If you know something to be fake, your brain generates any number of reasons that it looks fake, even if they aren’t true or not noticeable to the average viewer.
I thought some of the Tarkin stuff was seamless, despite knowing it to be CG. If motion capture got good enough to capture the micromovements of facial muscles, I would feel a lot better about an actor using a ‘digital likeness’ of another actor (provided the actor or their estate were in agreement). In this case, the actor wearing the digital likeness would be translating much of their performance to the screen, even more than an actor with layers of prosthetics on their face.
Even beyond transmitting their facial micromovements (which I think didn’t happen with Tarkin) there is theatre. From ancient times there’s been usage of masks. Mostly rigid masks all througout history, in order to resemble someone/something that wasn’t there.
Then came prosthetics, which were used to resemble someone or something that wasn’t there.
And now it might be CGI, but the intention remains the same. In the case of Star Wars, provided that Tarkin doesn’t exist per se, the likeness of his original protraying actor is aimed at. Should this movie have been about Winston Churchill, why wouldn’t they just reconstruct his face based in historical data? I believe it would be in no way different than having an actor go through 6 hours of makeup a day just to resemble him, it’s the same principle than 25 centuries ago.
I find supposed ethical issues with this technology to be nonesense.
Now, that being said, I will also say that I’ve come to terms with the technology, which really is groundbreaking for the industry. It doesn’t look CGI at all. But it does look like a prosthetic. And yet it certainly doesn’t completely look like Peter Cushing as we’ll see. But, again, that’s not a problem of the technology (which I found to be almost flawless on Leia), but rather of the fact that this Tarkin doesn’t act as Peter Cushing, probably not for technical reasons but for the very fact that the MoCap source material might just not be likely enough.
As you can see here, there are some facial structures that might look a little different (Right image is the movie’s, middle is mine. I tweaked the proportion to fit Cushing’s rounder face), particularly the eyes (sky blue vs dark green?) and their expression. Thing is Tarkin back in 77 was a very very bad gentleman. He had sophisticated manners, and there’s a certain tiredness in his eyes. He’s not just the evil, determined-eyed guy that stands tall and firm all around. Nor is he the kind of “I talk and stare into the void cause I’m so evil” guy as here:
http://imgur.com/jUSwNYz (which is the peakpoint that really got me out of character)
http://imgur.com/jUSwNYz
Originally, his expressions were not those of someone who speaks decidedly, but those of someone who looks at you in the eye and frightens you because he is listening in-depth to you, and analysing you.
Reviewing ANH as I write, there’s not a single moment when he doens’t convey at least less than two emotions at a time with his expressions. For instance, when he says “enough of this [Vader, release him]” he sounds commanding, but he looks a little worried as well, etc.
Thing is, there’s no naturality to his acting just because the replacing actor didn’t get the character, or he wasn’t well directed, or (perhaps) this new technology will require a fuck load more work on behalf of the actors to pull a seamless impersonation. What I do know, is that this Tarkin looked a little too monolythic, 4 bits, in his acting; but truth to be told, I honestly put it all in the way the character was written (today’s blockbusters are more and more having the cartoonish all-evil villains just like back in the sixties) and a held back and not so good performance of the replacing actor mainly due to the relatively new ground and lack of reference this technology has to endure until its consolidation.
Best acting with this CGI will naturally be that of an old actor playing his younger self. Or even perhaps to have a special branch of acting-studies to be dedicated to physical impersonations just like it happened with voice impersonators.
But it will consolidate, I put some two cents on it. Hope they bring Alec Guinness as well