Just no. I thought Rogue One was one of the most dull and unimaginative stories I've seen on the big screen.
This is my view as well. Regardless of personal investment in the story the CGI Cushing didn't make that story work or not work. It simply was a part of it. And, below is a good description for me: Yup. I was impressed at the time but it still was something that stood out constantly. Leia was even worse in terms of being distracting in its noticeably. I prefer 2009 over Rogue One, but that has nothing to do with the CGI and everything to do with the characters and the story. Definitely. And people will treat it as the greatest thing ever better than recent productions because all it does is tickle the ears of nostalgia.
We're a long, long way from having to worry about this, considering how unconvincing most of the efforts by one of the world's top visual effects companies have been. That surprise appearance in The Mandalorian was less convincing than some of their earlier attempts. But there's another factor. No matter how much you spend on motion capture and computer hardware and software, acting is done by actors. You can make something look and sound like a particular actor, but if it's someone who's dead or otherwise unavailable, you don't have that actor's performance of that scene. You're only guessing (and probably second- and third- guessing) how they'd play it. For something like Star Wars, maybe that doesn't matter. Nobody ever watched a Star Wars movie to enjoy the acting. For other things, though, that could matter a lot.
Back then I was stunned by tarkin. I went in the theater not knowing about it and couldn’t believe my eyes when he turned around, had no idea on how they had done it. I know some people find him lacking, but also that others, not remember the character from the original, never realized he was CGI. Leia...Not so much, didn’t feel right. But also costed a fraction of the earlier attemptes. Which is the bottom line: cost. As soon as the cost for this technology will be low enough it *will* get widespread use. There is no going around it, it has already happened with so many technology, such as CGI models for ships, backgrounds and even aliens, color, stereo, HDTV, virtual backgrounds, it is going to happen for this as well.
It comes down I think to the actor's permission and their estate when it comes down to it. Peter Cushing's estate was fine with Tarkin in Rogue One. Spoiler: The Mandalorian S2 Mark Hamill seems pleased with his Mandalorian appearance even though I agree the CGI was a bit off in recreating the younger version of him. If the actor or the actor's family/estate says it's ok, then it's ok. If they say no, then no CGI. I'm not sure why it has to be more complicated than that.
It’s complicated because it further shrinks the job opportunities for current actors. Just look at the current trend of doing reboots and sequels over and over: they sell, so why should a company invest in a new and risky idea when they can reboot Spider-Man for the 11th time? Similarly, x years for now, why cast a new face for the next Jim Kirk when you can actually have a very convincing 30-year old shatner on screen? Even further, I occasionally work as background performer but I know that this job will just mostly vanish in ten/twenty years when everyone will be using virtual sets and the technology is good enough to provide virtual extras than can be modified at will by the director and won’t ever ruin a scene. Do I like it? Not necessarily, but I know well it’s inevitable and not necessarily a 100% evil thing either.
I've spoiler-tagged a couple of references to something that I discovered was from The Mandalorian Season 2, which still falls within the spoiler threshold.
Please no. This franchise is already way too stuck in its own past. If they get into Deep Faking past crews in their prime we will never see anything new again.
Won’t be only this franchise, unfortunately. Yes, *but* for the kind of things I was thinking it will be easy to have preanimated libraries relatively soon. A lot of background work is just “sit at the computer and pretend to work”, “pretend to chat”, “sit on the chair and pretend to watch a concert”, maybe “walk down a staircase” and you end up on screen maybe for a couple of seconds, possibly out of focus. for these kind of things you don’t need to be particularly original and I can easily imagine actors replaced with prerecorded models that can be changed and inserted as will, especially as once virtual sets become more common having background actors prerecorded as they do now is problematic, as the director can’t change anything after the fact (and may even be limited regarding camera angles, I think), while with virtual extras the possibilities are endless.
Realistically a lot of this is going to come down to execution. If the studio a few years from now sees value in utilizing the scripts/stories of unfilmed episodes of TOS via a combination of speech synthesis and deepfakes, then such a concept might go down easier among the public then bringing them back for a commercial or an awkward interaction on a modern show. As the technology improves it seems more likely any resistance about using it will come more from contractual agreements about actors' likenesses then companies' concern about poor taste.
If they filmed every TOS comic book, novel, and video game ever made as lost TOS episodes, the sheer number of stories is going to last far longer than a 5 year mission.
At least the debates about when and if the second five year mission happened would finally be potentially solved.
As long as they ask permission from the family/estate first (even if it isn't required), I don't see the problem.
Well here's a couple of examples of Deep Fakery that looked good to me, and presumably they were done by someone on their PC/MAC at home.
The uncanny valley will be a tough thing to overcome, the more realistic they try to make it the more fake it seems to look. Spoiler: Mando S2 What should've been the emotional payoff of two seasons with Mando and Grogu was spoiled by the really fake looking Luke, it was very distracting. They would've been better slapping a wig on Sebastian Stan (or someone else that looks like a young Mark Hamill).
sigh. I remember when people said the same for dinosaurs and ships, saying that CGI would NEVER be good enough.
We don't accurately know what dinosaurs looks like so there is a lot of wiggle room with that, whilst spaceships are compete fantasy so they can look like anything and accomplished artists can make something that looks believable because we really don't know how else they would look for different races that created them. Though even today The Mandalorian and The Orville continue to use miniatures which gives the ships a far more realistic feel to them (EC Henry has a great vid on the new practical miniatures used in Mando, he puts it far better than I can). The problem with the human face is that we see then daily, they are everywhere and we know what looks right and how they should appear when the light hits them, or they speak, or the miniscule micro expressions that we pick up on and help build our impression of people. The valley might not affect everyone the same and if it doesn't bother you then good for you, but for me seeing fully CGI humans is just unsettling and intrudes on the experience (kinda pulled me out of the universe after an afternoon binge of the entire second season).
Sure, miniatures still have some uses, but today CGI is what is used for most of stuff. Not because the results are necessarily perfect, but because it's cheap and good enough. Until a ten years ago I could immediately recognize a CGI creature, ship or landscape, today not really anymore (unless it's badly done, of course). Same will happen in the next few years for faces. And again: it doesn't need to be perfect or to fool everyone, it just need to be good enough to "fool" the vast majority of people and cheap enough to make it worthwhile to the studios, then it will go widespread.