Lucas' Necromancy Masterplan.
By
Cowman,
Posted on: 2010-12-06 08:05 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
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I agree the SUN is a dubious source of data, so we'll see. However there have been commercials as shown in the youtube links in above posts where it has already been done.|
Originally Posted by Scythus
The SUN, people. You might as well buy into all of the Weekly World News reports of Batboy if you're gonna believe anything from the Sun.
I'll wait for this to be confirmed by the real news before I get worried. |
Steve McQueen 2005 Mustang commercial which is also a tribute to the car chase in his movie Bullet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZzXHq7gKN8
A simple ad like that that also pays tribute isn't too bad, rebuilding someone for an entire movie and expecting decent acting from said construct.......uhmmm no.
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Hm, and then they can use similar techniques to restore Connery as James Bond. |
Originally Posted by Mothers_Love
I think this is what Lucas' plan is with licences like Indiana Jones which has enough of Ford's performance in the role for an animator to potentially extrapolate a horrible frankenstein-like CGI performance for many more sequels. |
Then CGI revive Heath Ledger for more Joker.....
Not a pleasant trend.
Edit: hm....would a CGI de-aged Connery bring Bond fans back to the Bond movies? Perhaps a CGI de-aged Connery being CGI inserted into some of the other Bond movies and call them "Special Editions"?.....
Regardless of who might be working on this, the essence of the thing is in the performance. Fans of <insert deceased actor here> are going to go in looking for the actor themselves, not just the face. The body language, interpretation of the role, voice and more are going to toss the whole movie into the Uncanny Valley if it is not done incredibly well.
Of course, that may not keep some people from trying to make some cash off of the novelty, but people will stay away from CGI ressurrections in droves unless the first few are done spectaculary well (or relegated to cameos, per this movie).
I imagine the estate of the deceased will be able to decide what posthumous starring roles the actor will participate in. Hope they have someone canny and ethical making those decisions.
Speaking of ethical, two words:
Porn Industry.
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More importantly, this technology is central to Connie Willis's novel Remake, in which no one can get real acting jobs in movies because everything is a computerized remake of something else, using dead stars. This ought to strike a chord with today's geekdom, what with all the (somewhat justified) nerdrage over remakes, quite aside from this technology.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Howard Chaykin called this back in 1983 (Randall Flagg was fired from his TV show after being replaced by a computer simulacrum).
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In unrelated matter, Ironik's note that "the dead don't care" reminded me of the novel of that title by one of my favorite forgotten authors, John Latimer.
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Originally Posted by Cowman
Doesn't Jeff Bridges look awful young sometimes in that new Tron movie?
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Originally Posted by Nericus
Hm, and then they can use similar techniques to restore Connery as James Bond.
Edit: hm....would a CGI de-aged Connery bring Bond fans back to the Bond movies? Perhaps a CGI de-aged Connery being CGI inserted into some of the other Bond movies and call them "Special Editions"?..... |
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Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
Speaking of ethical, two words:
Porn Industry. |
It might actually work better in that arena because unlike trying to recreate the personality and mannerisms of well-known famous dead actors most people who "perform" in porn aren't in those movies for their Oscar-winning acting ability. The makers of those films will not have to worry about the intangibles that would make what Lucas is apparently trying to do problematic at best.
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It's not happening, sez Lucas through his spokesperson
"Update: But it isnt true! The I cast dead people scenario thats making the rounds on the web is not true, according to Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins. This rumor is completely false, he told Wired.com in an e-mail Monday.
source
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I'm sure the Actor's Guild of America will have something to say about this. I don't think these actors ever invisioned that their likeness, and ability to "Appear" in a new film would be used AFTER DEATH. Who owns the rights to an actor's after-life?
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Once again the Sun is proven as the unreliable "news" source it is.
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Originally Posted by Furio
It's not happening, sez Lucas through his spokesperson
"Update: But it isnt true! The I cast dead people scenario thats making the rounds on the web is not true, according to Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins. This rumor is completely false, he told Wired.com in an e-mail Monday. source |
I think the stuntman's guild has more to worry about re:digital dopplegangers than the actor's guild.
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I actually never cared about whether the Sun was right or wrong about this as far as Lucas was concerned.|
Originally Posted by Scythus
Once again the Sun is proven as the unreliable "news" source it is.
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This issue is one that has been talked about and considered for decades now. I still firmly believe that even if Lucas is not involved with promoting it there are still other people out there who are and this WILL be something that all the various actors, guilds, producers, lawyers and so on will be hashing out in the coming years.
