Key Points4 August will mark three years since the deadly Beirut blast.Footage of the explosion that killed 218 people captured the magnitude of its impact. Reddit users were the first to notice a scene from The Creator trailer that looked like real-life footage from the Beirut explosion.
Moviegoers these days are used to such quality visual effects in films to the point that it can sometimes be difficult to tell what is real and what is computer-generated imagery (CGI).
However, footage used in the preview for an upcoming movie appears to have gone a step further.
The Creator is a movie distributed by Disney’s 20th Century Studios, that is set in a future where the human race is at war with artificial intelligence.
The vision of an explosion shown in the preview of the film and real-life footage of the 2020 Beirut blast, which claimed the life of more than 200 people, is eerily similar.
The blast in Lebanon’s capital, which occurred three years ago to the day, was triggered by a fire igniting thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser in a warehouse at Beirut port.
It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in recent history and as well as the fatalities, thousands of people were injured.
While many had hoped the tragedy would prompt mismanagement and corruption within the country to be addressed, Amnesty International has said “rampant political interference” meant domestic investigations had “stagnated”.
The Creator trailer footage
According to The Corridor Crew, a YouTube channel specialising in visual effects, it appeared as if actual footage from the Beirut explosion had been used, with additional CGI layers composited over top.
Reddit users had picked up on the similarities between the footage within a day of the movie trailer being released last month.
“You can literally see behind the CGI futuristic buildings, are the exact buildings,” one of the Corridor Crew hosts said, pointing out specific features on different buildings and an identical lens flare across the cloud in the shot.
The hosts, Niko, Wren and Jordan said it made them not want to watch the film.
“A lot of why we go to films is to escape reality, and to just even know that under the surface of what are visual effects and really well done visual effects is actual devastation or suffering or death even, it is upsetting,” one said.
Karthi Animations shared comparison shots in a video posted to YouTube showing original footage of the Beirut blast and a scene from The Creator movie trailer. Source: YouTube / Karthi Animations
‘In poor taste’ as community marks three years since Beirut blast
President of the Australian Lebanese Association Raymond Najar said if the footage was from the Beirut blast, and he certainly thought it looked as if it could have been, using it in a movie was in “poor taste”.
“Some of us are immune to being hurt by it, every human being on this planet is different in the way they react to regurgitating something that shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“My personal view is that it’s probably in poor taste and to be released publicly right around the third anniversary of the event, it is not clever,” Najar said.
At the same time, the footage in the movie was not the most pressing issue for him. Instead, his concern was with those families hurting from what happened and his focus on a continued push for those at fault to take responsibility for what happened.
“It’s gotten to the stage where nothing good has come out of the blast that you can say the government has picked up on or been able to use to make life better for anybody, if anything, they’ve made it worse,” he said.
“There’s been no recompense, no activity by the government to sort the problem out, to bring those to blame to justice or even forgetting blame, to at least compensate people for their losses, absolutely nothing.”
The Australian Lebanese Association is supporting a campaign entitled Forget me Not, which aims to honour the victims of the explosion and urge the United Nations to establish an independent fact-finding mission into what took place.
Lebanon has been without a president since October 2022, and the country’s fractured, sectarian politics mean electing a new head of state or forming a new cabinet is never straightforward.
Videos featuring images of the victims including two-year-old Australian boy Isaac Oehlers will be shared online beginning Friday, which marks three years since the explosion.
Families of those who were killed in the blast have contributed to the videos that share a little about each person such as three-year-old Alexandra Naggear, whose smiling face flashes up next to the words “they called me the star of the revolution” and Abde Kader Bloso who was on his way to celebrate his son’s birthday when the explosion occurred.
The Creator is due for release later this year but it is not known if those behind the film have plans to remove the shot in question from the movie itself.
Disney did not respond to questions on the matter sent by SBS News.
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