One of the best performances in ‘Rogue One’ is by an actor who died in 1994 | Hacker News Reader

One of the best performances in ‘Rogue One’ is by an actor who died in 1994

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40 pointsilamont43 comments

I can't disagree more. The CGI was bad and should have been kept to a minimum. It was the ONLY thing I (and a few other's I talked to) didn't like about the movie.

Agreed. I thought is was so bad it was embarrassing. They should have kept it "artistic" and only have his face seen as a reflection on windows and back shots. These worked tremendously well....before the full front reveal. edit: I commend the film makers for their bravery, this must have been a nerve racking decision.

Looking at a single frame at a time, it's nearly perfect. I think the problem comes in how something about the lighting is just a little bit off compared to the rest of the scene and how that shows up when the face starts moving.

It's something that works better for Leia at the end because, aside from the shortness of that scene, the lighting is more indistinct and washed-out, so the little giveaways of light on skin aren't as obvious.

Wow, I was wondering how they got Tarkin so wrong, while Leia was pretty darn good. The lighting is what made the difference. The shine that was on Tarkin, which didn't work in those dark scenes, worked perfectly fine in the super bright lighting.

I thought leia was worse, when her mouth moved I got a horrible chill.

Glad I wasn't the only one. When it was just her face, it was fine. As soon as she talked it bugged me.

Indeed, however I feel the main issue was the animation. A combination of cleaned up mocap protocols led to a "floaty" feel, and I suspect an over exaggeration on some phonemes done by hand afterwards also led to a cartoony feel.

You definitely can't say the CGI was "bad." It was imperfect, and probably still not good enough to include in the film, but still very impressive and the best it's ever been in that capacity.

It's fascinating that so many of you saw it as obviously fake. Going into the film without having even seen a trailer, I was so confused. I couldn't tell if that was an excellent recast or CGI. Only something about his eyes seemed a bit off. Other than that, I'd say it was the best CGI human I have ever seen. So good, in fact, that I quickly forgot about it.

Interesting.. Chris Stuckmann, a popular Youtube Movie reviewer, described the special effects as being flawless. https://youtu.be/oxWFm5kUBGk?t=124

https://youtu.be/oxWFm5kUBGk?t=7m7s

"There's a character in this film that is full CGI[...]and it was very distracting."

Yeah, he specifically said the CG in space and the battles was virtually flawless, not Tarkin or Leia.

Totally agree. It was definitely the only bad part of the movie. Everything else about it was excellent, including the other effects. He was too smooth and too shiny. It took me out of the movie every time he showed up on the screen. The voice was excellent though, just wish they had used his face less.

The Leia was pretty darn good, until she spoke. Something was off about the facial movement to me. Did others notice that too, or was it just me?

Yep. They should have recast him like they did with Mon Mothma.

CGI Leia was also really bad and unnecessary.

Right? I felt like it was so heavy-handed. There were so many small references in there to A New Hope, seems like they were trying to cater to viewers who were pretty familiar with the original movies already anyway. Ending with the shot of Vader watching them fly off or something similar would have been better imo.

Edit: to be clear I'm operating off of the assumption that they did that so it was impossible to miss the fact that A New Hope picks up directly after the end of this movie

Agreed. Vader staring at Leia's ship as it escapes would have been a better ending. I'm not sure why the writers put so little faith in the audience to connect the obvious dots.

My wife and I just saw this and we both didn't care for it. Otherwise, I enjoyed the move too.

So who got paid?

Crispin Glover went through a similar experience in Back to the Future 2 & 3 where they took old footage, added a stand in with prosthetics based on his face mold, and didn't pay him.

Basically due to using the face mold, the argument became that the new actor wasn't playing George McFly (a character) but Crispin Glover (an actor, covered by the Screen Actors Guild). They settled out of court and supposedly he got $750k so this one isn't settled.

Ref: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/back-future-ii-a-le...

Disney/Lucasfilm signed an agreement with the estate of Peter Cushing. In the case of Crispin Glover, they used his likeness without his consent, which prompted him to sue and win.

Sounds like a simple and reasonable approach. Thanks!

This should win them an Oscar for visual effects. Unlike what they did with Paul Walker in F&F7, Tarkin not only looked and spoke almost exactly like the 1977 Peter Cushing, the character had a substantial role in the movie. (note: surprised there's no credit to Cushing at all on IMDB)

This is truly groundbreaking, and I would expect a new era in movies where they bring back actors from the dead and/or sign actors to contracts to license their likeness beyond a single movie.

