Legendary Jodie Foster has taken aim at the Brad Pitt-led car blockbuster F1 and sharply criticized… its AI-style plotting.
Released to theaters in the summer of 2025, F1 from Joseph Kosinski roared onto screens worldwide, racking up a global gross of about $634 million. The production budget hovered between $200 and $300 million, depending on the source, and the film also drew a French audience with roughly 3,277,000 admissions. A solid success that naturally spurred Apple executives to greenlight a sequel to F1.
The movie even managed to snag four prestigious Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and ultimately won the award for Best Sound. A crowning achievement that, however, did not spare it from critics’ barbs, with many cinephiles accusing it of a “Top Gun on asphalt” syndrome, a lack of realism, and a romance-tinged take on life on the circuits. A lament echoed by the formidable Jodie Foster, who weighed in with arguments of a quite different caliber.
F1 Justifies the Means
It was during a roundtable titled “Who Owns the Future of Hollywood” (hosted at the Aspen Festival of Ideas alongside former Sony Pictures head Michael Lynton) that the actress known for The Silence of the Lambs let fly her broadside. Foster used the forum to dissect the narrative vacuity of today’s blockbuster fare, citing the Brad Pitt racing film as a prime example. A soft-spoken yet deadly critique, suggesting the machine has replaced the human brain behind the cameras.
« I’m not saying this in a belittling way, and how could I? The film has nonetheless generated millions of dollars in global profits. But when I watch a movie like F1, I think to myself: ‘Was F1 made by AI, wasn’t it?’ I mean that its overarching narrative structure aligns exactly with the theoretical, classic shape you’re taught in school. »
And the trouble for Kosinski’s team’s screenwriters doesn’t end there, as Foster also pointed to a lack of character in the film’s dialogue:
« The actors deliver their lines in exactly the way a computer would phrase them if it had to write the precise line for that exact moment. They’ve simply learned to wrangle the technology to fashion a gigantic, visually stunning object, but much of the substance may well come from other preexisting data banks. »
Pressed by Michael Lynton about the AI threat and its potential to replace writers or performers, Foster conceded that the studios are already displacing workers, digitally cloning background performers to shrink salaries on crowd scenes:
« We’re already replacing people, that’s a fact. We’re wiping out a lot of jobs, and I sincerely hope the unions will insist that if a studio uses my image twenty times, they pay me twenty times, which seems fair to me. »
That said, Foster also argued that the tools remain useful for smaller, tedious technical tasks—such as upfront computer-assisted visual pre-visualization—citing the example of a dream sequence in her latest film, Private Life, whose computer-assisted outcome she believes translated perfectly on screen:
« What we want is for filmmakers to maintain control of AI without ever losing their bearings. If we can master this technology in the long run, we’ll create work that reflects us and helps us improve things. »
It’s hard to reconcile Foster’s stance on AI as a “cool” tool with the reality in which unions—led by SAG-AFTRA—are waging a long battle with the majors over the big replacement of human labor by machines. Yet as long as directors and cinematographers toy with their new gadgets, the fates of background performers and technicians linger on the curb, waiting for their day in the sun.
