Death of the Star
I recently added RogueOne to my movie collection. The film is a really nice addition to the Star Wars narrative — but it’s not the storyline that lingers in the back of my mind after the movie ends. The fact that an actor in this latest addition to the Star Wars story has actually been dead for 22 years is something I just can’t shake off.
Of course, it makes perfect sense to use Grand Moff Tarkin as a link to the old movie — but I think the implications are bigger than that.
For Rogue One, Lucasfilm obtained the permission of Peter Cushing’s estate to use the dead actor in the film. That is of course a wise ethical choice — but what’s the legal angle? What are the actual rules for using a dead person’s face in a movie?
When Peter Cushing signed his contract to play a Galactic Imperial officer, I bet no one thought of adding “the use of my face digitally after I die”-clause. So they had to ask. But my guess is that Disney has added such a clause to its more recent contracts. Which means that Carrie Fisher’s death in December 2016 may not prove to be such a big issue for the next Star Wars film. Just like Fast and the Furious 7 was completed after Paul Walker died.
But with the progress of computational power, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched to imagine that within a decade (or less) you could just eliminate human actors all together.
I mean why pay Harrison Ford $20,000,000 to convince him to play a role if you can just animate him? Why deal with actors who behave like spoiled idiots, forget their lines, ruin a take with a laughing fit, demand insane amounts of money to do the sequel, or simply die in the middle of shooting?
Why bother shooting actors on green screen to put them in a fictitious environment, when you can just create everything — including the actor — without even leaving your desk.
I can already hear you say, “but computers can’t act” — and you’re correct. But how hard is it to make a repository with ‘expression plugins’? Imagine if all you have to do is to build your character with the correct ‘muscle-anchors’, and then load the emotion/expression needed, and your character ‘acts’ that expression out.
It might seem far-fetched, but in 1993 (the year before Peter Cushing died), when the CGI dinosaurs of Jurassic Park amazed the world — they were originally supposed to be filmed with stop motion.
Now, just the thought of shooting an action scene for a Hollywood production in stop motion is completely silly.
Maybe in a not-so-distant future in a galaxy not too far away, the thought of using human actors in a movie will seem just as silly.
But I hope we’ll still have bloopers, even in the future.
