Josh Daws made peace with never becoming the filmmaker he dreamed he might someday be.

Until A.I. technology gave him a second chance.

Daws, a former Disney software engineer, is the creative force behind “The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue.” The 90-second animated clip uses A.I. to showcase a young, physically slight heroine who learns why she can’t pick on men twice her size.

Or, in this case, a dozen times her size.

The humorous clip took off on X, generating nearly half a million views on the platform in just days.

Mary Sue doesn’t need a man to protect her. pic.twitter.com/SkQxgy0dNG

— Josh Daws (@JoshDaws) June 21, 2026

The secret sauce? On paper, it’s Artificial Intelligence. But there’s so much more to Daws’ clip than that. It’s why HIT reached out to the filmmaker to learn more about the clip, the early reactions and why A.I. isn’t always what we think … and fear.

HiT: What inspired ‘The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue?” Was it a general frustration or a specific film or show that made you want to mock the term?

DAWS: It was a bit of both.

For the last 10 years or so, the same girlboss character has dominated Disney, Pixar, and most big-studio films. The arc always lands in the same place. She discovers she was awesome all along and learns to believe in herself.

She reaches the end of the hero’s journey without shedding a single one of her false beliefs because those beliefs are protected by plot armor. She never has to confront the reality that would break them.

When I saw the latest trailer for Disney’s “Hexed,” it looked like another version of that exact same character, at least from what you can judge from a trailer. I’d already been experimenting with AI filmmaking and had made a few shorts, so I thought it would be fun to play with this.

The concept was simple: take a character with all the false beliefs of a girl raised on all these movies and put her in contact with reality, and let those beliefs start to crack.

I made the first one as a 15-second proof of concept, threw it up on X, and was really pleased with the response. Once that proved the idea struck a nerve … Someone in the comments had asked if her name was Mary Sue, and I just went with it because it made sense.

I released the second one on Sunday with the title “The Continuing Adventures of Mary Sue,” and it blew up.

HiT: What has been the initial reaction to the video short? Anything surprising in those responses?

DAWS: I’ve been blown away. It’s been overwhelmingly positive. I think people are starved for stories like this, with a protagonist who actually has to face the fact that she isn’t awesome. It’s almost a character rediscovering the real hero’s journey.

You don’t start out great. You have to learn, you have to struggle, and the beliefs you came in with don’t survive contact with reality once there’s no plot armor protecting you from the truth about the world.

There’s been some criticism that it’s AI, but overwhelmingly, people don’t seem to care. They want a good story and a character they can root for. That portrayal was a deliberate choice. Mary is a sweet girl who happens to be full of false beliefs that need to come down, but underneath it all, she’s likable and good-hearted.

There are a lot of talented filmmakers who’ve been shut out of the Hollywood system for years

When you set out to poke fun at these characters, there’s a real temptation to give them their comeuppance. I actually had people telling me I should have had her beaten to a pulp. But nobody wants to watch that. I want you to like this character. I’d rather watch her learn. So I put her in a situation where the only thing getting dismantled is her false beliefs, never her.

It’s also opened some doors I didn’t expect. I’ve had people reach out about potentially investing in what comes next, so there’s a lot of interest building right now, and it’s been a thrill to watch it all take off.

But my favorite response, and the one that surprised me most, has been from parents. I’ve gotten messages from so many of them saying their kids love it, that they’ve watched it over and over, and are begging for more.

One dad even sent me a video of his little boy asking me to make more.

HiT: Can you break down the basics behind the creative process? How much input do you need to make this a reality, and is it hard to work with the A.I. tools employed here?

DAWS: For me, everything starts with the story. There’s a misconception that generative AI is an easy button, that you type “make me a movie,” hit generate, and you’re done. You can actually do that, and you’ll get some dazzling images and video out of a simple prompt. But you won’t get a story that connects with anyone. That part still has to be human.

That’s where someone who knows what they’re doing brings their own expertise and creativity to these tools.

So I start with the concept. From there, I generate character sheets and work on the character designs. I found a few art styles I liked in Midjourney and used those as style references, then built out reference sheets for the characters.

I bring all of that, along with the script, into a platform called inVideo and work with their agent.