Just because Lucas claims to be uninvolved doesn't mean this won't ever happen.
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Originally Posted by Mothers_Love
I think the stuntman's guild has more to worry about re:digital dopplegangers than the actor's guild.
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Indeed. Far easier to fake a stunt than it is to fake a performance
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"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2
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They've been CGIing stunts for almost decades now. I'd agree it's probably far easier to "fake a stunt than it is to fake a performance". But they've been making steady improvements to the stunt side of things for years. To believe that they'll never master the "performance" side of things is a bit naive at best.
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Originally Posted by Furio
Indeed. Far easier to fake a stunt than it is to fake a performance
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Originally Posted by Lothic
They've been CGIing stunts for almost decades now. I'd agree it's probably far easier to "fake a stunt than it is to fake a performance". But they've been making steady improvements to the stunt side of things for years. To believe that they'll never master the "performance" side of things is a bit naive at best.
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It'll still require an actor of some sort, I would think, to pull off a convincing new performance from a dead celebrity. Full on animation will still look like animation for a while yet, leaving us with mo-cap
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"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2
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Yeah, no shocker there. |
Originally Posted by Furio
It's not happening, sez Lucas through his spokesperson "Update: But it isn’t true! “The “I cast dead people” scenario that’s making the rounds on the web is not true, according to Lucasfilm spokesman Josh Kushins. “This rumor is completely false,” he told Wired.com in an e-mail Monday.”
source |
However...
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Originally Posted by Lothic
Obviously there's a lot of room to debate whether the "resurrection" of long dead actors in this way is good, bad or otherwise.
But here is something to consider: With advances in CGI happening all the time the likeihood that someone, somewhere will be doing this in the future is almost guaranteed. Frankly I'd rather have a person like Lucas with the backing of his industry-leading talent and technology spearheading this so that the quality of it can be as good as possible. If it's going to happen it might as well be really well done. *shrugs* |
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Originally Posted by Lothic
My point was that people like you or I complaining about it is not going to stop it. I'm resigned that it's going to happen regardless.
 If Lucas wants to jump in and try to at least make it look better than what other lesser people are going to come up with then that's better than nothing. If graves are going to be robbed then at least someone of the caliber of Lucas will be doing some of the robbing. I'd rather him do it than the folks over at SyFy for instance... |
Agreed, agreed and agreed... (And to the last comment... If someone is going to rob the graves, let it be Indiana Jones, right?).
Lastly...
If it were true and he was indeed buying the rights to such things... Wouldn't it just be a rather smart business move?
Not a bad investment.
Especially since ILM is the place to go for the best in the business... That right there is not a bad business move, if he were to make it (if that is even possible... can you buy the rights to deceased actors' likenesses?).
Long before this stuff was possible to do halfway decently... I wondered if we would eventually see such things as a brand new Bruce Lee movie.
There is some merit to it.
People can call it "grave robbing", but it is really no different than making an animated film of a legend or some such thing.
It is strange what happens when the lines are blurred by realistic quality!
Second Lastly...
The performance is always the key. Zero question. However, that does not mean that the potential for brilliant performances and/or imitations are not there.
Just with all things... Greatness can be great... everything else generally sucks.
What we need are: the best voice and character mimics/imitationists (whatever title they want to use), the best animators... Oh, the right scripts, direction, etc, etc...
Then we can have endless Cannonball Run sequels and they will never age!!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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Originally Posted by Lothic
They've been CGIing stunts for almost decades now. I'd agree it's probably far easier to "fake a stunt than it is to fake a performance". But they've been making steady improvements to the stunt side of things for years. To believe that they'll never master the "performance" side of things is a bit naive at best.
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*wretches up the sound* GOLLUM... GOLLUM *coughs*
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
It can be done tastefully, like the Jeff Wayne's war of the Worlds stage version which uses a large styrofoam sculpture with a projection onto it which is the amalgamation of the top half of Richard Burtons face (made using CGI so it could blink and such) and the lower half of an actor with similar face structure speaking the words (since Burton was the narrator) to create a 3D CGI Richard Burton.
They merely used it for the narration, they never had it say anything different than he had done in the original version of Jeff Wayne's war of the worlds and was honestly, quite well done.
As you can see here, it is well done but there is the obvious tells that something is slightly off
Here's a link for the 2005 Steve McQueen Mustang commercial. Nice tribute to the movie Bullett.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZzXHq7gKN8
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