Please fix Leia in Rogue One

Hello,
as I can’t find a search form on this board, I will try with a new topic, I hope you won’t kill me 😃 Also please excuse any possible language mistakes, I am no native english speaker.

Well anyway, I wonder if I am the only one who really likes Rogue One except the CGI Tarkin and Leia. I mean Tarkin is kind of ok, but Leia??? She looks not like a living being at all in my opinion. Ok, they did it so we gotta live with it, but as there has been so much great work concerning the Original Trilogy, I though maybe some of those talented people could make an edit of Rogue One with some other footage? Even if they only used a cgi and show her from behind with the hood over her head, that would be fine, but the face is terrible! I hate it so much, it ruins the whole experience of the otherwise great movie. So is there someone who could edit that in a way that the scene containing Leia look more real? That would be fantastic!! Bye the way, I think Hayley McFarland would have been a good choice to play a young Leia.

I’d like to see someone edit the ending of R1 to align more closely with the SW radio drama (so certainly no Leia at Scarif). I don’t know how feasible it would be, though.

Oh, that looks allready better, thanks for the link. And of course her appearance was pure fan service, you’re absolutly right about her being there making no sense. But I wasn’t questioning the plot 😉 Just please somone make Leia look real or just don’t show her. That would be a nice Special Edition one day 😃

To fix it would be easy, just delete those scenes. No cringe and better continuity.

Funny, I thought Leia looks OK-ish, but Tarkin looked like something which came directly from my nightmares

Thank you all for your replies. NeverarGreat you made a good point with the possible way the animator worked, that really might be the problem. I really think Leia looks terribly fake, not only the face, also her movement, and it’s so strange to read that Carrie Fisher said she thought it was old unsused footage from 1977. I can hardly belive that. Besides that I realy wish they would stop recreating real actors with no need. And if they really, like in this case, think they need Tarkin and Leia in the movie, why not just show them form a different angle and for a rather short moment so you can get an idea, that would be enough, but I suppose they want to show off. I also would have expected they should really be able to give us a decent illusion but it’s just dissapointing. By the way, I am also absolutly not happy with how they did Snoke. He could have been done with a rubber mask instead and look more real, but I suppose that’s somthing for another thread.

Funny you mention Leia’s movement cause she was a real actress under the CG face. (Unless you meant facial movement.)

Yes, real actress on set, face replaced digitally. Probably actual ANH dialog from Carrie herself. I have some minor issues with the CG with these two characters, but I emphasize minor. I have more of an issue with Tarkin’s voice. It was not crisp enough. Too muddled. Both faces have the same problems and it is very common for all cg humans. We notice it less with non-humans. They got the movement of the face close, but not quite and our minds pick up on that. They did a much better job with the animation of Rachel in Blade Runner 2049, but they did a crappy job of making it look like Sean Young. I thought it was a look-a-like actress when I saw the film in the theater. But no, they intended it to be Sean Young and in that respect it was bad. So at least they go the faces right in Rogue One. But have you checked out Superman in the last movie? Caville had a mustache that for some reason he couldn’t shave off and regrow and the CG work they did is horrible. He looks more fake because of his upper lip than Tarkin or Leia do, and he was virtually all real.

He didn’t shave because of Mission Impossible:Fallout and I think that was the right choice.

yotsuya said:

Yes, real actress on set, face replaced digitally. Probably actual ANH dialog from Carrie herself. I have some minor issues with the CG with these two characters, but I emphasize minor. I have more of an issue with Tarkin’s voice. It was not crisp enough. Too muddled. Both faces have the same problems and it is very common for all cg humans. We notice it less with non-humans. They got the movement of the face close, but not quite and our minds pick up on that. They did a much better job with the animation of Rachel in Blade Runner 2049, but they did a crappy job of making it look like Sean Young. I thought it was a look-a-like actress when I saw the film in the theater. But no, they intended it to be Sean Young and in that respect it was bad. So at least they go the faces right in Rogue One. But have you checked out Superman in the last movie? Caville had a mustache that for some reason he couldn’t shave off and regrow and the CG work they did is horrible. He looks more fake because of his upper lip than Tarkin or Leia do, and he was virtually all real.

I can’t see how you could mistake Rachel in Blade Runner 2049 for a look-alike actress. I thought it was a very close likeness of Sean Young. Closer than Carrie Fisher in Rogue One. Though it still didn’t look real.

But again, both of these problems could have been mitigated by only showing the characters from behind. The audience already knows who they are.

Really if they just had the faces emote LESS I think it would have looked more realistic. This isn’t a live action anime lol

snooker said:

Funny you mention Leia’s movement cause she was a real actress under the CG face. (Unless you meant facial movement.)

That’s the problem with both of the characters in RO to be honest. Putting someone else’s face over the bone structure of another actor.

Can suspect disbelief for the five seconds we see Leia’s face, honestly. All good.

snooker said:

Funny you mention Leia’s movement cause she was a real actress under the CG face. (Unless you meant facial movement.)

I meant the whole person, same goes for Tarkin. I don’t know what it is, but they both do not move like they were actually there, something’s very unnatural about the movement.

Possessed said:

Really if they just had the faces emote LESS I think it would have looked more realistic. This isn’t a live action anime lol

Exactly!!! Sometimes less is more.

GlastoEls said:

Can suspect disbelief for the five seconds we see Leia’s face, honestly. All good.

If they spend millions of dollars on it and you still have to suspend your disbelief then something its wrong. Everyone needs that little voice that says “maybe we shouldn’t”. Honestly I’m shocked that it was even done this way when the fighter pilots were just cut from existing footage, that would have been much better.

The argument could (and should) be made that this is an early example of the process, more an essay in the craft than an example of its peak potential. Jar Jar cost millions of dollars to bring to life too, and while it’s certainly not very good by today’s standards, it paved the way for CGI to advance and reach a point where it’s all but indistinguishable from real life. More practically, just look at how much improved between the CGI recreations in Rogue One and Blade Runner 2049, just a year later.

But neither Fake-Tarkin or Jar-Jar were the first rough attempts at a ground breaking idea that paved the way etc. They’re both just expensive failures by people that should know better.