The agent functions a lot like a cinematographer. It helps me work through a shot list. I describe the look I’m after and how I want each scene lit and staged, and it can generate more references from there. It has access to all the different image, video, and sound models and runs on a credit basis.

And it knows how to prompt each of those models to get good results, so when I’m generating the shots I need, I can focus on performance, action, and what I actually want to see, without having to know all the prompting techniques for something like Seedance.

the chance to create entertainment that says things Hollywood never would is almost more exciting

In many ways, it’s very similar to the traditional filmmaking process. The difference is that instead of using a camera or animation software to capture footage, the AI models generate it. Everything after that is basically the same. You’re still cutting it together, and I edited this one in Final Cut, did the sound mix, the color correction, all of it. It really is just a new form of filmmaking.

HiT: A.I. promises to give incredible power to the Everyman. How do you see it playing out from a creator’s perspective?

DAWS: Overall, I’m excited about it because it makes filmmaking accessible to people who never had a way in. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade my years making films in the real world for anything. I learned the craft and the storytelling, and what actually makes something work.

But I’d hit a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore, and now I can again. That’s phenomenal.

For truly creative people, I think these tools are thrilling. You look at them, and you’re captured by everything they suddenly make possible. For people who already fought their way in and secured a job inside the industry, I think it’s frightening, and understandably so.

This isn’t only a tool for outsiders. The studios are going to use it too, and they’re going to use it to cut jobs.

My honest read is that embracing these tools is the best chance any creative has to survive the disruption that’s coming, whether you’re on the outside trying to get in or on the inside trying to hold on. The experienced artists who really understand composition, story, and the craft of the trade will be able to do incredible things with this.

Their skills don’t go away. They get amplified.

So I’m bullish overall, but I won’t pretend it isn’t going to be disruptive, for good and for bad. What has me most excited is the experimentation. I’m watching creators like Captain Hahaa put out these weird, wonderful things that would never get greenlit at a studio in a hundred years.

New Music video and New stories to tell

“No Cosmic Parade”

Video made with @runwayml using Seedance and Aleph 2.0 pic.twitter.com/4cwWhN2d85

— Captain HaHaa (@CaptainHaHaa) May 28, 2026

There’s a feeling in this small but growing AI filmmaking community that anything is worth trying, and it’s really inspiring. I’m seeing things every day that push me to think more creatively, and it’s a thrill to be on the ground floor of something like this.

HiT: Some artists instantly recoil at all things A.I. – from comedians to filmmakers. What do you say to those who reject what A.I. offers? Do you harbor some of those concerns yourself?

DAWS: I do harbor some of those concerns, at least on the jobs side. The disruption to people’s livelihoods is real, and I take that seriously. But a lot of the loudest critiques, the ones worried this is going to strip the humanity out of art, tend to come from people who have never actually sat down with the tools or learned how they work.

The major companies building these video tools are building them for creative professionals. Even the cost right now is more than your average person is going to spend casually, so these really are professional tools. The more real artists pick them up, the more they’ll start to see what’s actually possible.

Mostly, though, I’m just excited for the creativity all of this is going to unleash. You get to try things you’d never spend a production budget on, ideas that suddenly make sense to try just to see what kind of response they get. And it doesn’t even have to be a finished piece you show an audience.

If you’re a screenwriter, you can generate a promo that helps people actually picture your story, and that’s a powerful thing to send around with your script.

HiT: Is there monetary potential here? Or do you see a clip like this as having more cultural impact than anything else?

DAWS: I think the monetary potential is really a function of where the technology goes and what it can produce. And it’s already at the point where you could make a truly compelling TV show or movie with it. So yes, I think there will be real opportunities to make money here.

But as much as I’d love to make a living at this, the chance to create entertainment that says things Hollywood never would is almost more exciting. There are a lot of talented filmmakers who’ve been shut out of the Hollywood system for years, and this gives them a way to make movies for audiences that Hollywood has long ignored.

To me, that cultural impact is worth far more than what any single project could earn.

HiT: Conservative thinkers and creators are often kept outside the Hollywood walls. They don’t have access to the tools, technology and funding that their liberal peers do. Do you see A.I. as a great equalizer, of sort, or is it more complicated than we think?

