caused people to faint in theaters. That picture, which sees a woman become one with a car, emerged as a success, so why shouldn't our Tour de France body horror film take cues from it?
Once the humans and bikes become one organism, perhaps they snowball down the predetermined path, trying to snatch up as many racers as possible? It's not a bad idea, as it would make the race all the more exciting — and deadly. The faster you pedal, the better chance you have of escaping our giant blob of flesh and steel. While it'd be great to see that film, that obviously won't happen (unless you're a Hollywood exec and think our idea is great — in that case DM us!).
Big changes are coming to movies and TV shows because of AI, but if this is what generative AI can cook up if you give it a simple prompt, it's fair to say those changes won't be coming soon.
And if our Tour de France horror film were to be real, it definitely wouldn't be one of the best sport movies to ever be released.