Star Wars: Rogue One - * Non Spoiler Discussion Thread * — Page 6

Someone brought up Charles Dance in the comments of the AV Club article about this, and while I personally think he isn't  right physically for the role, I'd much rather they go that route than digitally recreate a dead actor. Whether or not they can pull it off, I'm a little squeamish about it ethically. It's like that Audrey Hepburn commercial for . . . I want to say . . . Chocolate? I found that whole posthumous endorsement deal thing really unsettling. Anyway, I have to think that to do this in an actual movie would set a potentially dangerous precedent.

aside from all that, even though I don't like him for Tarkin, I'd love to bring Dance into the saga in some other capacity. He'd be great.

SilverWook said:

It's been done more often than most people realize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEgsqvtaN28

Pretty sure it's always done with the permission of an actor's estate or family. Tarkin may not even have a large role in the film, or only appear on a viewscreen or hologram.

 I'm not super comfortable with a lot of those either. Honestly, based on what I know of Cushing and how peripheral the role is likely to be, I don't have a huge problem with this idea in itself, but it seems like a very slippery slope. I know copyright law is good enough to prevent these particular examples, but I've got a horror scenario in my mind where we end up getting Godfather prequels with "Brando" and Casablanca sequels with "Bogart". The realist in me figures this is ludicrously improbable for myriad reasons, but the pessimist in me can't shake the feeling that if this is established as a viable possibility and the powers that be like what they see when they run the numbers, something in that vein could become our reality. It's much better if everyone agrees that it's a dick move now and proceeds with pursuing other methods, IMO.

I believe you are right and strange decisions are made and these CGI recreations although they can be convincing.

The Schwarzenegger Terminator 1 CGI recreation is probably the best one I have seen but it works on a level because the character itself did not have to say anything so the face did not need animation.

Tron Legacy and young Jeff Bridges already showing signs of plastic face

It's the facial movements where it still falls over and expression.

Why can't they just find a look a like that can act a like and a sound a like to do an impersonation?

It's not that difficult so many people in this world who can look like other people with the right hair do and make up and so on.

Watching your clip Silverwook and Oliver Reed I thought was quite convincing in Gladiator and then I realised the shot that was CGI with the much whiter beard and the eyes were not right.

Brandon Lees the Crow although convincing the make up of the characters pasty white face and Black lips and eye make up really helped make that much easier to recreate in CGI

If this is true it shows where their focus is. I mean, the fact that Cushing was a great actor means nothing. Rather than hire another great actor and ask the audience to go with it they just want something to look right. Fuck performance. What you will get is a computer operators approximation of a performance.

Fuck this shit. John Knoll is all over this film, it will be cgi heavy and suck ass.

I don't find this technological achievement ethically questionable (given a certain legal framing); I don't even support the fact that heirs/estates hold rights for someone's face, unless the data would be used to denigrate the person who passed away.

From a certain point of view, history won't remember who was the model for MichellAngelo's David, or la Pietà, and those people didn't have any remuneration for it, yet art was preserved.

But aside from this, I remember having read that they're trying to develop new technology on this subject (God knows what would that be)...and if it was related to motion capture, we could probably have someone in the role of Peter Cushing, in the role of Tarkin. So it doesn't necessarily mean fuck performance. We could have very strange situations such as Andy Serkis, as P. Cushing.

Unlike most here, I don't have anything against "resurrecting" dead actors through digital technology. Truth be told, it's something I've been wanting to see for years now (How else am I ever going to see Vincent Price, Bruce Campbell, Heather Langenkamp, and Rod Serling appear in a new Twilight Zone episode/film together?).

As long as the actors' likenesses are being used respectively -- ie. not in some teeny booper garbage or crass parody movie or other stupid schlock like that -- I see no problem with it.

We're doing a lot of debating about something that most likely is total bs.

DominicCobb said:

We're doing a lot of debating about something that most likely is total bs.

Just par for the course for the Internet, I'm afraid. 

The difficulty with getting a stand in for Peter Cushing would be the cheek bones.

Perhaps a couple of green screen Cheek Pads down to the chin would do it.

I think once you have the cheek bones and narrow gaunt chin you have Tarkin / Peter Cushing obviously with the hair do also. Crooked nose prosthetic and so on.

This model re-creation is also pretty real looking...

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/05/you-will-not-believe-these-star-wars-pictures-are-real/

So even if they did do a cgi re-creation they could scan that as a reference so It could possibly be up there with the likes of the schwarzenegger T-800 (terminator 1 model) which was done from scanning a cast that they used to make his fake head where he gouges his eye out.

Personally all CGI is no good though it should be a mix of both real and CGI if they go for a re-creation. especially the eyes are lifeless, so it works for Terminator but not if someone has lines to deliver.

I thought Lucasfilm had to wait till Cushing had died before they could even release a Tarkin action figure in his likeness, is his estate a bit more flexible with his likeness?

An Uncle Owen figure would smack his way out of any packaging.

I thought the Audrey Hepburn commercial was kind of creepy.  It kind of looked like Hepburn, but I got a Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe.  It creeped me out.

unamochilla2 said:

I thought the Audrey Hepburn commercial was kind of creepy.  It kind of looked like Hepburn, but I got a Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe.  It creeped me out.

I found the commerical kind of cool, myself. Of course, I haven't see her in much -- Wait Until Dark is the only movie of hers I've watched all the way through -- so perhaps I'm just not "keyed in" to her enough to really recognize any underlaying alienness.