DAWS: I’m not sure I’d call it a great equalizer, but I do think it gives conservatives the biggest cultural opportunity we’ve had in my lifetime. For a long time the right has been locked out of Hollywood and the entire cultural machine that comes with it.

We haven’t had the access, the technology, or the funding that the left has always taken for granted. AI knocks down a huge part of that wall.

You no longer need a studio’s permission or a studio-sized budget to make something people actually want to watch.

That said, I think a lot of people on the right have looked at this technology and decided Hollywood is cooked. I’d pump the brakes on that a little. This is a real opening, but it’s not an easy button. It’s still going to take taste and talent and the ability to actually tell a story.

And it’s not like these tools only exist outside the system. Hollywood is going to be using all of it too.

So yes, it gives outsiders a real chance to make things we never could have made before, but competing with Hollywood will still take talent and investment. The difference is that the investment is a lot smaller than it used to be.

That means an investor who wants to take a real swing at the system, who wants to bet on something made outside of Hollywood, isn’t risking nearly as much to do it. The downside of taking a shot just got a lot smaller. I really do think we’re heading into a golden age of creativity, and I’m excited about every bit of opportunity it’s opening up.

HiT: Given the initial reaction to the animated short, is this something you’d like to expand in some fashion? How?

DAWS: I’m definitely planning to do more with this character. I’ve already got a handful of ideas for more bite-sized shorts, and I’m using those to explore what it might look like to eventually give her a full feature. I wouldn’t move forward on something that big until I had a story I really believed in, though.

A feature lives or dies on the story, and I’m not going to rush that part. But people have fallen in love with this character, and I’m going to do everything I can to give them more of her.

The post Meet the Mind Behind Viral A.I. ‘Mary Sue’ Animated Clip appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

With Apple's foldable iPhone hinge woes apparently resolved, it appears the new device is on track for a September unveiling after all.

(via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Religion has too long maintained a cartel on morality; we need to find a new scientific ethics

The post After the Pope’s AI Screed, It’s Time to Break Free from Dependency on Religious Morality appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

Written by Bong Joon Ho
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
Starring Robert Pattinson, Seven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo
Distributed by Warner Bros Pictures (United States)
Running time: 137 minutes
Rated R for violent content, language throughout, sexual content and drug misuse

“I really hate dying. Still. Always. Every time.”

Wake up. Work. Die. Repeat. Mickey 17 is a sci-fi thought experiment: What if we stopped valuing life, and what would that do to unskilled workers? Mickey 17 addresses these questions by exploring the importance of self-interest in such a context and why one might choose to fight for a meaningful life.

Mickey 17, written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, is a comedic, dystopic techno-futurist film based on the novel Mickey7 (2022) by Edward Ashton. Set in 2054, the plot follows a down-on-his-luck young man, Mickey, who joins a private space exploration mission as an “Expendable” to escape the sadistic mafia boss to whom he owes money.

An Expendable is a disposable employee; Mickey is required to complete fatal missions, often as the sole participant in a scientific experiment, for the sake of keeping the rest of the crew safe. His role is entirely subservient, like a canary being sent into the mines. And when he dies, the scientists on the ship simply “reprint” his body, upload his memories and consciousness, and he does the whole thing again the next day.

The film shows starkly how easily people can lose respect for life. The reprinting started with a semblance of care and consideration from the scientists. In the first reprinting scene, we see a kind of conveyer belt on which Mickey can be reborn comfortably, and one of the scientists even takes care to cover his genital area to maintain his privacy. But as the reprinting continues, they begin to treat him with callous indifference, barely acknowledging his humanity through the process. In a later scene, the scientists neglect to provide the conveyor belt, so Mickey falls to the floor haphazardly. Often Mickey’s missions are preceded by torturous experiences: being injected with incredibly painful diseases, eating poisonous food, and being exposed to toxic levels of radiation. And strangely, no one seems to care.

At one point the scientists trick Mickey into going into space to check a faulty cable. But when he gets there, the lead researcher tells him on the intercom that this was a ploy to get him in contact with high levels of radiation. The lead researcher tells Mickey that he needs to explain every awful thing that he’s feeling so that they can note it and stop it from happening to other crew members, whom they deem more important. He asks Mickey to take off his glove so that they can see what’s happening to his skin, and when he tries to, his hand is sliced off by a blade from the ship’s engines. Instead of the scientists’ expected shock and horror, they all laugh in disbelief, more beguiled by seeing something so extreme than the fact Mickey is suffering.

