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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Condolences to her family and to the wider Star Wars community.

On a film-related note: I'm assuming any role she might've had in Episode 8 might've already been shot since the film is in post production, but given that she's passed away and (I figure) Leia almost certainly won't be recast, how might Disney rejigger the storyline going forward? Furious 7 handled Paul Walker's death through CG and the use of Paul's brother to stand in for missing shots, but that was to close out a single film rather than to adjust for broader plot gaps in an overarching series.

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Maybe CG will be good enough to keep casting dead actors?

The face2face[1] tech looks pretty convincing to me and it already works in real-time (which isn't necessary for films) and you have plenty of old footage of them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk

It wasn't really good enough in Rogue One, but of course will be getting better.

Personally, I hope that never really becomes popular. Culture is already far too backwards looking and nostalgia filled for my taste. I'd hate for us to get stuck using dead actors providing something mimicking a performance.

Far more interesting will be the possibility of wholly CGI actors with artificial vocaloid voices. That'll be a ways off since a voice actor would be cheaper.

> That'll be a ways off since a voice actor would be cheaper.

Fox will probably beg to differ.

>It wasn't really good enough in Rogue One, but of course it will still be getting more use.

> I'd hate for us to get stuck using dead actors providing something mimicking a performance.

It's funny to think about it now, but Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness were the two "big name" actors in Star Wars, and provided some of the best acting in the entire series. The look on Alec Guinness' face when he mentioned Luke's father being his good friend said more than the accumulated total of prequel movies and spinoffs could ever hope to.

As experienced professionals (with experience working in low budget action films in Peter Cushing's case) they added a lot of nuance to and took ownership of their roles that I doubt face-swapped actors will have the authority to for a long time, if ever. To be honest, it feels kind of weird to me that they are resurrecting an actor who has been dead for such a long time.

Having said that, I think the actual technology is good enough for de-aging when the actual actor can give a performance; realistic CGI replacements for actual people have been improving since 2009 when a cameo by THE Terminator was believable enough (somewhat because it conveniently got its face blown off immediately). Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy was not bad: http://www.danplatt.com/?cat=91, and you won't notice the de-aged actors in the latest Marvel movies unless you are actively looking for them.

> It wasn't really good enough in Rogue One

I went to Rogue One with 8 people. 3 could tell me which prominent character was CG when asked. And those 3, it was because they knew the actor was diseased.

Neither of my parents realized Peter Cushing was played via CG while watching Rogue One, so while it was terribly distracting to me, it's apparently pretty successful.

I noticed it during his first scene, but either my suspension of disbelief won out of they got better tech as the movie progressed, because it looked totally natural later.

Of course, I was expecting to notice it. If I hadn't known about it, maybe it would have gone right by me.

I wasn't expecting it, as I tried to remain ignorant of details before seeing, but I spotted it quickly. I struggled with it momentarily, though, thinking to myself, "Wait. He's dead, right? This looks a bit off." My boys, 13 and 17, lean over simultaneously and say, "Totally fake." It still looked digital later, but I think we cared less because we'd settled it in our minds. Young Leia felt more obviously digital than Tarkin, though.

In the first appearance it felt more like the scene was abruptly adjusted in terms of lighting and exposure to make up for the rendering of Cushing's face on the actor. It definitely got harder to notice in subsequent scenes.

But once you figure out something is out of place, you can't break that thought process.

I personally didn't realize he was fake until after. Possible because Tarkin was so stoic his face barely moves. Leia looked a but unnatural but it didn't ruin it for me.

Agreed. Though I've long been a star wars fan, i.e. not a CGI snob ;)

The weirdest thing about Leia was her smile...I mean that she smiled at all. Real Leia would've told the guy to shut up and do his job.

There was a CGI young Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Salvation, in 2009. Admittedly, that scene did not require many facial expressions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7YYfgx_cHo

A CG solution is unlikely - it's doable for a tiny bit part but not for a major character. Technically it might be possible to pull it off (and this will certainly be the case in years to com e- by next decade you'll be able to write your script and cast virtual actors scanned from existing movies. But I can't see the audience accepting a digital puppet of a character they're intimately familiar with.

