Last year, when I came across an old photo online of Tom Cruise in a gray jacket standing next to an elderly Russian woman outside a private home with carved wooden window frames, I assumed it was AI-generated. It looked too improbable to be real. It wasn’t.
In the summer of 1987, Cruise made a private visit to the Soviet Union — a trip documented in the memoirs of the Russian filmmaker who accompanied him, along with a series of rare photographs taken at the time.
Hollywood stars — reimagined in 1990s Russia
The pictures below, however, are pure imagination. They are AI-generated works by Russian MC Pavel Meleshkin, who reimagined what famous Hollywood actors might have looked like if they had lived in Russia in the 1990s.
Read also: What if Harry Potter was a Soviet researcher?
The results are strikingly realistic.
A mustachioed Matthew Perry sits on a bench holding a traditional Soviet string bag known as an avoska, alongside Courteney Cox, with a small neighborhood grocery kiosk in the background.
Nearby, Samy Naceri, known for his role in the “Taxi” franchise, is behind the wheel of a classic Volga sedan.
From samovars to sausage sandwiches
The stars of “The X-Files” gather in a modest kitchen, drinking tea poured from a samovar, as fresh copies of the Izvestia and Trud newspapers rest on the table.
Next door, Jack Nicholson starts his morning with sausage sandwiches.
The child hero of “Home Alone,” played by Macaulay Culkin, celebrates New Year’s Eve alone once again — this time in Russia — while the American holiday classic plays on television in the background.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage appears as a gracious host, setting the table for guests, complete with herring and pickles as the main appetizers.
Action heroes, Soviet style
In another scene, Bruce Willis sports a striped shirt as a street sweeper.
Laurence Fishburne is recast as a neighborhood pharmacist (see above). And the heroes of “Back to the Future” are shown plotting their next leap through time. In the background, a television set airs Ochevidnoye – Neveroyatnoye («The Obvious – The Incredible»), the long-running Soviet and later Russian popular science program that aired from 1973 to 2012.
Action icons Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone pump iron in a dimly lit basement gym — a distinctly post-Soviet take on Hollywood muscle culture.
Read also: Meet ‘Granny Schwarzenegger,’ the 67-year-old bodybuilder taking over TikTok.