Then one day, everything changes when the scientists wrongly believe that Mickey 17 is dead and print Mickey 18 in his place, meaning that two iterations of Mickey exist at the same time—an illegal scenario and ethical dilemma.

Mickey 18 is everything that Mickey 17 is not. The contrast exposes the failures of the human printing technology. It promised to create an identical copy after death, but all the clones vary slightly in their personalities—its designers had not accounted for the depth and variety of the subconscious.

Mickey 18 is not just a cloning error; he is a significant outlier. He brings a new perspective to his role that seemingly no other Mickey has done before: He assesses his position and concludes that he deserves more. He is appalled by his crewmates’ treatment of his life and becomes angry and vicious, yet he acts decisively and defends his survival. He tries to kill a fellow crew member with whom Mickey 17 had joined the ship and had a long-standing friendship before the mission because Mickey 18 blames him for his subjugation.

The Mickeys debate, physically fighting over who should stay alive because if they are found to exist at the same time, they both will be killed and Mickey’s lives will be completely terminated—Mickey as such will no longer exist. Mickey 17, understanding this, tries to compromise, offering to halve his workload and meager rations with Mickey 18. Mickey 18 laughs in his face—why should he only get half when he is entitled to it all? And more importantly, why should he do this horrible job in which self-sacrifice is constantly required with little gratitude when he could take revenge and be free?

Mickey 18 soon becomes the hero—a person committed to rational thought and uncompromising integrity who lives for his own sake, even in the face of danger or death. Because Mickey 17 is the complete opposite, the stark differences between these two characters who should be identical reveal the film’s paramount question: Why does Mickey 17 accept his fate instead of fighting against it for his own self-interest?

The Abandonment of Personal Values: Collectivism versus Self-Interest

Mickey 17 is a victim of this society’s values as we see them on the ship. Aside from a few friends and his girlfriend, no one is appalled by Mickey’s subjugation. His value, to most others, derives solely from his self-sacrifice, and he does not benefit from any of the supposed collective goods that derive from it. He will not get to enjoy the vaccines, the painkillers, the genetically modified meat because it is not for him; his sacrifice is for the good of the rest of the ship.

Throughout the film we can see the society’s collectivist undertones—people value each crew member based only on how well he fulfills his role. This affects even the highest ranked; for example, when the head scientist realizes that he hasn’t produced edible genetically manufactured meat, he offers to kill himself as punishment, as easily as one might offer to stay later at work after a mishap. The charges thrown against collectivism by philosopher Ayn Rand apply here—it upholds the existence of a mystic and unperceivable social organism while denying the reality of actual individuals.1^[1] This mystic social organism serves as a spiritual replacement for the individual’s life. That is, individuals are made to live their lives for their society instead of for themselves, much in the same way that Abrahamic theologies urge individuals to live their lives for God or in God’s image.

More specifically, Mickey’s belief in sacrifice and suffering as a constructive force for good resembles John Hick’s theory of the value of “soul-making.”2^[2] Hick preached a belief that humans were created as imperfect so they could grow into the “likeness” of God through suffering. This, in turn, he argues, would allow us to develop virtues that are more meaningful than if they had simply been imparted by God.

Although Mickey 17 isn’t explicitly religious, this theology expresses itself in his baseless yet absolute belief that he is bad, and he alone cannot ensure his salvation. So, instead of thinking critically or pursuing his interests to form a better relationship with himself and his past, he uses severe punishment to become “good.”

His belief in an innate badness is irrational, an irrationality that fuels his selflessness. He has accepted without much thought that he was responsible for his mother’s death, even though he wasn’t. As a child, he begged his mom to let him sit in the front seat of her car even though he was too young, and she eventually acquiesced despite significant hesitation. While they were driving, he pressed a red button simply to see what it would do, which sent the car hurtling into a wall, killing his mother instantly but leaving him unharmed. His lack of injury is the source of his guilt, which snowballs so that every other guilty feeling he has compounded into the belief that he deserves to be punished. So, on the ship, he readily accepts his treatment. When he is poisoned by the scientists against his will, he says it’s because he didn’t tell his girlfriend straight away when he found out about Mickey 18. When he is being exposed to unthinkable levels of radiation, he says that in fourth-grade science he “messed with a frog,” so this all must be his punishment.