Much more likely that part of Episode 8 would be reshot to kill her character off and leave the rebels at a nadir. For example if there's any scenes of her traveling from A to B, just reuse part of that material and blow the ship up as it approaches its destination. Reshooting to solve story problems in post is quite common and losing the leader of the rebel alliance is the sort of narrative problem that would fit right in with the series' ethos.

I think Rogue One has shown that actors from the original series, dead or alive, are fair game.

Most likely by GC replacement. They already did this with young Leia in Rogue One, which also prominently starred Grand Moff Tarkin played by GC stand-in, as Peter Cushing, actor who portrayed the character, passed in 94

Perhaps a tasteful hologram?

You didn't see Rouge One? There's an actor who's been dead for 20 years. Carrie Fisher didn't play her part.

And it looked bloody awful! Talk about uncanny valley!

I was thinking the younger characters are probably harder to do because they can't hide the flaws anywhere. Leia was very creepy in Rogue One, but it didn't even occur to me that Peter Cushing had died 20 years ago until after I finished watching the movie. His recreation was very good.

I thought it looked like a PS4 cutscene tbh. I think if you play video games then you're primed to notice the facial animation techniques.

Yes, I couldn't help but feel like they were very well rendered video game characters surrounded by live actors, and I had to force myself back into the movie. I still have no idea what happened in the first scene Tarkin appears in.

I think this is why my two teenagers noticed it immediately when he first appeared. They instantly recognized being in a cutscene. It took me an extra second to go through an internal "Wait, he's dead, right?" moment.

I suspect some people have different levels of sensitivity here.

I certainly didn't notice it was CG while I was watching the film. Nor did my wife, who was watching it with me.

I didn't notice it either. I would also be willing to bet that the majority of people who say his recreation was poorly done only say so because of having prior knowledge about the actor being deceased.

As a counterpoint, when my wife and I saw Rogue One we were both impressed that they managed to find somebody that looks just like Tarkin from the original film. I had no idea he was CG until reading about it after the fact.

I also was impressed with Tarkin, but once I realized what was going on, I saw the flaws. That said, for casual fans, they may not even notice because it took the realization of "Hey this guys dead" to open my eyes to it.

That said, the CG Leia was poorly executed, which was a surprise considering how well Tarkin was done. She really looked like a video game character. I would have preferred showing her head covered by her scarf and only showing her hands, like her intro in Episode 4. Maybe the production was worried casual fans wouldn't know who it was if they didn't show the face and goofy side-buns?

The main problem I had with Tarkin was that the facial scanning was obviously done very late in life - the cheeks were extremly gaunt, and, well, corpse-like.

That is how I would describe Peter Cushing's appearance: http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5533/98/16x9/960.jpg

And in Rogue One...

http://postnewsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CGI-Pete...

Yeah I noticed this too. He looks older in R1 instead of younger.

He should look the same age because it literally takes place days before the original movie. His footage was take from the original movie.

No it wasn't.

It was CGI over a mo-capped live actor.

You probably only thought that because you knew ahead of time. Did you also notice the two rebel pilots who were CG?

That was original unused footage.

https://moviepilot.com/p/unused-new-hope-footage-rogue-one/4...

Yes but it was "CGd" onto another actor.

No it wasn't. What are you talking about?

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-12-19/the-unseen-star-wa...

It was the other way around. They found the old footage of the actors, and "CGd" the new cockpit etc. onto them.

I didn't know ahead of time. I just thought at the time that "Man, that looks really bad", and then I read up on it afterwards, and it all clicked.

I thought Tarkin looked a bit creepy (in a bad way; the scriptwriters captured his ghastly Lawful Evil personality beautifully, and the voice actor (Guy Henry, who I've never heard of) did a masterful job).

But Mons Mothra looked fine, and I didn't get to see enough enough of Leia to tell --- and the other CGI actors I didn't know were CGI and completely failed to notice.

So it's definitely getting better. This was no _Polar Express_.

For what it's worth, Mon Mothma was played by an actress cast for Revenge to play Mothma (who was only seen in deleted scenes from that), and ended up aging to nearly the look of Caroline Blakiston in Return.

No CGI trickery here.

Oh, huh.

Well, that does explain why she looked so realistic!

I thought he looked amazing when still and I didn't realize right away what was going on. It was when he started moving his face and walking that it became obvious. There's still a long way to go in making human motion appear more natural. It's still too "smooth" when rendered.

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