An AI version of Milton’s Paradise Lost is fundamentally unworthy of one of the great works of art

TThe special thing about non-filmable literary works is that most of them turn out to be filmable in the end. The Lord of the Rings was a bit of a mess when it was rotoscoped on a tiny budget by the man who filmed Fritz the Cat; Given the gross domestic product of a small nation and a visual effects department the size of Gondor, it won Oscars when presented to Peter Jackson. The 1984 version of Dune was a disappointment, despite the presence of David Lynch in the director’s chair, mostly because all the shiny, tacky galactic opulence couldn’t make up for the thoroughly bad acting, lumpy delivery and obsession with crazy heart studs. And yet Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation was a tour de force of masterful restraint and monolithic grandeur.

Milton’s paradise lost? The 17th-century epic poem always felt like an outlier, a literary work too religiously inspired to be filmed as a work of pure fantasy, and yet too crazy to be treated…