Mickey 18, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be burdened by the same ideas. He wants to kill anyone who has done the Mickeys wrong. He is infallible when Mickey 17 can be weak and easy to overpower; even when the whole ship seems to be against them, Mickey 18 holds strong, which influences Mickey 17 to see his point of view.

I read once that a drama is when you watch a film and think, “What if?” What if he caught her at the airport in time, what if they managed to jump out of the flaming building, what if she could save her baby? Whereas a tragedy makes you think, “If only!” If only Romeo had known that Juliet was still alive, if only Oedipus had known who his real mother was—and if only Mickey 17 could let go of his unearned guilt, he could have avoided so much suffering.

This film is a warning about the horror of sacrificing oneself. Mickey’s suffering shows that abandoning self-interest is not life-promoting or life-fulfilling. He sacrifices himself for the good of his crewmates, hoping to cleanse his spirit of guilt, but all it does is make his situation worse.

Although this film has many layers and meanings, what stood out most to me was the value of self-love; it is not merely an advantage but a requirement to live a happy life. If you don’t value your life, no one else will.

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Consider a common communist argument from just a few years ago:

«Fascism and capitalism are basically the same.

The Nazis allowed private ownership, therefore they were capitalist.»

The purpose of this argument was obvious. If fascism could be tied to capitalism, then every crime of fascism could be laid at capitalism's feet.

The problem was always that private ownership on paper is not the same thing as private ownership in practice.

If the government decides what may be produced, who may produce it, how it may be used, what prices are acceptable, what profits are acceptable, and whether the owner may continue operating at all, then the government possesses the essential powers of ownership.

The deed may remain in your name.

The control does not.

Ownership becomes a permission granted by political authority rather than a right protected from political authority.

That was my response then, and it remains my response now.

Yet something interesting happened.

The same people who argued that state control over nominally private property proved fascism was capitalism are now using the exact same arrangement to defend China.

Now the argument sounds like this:

«China proves communism works.

Yes, there are private businesses.

Yes, there are entrepreneurs.

Yes, there are investors.

But the state ultimately controls everything for the good of the people.»

Think about what has happened here.

The same fact pattern is used to condemn one system and defend another.

When discussing fascism:

«Private property under state control proves capitalism is evil.»

When discussing China:

«Private property under state control proves communism is successful.»

At this point, the issue is no longer definitions.

It is consistency.

Either ownership requires meaningful control or it does not.

If state control over nominally private property means the state is the real owner, then that principle applies regardless of whether the flag is red, black, or blue.

If state control does not undermine ownership, then the argument against fascism collapses as well.

You cannot have it both ways.

What makes this contradiction particularly revealing is that it exposes the difference between principles and preferences.

A principle applies equally regardless of who benefits.

A preference changes with the desired conclusion.

Many modern defenders of China have quietly abandoned the earlier argument because it became inconvenient.

They discovered that China's success is difficult to explain without acknowledging private enterprise, markets, profit incentives, investment, and entrepreneurship.

But instead of conceding that these elements played a crucial role, they simply changed the definition.

Now private ownership counts as socialism so long as the state remains powerful enough.

The result is a strange intellectual sleight of hand.

Private ownership under state control is called capitalism when they want to condemn it.

Private ownership under state control is called socialism when they want to praise it.

The labels change.

The arrangement does not.

The real question is not what politicians call the system.

The real question is who ultimately decides.

Who has the final say?

Who controls production?

Who controls investment?

Who controls property?

Who controls the profits?

The institution with final authority is the institution that effectively owns.

Everything else is branding.

And once that principle is understood, many political arguments begin to unravel on their own.

"Socialists see unequal outcomes and ignore the process that created them. 

"The interesting part isn't that some people got rich. 

"It's that most of the richest people changed within a decade. 

"Capitalism doesn't freeze society into classes. It constantly reshuffles them. 

"The system they call unfair is one of the few that allows yesterday's winners to be overtaken by tomorrow's innovators."

~ Rock Chartrand