Spoilers The Roddenberry Archive brings every iteration of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise bridge to life
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This. No one, at least no one in this thread, is suggesting anything like your Strange New Worlds or Solo examples. I'm on my third Spock, and while Nimoy will always be the gold standard, I love what each actor has brought to the role and I consider all of them to be Spock.
But, from an entirely in-production standpoint? Showing a character as younger or older in a flashback or a flash forward? Or for a sequel, prequel or inbetweenquel? This is an ideal technique for those kind of situations, and allows for more of the actor's actual performance to come through.
As for myself, I thought "Unification" was near flawless. I still find it hard to believe that I'm not actually looking at William Shatner when I watch it.
And, I'm sorry, but why shouldn't the direct descendants of an actor be allowed to benefit from their legacy? Rights to literary and musical works are passed down to family, and I'm not really seeing the difference here. I think it's pretty arrogant to assume that a deceased actor is going to object to their family benefiting from the use of their likeness, considering that when they were alive and acting, providing for their family was probably what was first and foremost in their mind in the first place. I'm sorry, but the objections presented here largely come off to me as self-righteous and presumptuous handwringing.
And then, there's stuff like the aforementioned George Carlin example, which was just nauseating.
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Carrie Fisher wasn't recreated in Rise of Skywalker. They made a younger version in Rouge One, while she was still alive to consent. But in Rise of Skywalker they modified existing footage from deleted scenes from The Force Awakens. No need to create a artificial face.
There was the brief flashback scene of Leia training with Luke in which Leia weas portrayed by her daughter, Billie Lourdes.
My guess is AI is poised to replace them all within the next 5-10 years unless massive protections are implemented and enforced. Actors, authors, writers, all of them. Also much in the way that coders' careers (such as mine) are in equal amounts of jeopardy from this emerging and quickly evolving technology, especially in the private sector. I would be a little more worried for my own job, but I've been a FedGov contractor for the past 20 years and I know it takes these people eons to replace a fucking keyboard or scroll-wheel mouse with something manufactured in this decade, much less embracing something so cutting-edge as AGI+. I'm hoping that, by the time it starts moving into my arena, I'll be prepping to finally retire, if not already out of the workforce completely (I dream about it every day now).
It's my daughter's future I'm worried most about. She's considered possibly becoming a professional singer. AI does voices pretty damn well too.
Yep, that's all definitely a concern. The Trek fanatic in me wants a seamless believable fictional universe with no recasts and deepfakes used to provide suspension of disbelief. The compassionate human being in me who lives in the real world definitely understands how disastrous this would be for actors and the film industry as a whole.
I do.
There's a reason why I don't like Cameron films.
It strikes me that they is a strong desire to remove the human in these cases.
Of course. Deepfakes and AI voices can't go on strike.
Exactly. I can see some dirty tricks coming, too, in response:
Quoting myself here.
I don't see how saving millions on productions and actors acquiring a source of secondary income equates to disaster for either the actors or the industry. Isn't it generally accepted that the studios are paying far, far too much on these blockbuster movies for far too little return on their investment? Oh, so many big budget flops? Isn't that a part* of the reason that studios are hemorrhaging money and local cinemas are going bankrupt?
Cost cutting measures such as this new technology and The Volume that can produce the same product at a fraction of the price seem to be a direct response to that real world phenomenon. And technology ever moves forward. That's an inevitability like death and taxes.
*I would actually put overpaid executives at the near top of the list of why Studios are hemorrhaging money, but that's a different conversation.
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As I understand it, a huge chunk of the expenses for those movies goes towards marketing and merchandising after all the actors and other cast & crew already got paid. Yeah, the A-listers will always get their lion's share, but I think on the whole much of the actor salaries goes towards their own management firms and other personnel who represent and/or support them.
The future has been wept for by humanity for as long as there has been a future for humanity to contemplate.
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Good points too
With his full consent before he passed, and all the royalties will go to his family now. IIRC the deal he made with LucasFilm was that it's just his Vader voice they're allowed to recreate, not anything else.
Majel Barrett's voice was also digitized for use, she gave her consent before she died and it is used on the Roddenberry Archive website.
I'm fine with this kind of stuff if the living actor gives consent.
It gets a bit iffy if it's the family who gives consent after the death, but then I see it from their perspective, I mean I doubt they'd agree to it if they thought seeing their loved one(s) again on screen would creep them out? I don't think any amount of money would get me to agree to that.
I thought he was great as a Young, Pre-ANH Han Solo
It might even just come down to the role being reprised after death. An actor might not have any objection to the general idea of his/her likeness being used after death, just objections to certain roles. For example over at DC, there was some discussion over why John Turturro didn't come back as Falcone in Penguin and while it was clarified that there was a scheduling issue, Turturro did mention that he wasn't comfortable with the violence that the character of Falcone inflicted on women. So I can see a situation where Turturro oks, say, a deepfake of his Transformers character but not his Batman character.
That but also expectations from fandom too. No longer wanting that pesky aspect of human aging to be a factor and instead able to create perfect replication every time. No longer human actors but action figures.
I've seen far more expectations from actors themselves that their image be frozen at a certain age than from the fans honestly. Just from the wikipedia page of "Wrath of Khan"
Bennett remembers that Shatner was hesitant about portraying a middle-aged version of himself, and believed that with proper makeup he could continue playing a younger Kirk. Bennett convinced Shatner that he could age gracefully like Spencer Tracy; the producer did not know that Shatner had worked with Tracy on Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and was fond of the actor.
And even from Patrick Stewart who Trek fans generally believe does not have the ego that Shatner has: https://screenrant.com/logan-patrick-stewart-charles-xavier-doubts/
“There might have been moments before Logan when I thought, ‘If I do this and I really go for it, am I only going to get cast as geriatrics from now on?"
Of course, but this is now rewarding it. Before it was just "We can use make up and try to shore up the image." Now, it's "Ok, I can look like my old self 20 years ago. I can appear like aging hasn't caught up to me."
It creates an extremely disturbing precedence of essentially saying "You don't age."
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