Expect more of this. Facial scans of full FACS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System have already been and are done. I expect more comprehensive scans as well as some advancement in audio synthesis (probably based on scans? I'm not knowledgable about audio). On top of that, some legal and you will get full-fledged synthespians soon enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_actor

Animators, to an extent, already are actors. You have to be in order to be an animator.

In the 80's, the was a comic by Howard Chaykin called America Flagg. In the comic, the main character Ruben Flagg loses his job in a TV series because he is replaced by computer generated version of himself.

Seems to me that we are getting nearer to that being possible.

People seem to have a wide range of reactions to it. I thought Leia was perfect, and Tarkin was in the uncanny valley. But I've spoken to people who feel the exact opposite. Regardless, great movie and the days of CGI characters are definitely upon us.

Leia was played by Ingvild Deila [1] [2] [3] in Rogue One (at least in part, there may have been CG involved too).

[1] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6488665/

[2] https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/808730029203095556

[3] https://twitter.com/Ingvild_Deila/status/809666112820539392

Obviously there was CG involved; she looked exactly like 70s Carrie Fisher.

Yep, I feel the opposite way! Tarkin felt very uncanny valley to me at first, but due to him appearing several more times, that feeling died off and it felt normal that someone 22 years dead was in this movie. Leia, however, only had that brief (and unnecessary, imo) scene so I had all of about 15 seconds to realize what I was seeing, process it, and get used to it. It looked/felt like a video game cutscene.

That being said I think the technology itself is absolutely amazing. I'd been avoiding rumors/trailers/etc. so it was a complete surprise to me when Tarkin turned around.

Leia's smile bothered me so much I couldn't think of anything else on my drive home. Why didn't they just use reflections or just show their backs? There's no way this hold up over time.

To be honest I think they did the best they could do given the technology and given its tradeoffs a solution that wasn't as bad as other people think. Maybe 10 years from now they will do a remastered version where the CG is more convincing. The issue I saw was that the skin was glassy possibly due to the lack of translucency. If I were to do it I would have made it into a holographic voice call for Tarkin and keep the reveal with Leia since there was less lighting and screen time for her.

If they had recast Tarkin we would also probably still see complaints.

This thread is fascinating to me. I watched the whole movie thinking that they had found an amazingly good Cushing look-alike. I had no clue it was CGI until I came home to read the spoilers. Curious if the people that thought Tarkin looked fake saw the movie in 3D?

I saw it in 3D (hated it, really want to see in non-3D) and couldn't tell he was CGI either.

It was so obvious in 2D. I wonder if 3D somehow helped mask it.

I saw it in 3D and when I first saw his face, thought "Dobby!"

Ooooohhhhh now I see it. You're right there is an uncanny resemblance.

I saw this in theatre and instantly knew something was off with his face. It was such a disturbing feeling, made my brain question whether everyone else in the movie was CG as well and it took awhile before I was able to see the other actors as "real" again. The uncanny valley is deep and extremely disturbing.

Lot of the criticism of the CGI characters is due to the knowledge that they were CGI. People that know Peter Cushing was dead and have seen Star Wars with Carrie Fisher 40 years ago are going to be biased. That bias limits suspension of disbelief.

People that have no idea Peter Cushing died or who Princess Leia is aren't going to complain about the spot-on CGI.

They recast Mon Martha. It's not inconceivable that they would have recast Leia or Tarkin. In fact, that's what I had expected them to do. I was surprised when Tarkin was revealed and was obviously CGI. It was very distracting. Though, admittedly, computer graphics is my specialty.

On the other hand, I didn't notice Leia was CGI.

Who got paid? Can they just rip any dead persons look for free?

The Estate of Peter Cushing

I personally found Leia a bit jarring, but thought Tarkin was perfect.

There's definitely a wide range of reactions.

I found on my second viewing the CGI tarkin and Leia were much more believable to me. I wonder if the artists and directors brains filled in the gaps of the uncanny valley as they were very familiar to them.

I went to school for animation. Granted, I'm not in that field now, but I thought Tarkin was spot-on. The entire film, I was thinking how well they cast a replacement.

Both were deep in the uncanny valley for me, Leia looked worse. To me, animations/facial mimicry is what gives it away. Renders themselves are pretty much perfect at this point, bar barely noticeable fakeness of subsurface scattering.

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