How ‘Rogue One’ Brought Back Familiar Faces | Hacker News Reader

How ‘Rogue One’ Brought Back Familiar Faces

nytimes.com

32 pointsstevewilhelm51 comments

There is a subplot in "The Congress" where the actress Robin Wright (of Princess Bride fame) agrees to be digitized so that they can use her likeness in films. Part of her contract is that she may never act again. It makes me wonder how long it will be before we start seeing digitized actors who have not died, and what kind of rights/residuals they will get.

It was a strange film; I enjoyed it. Fans of Philip K. Dick would do well to watch it--it reminded me a lot of his work (though it was not based on anything he wrote).

It's actually supposed to be based on The Futurological Congress [1] by Dick's contemporary Stanislaw Lem, although they changed it beyond recognition. The only thing the book and the film have in common is that there's a congress. I didn't enjoy the film at all, but I can recommend the novel, which is excellent.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Futurological-Congress-Memoirs-Ijon-T...

Yes, I almost added that it was loosely based on Lem, who I have yet to read, but when I went to confirm this on Wikipedia, I found that the director actually stated that he used the book "more as a source of inspiration." So I imagine going in expecting to see a faithful reproduction would be pretty disappointing!

If you like PKD, I think you'll like Lem. He's very different, but they have some commonalities; they were both great, inventive conceptual thinkers with a superbly dry sense of humour. TFC is a very dry, dark satire.

I was pretty blown away by it in theaters - crazy to see Tarkin, Leia, and Mothma, looking and sounding almost exactly as they did in in Episode 4 all those years ago.

I think quick cameos are really doable right now. Leia was fin in Rogue One, but the more Tarkin appeared on screen, the more "off" he felt to me. The animators definitely made it across uncanny valley and most of the way up the other, but I think we're still a little short of the top for extended appearances along side real people.

This is Star Wars...uncanny CGI can't offend too many fans.

The first 3 star wars movies was made mostly with props (miniatures). The next 3 were CGI.

http://themovieblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/lucas-gre...

Except unless you own a copy of the VHS release before 1997 you are stuck with bad CGI in the original three.

Which is certainly sad. Anyone born since around 1995 has probably only seen the awful song scene in Episode 6 version.

> The first 3 star wars movies was made mostly with props (miniatures).

If you bought them decades ago.

Maybe I'm blind, but I didn't know Tarkin was CGI until someone told me several days after I'd seen the film.

Most of the people here have convinced themselves that they could tell and it was awful. However, I bet if there was some sort of scientific comparison, a lot fewer people would guess right.

Perhaps more interesting are the people who can't understand that their own perceptual blind-spots are not universal standards. This is especially interesting in the social realm, but I think what makes this example so interesting is it may fall somewhere in between (physical and social.)

I am willing to bet you would get different results if you broke the people up into groups of people who watch eyes and people who read lips. I think the eyes were way more convincing than the lips. People who lip read could tell something was off. I also wonder if it would work better if they superimposed human lips onto the cgi face.

My wife has never seen the original trilogy, and she exclaimed "Is he CG??" 200ms after grand moff's face was on the screen.

Come on guys, both characters were deep in the uncanny valley.

That may well be true... but the uncanny valley isn't the same for everyone. Tarkin looked great to me. For the two seconds she's on screen, Leia looked fine, if oddly happy given the situation. I'm guessing there's a LOT of variance between people's perception of the uncanny valley.

I found Leia really hit the uncanny valley, for me. Shudder.

P.S. I'm commenting on this with specificity, here, because the thread is already a spoiler in this regard.

I found Tarkin pretty distracting from the start. I don't think other people I was with noticed though, so maybe it wasn't a bad choice.

Mothma was a real actress who was a bit of a doppelgänger :)

Mon Mothma didn't appear until Return of the Jedi.

Think we'll see the side story that lead to the data she presented to the Rebels in that episode?

Actually Mon Mothma was played by the dead-ringer for Caroline Blakiston, Genevieve O'Reilly.

She also plays Mothma in a deleted scene in Episode III.

Just saw Rogue 1 last night. By my calculations, Leia's character appeared on screen at about the same moment Carrie Fisher passed. Poignant and sad.

But related to this thread, i must admit that Tarkin's CGI character fooled me for the first few minutes. I was so caught up in the story that it took me a while to realise Cushing was no longer with us.

I wasn't even aware that the actor wasn't with us until afterwards when discussing the movie with friends. I noticed a weird glow but I didn't really think about it; it amazes me how good CGI has gotten these days to be able to portray a person without some people even noticing.

I didn't see it addressed in the article, though I may have missed it, but would the family of Peter Cushing be paid for the use of his likeness? Do you need permission to use someone's likeness like a copyright or something?

This article by Vulture goes into some detail about it: http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/rogue-one-peter-cushing-digit...

In short, personality (e.g. likeness) rights are well established in law, but vary by territory, especially for posthumous usage. Disney almost certainly negotiated with his estate / living descendents.

Per [1] it looks like there was an agreement between Mr. Cushing's estate and Industrial Light & Magic. I would be surprised if this did not involve some sort of compensation to the estate. In this day and age though, I would also not be surprised if in some franchise contracts big studios try to get preemptive agreements to use an actor's likeness in future films. Obviously that was not the case here though.

[1] http://www.slashfilm.com/grand-moff-tarkin-in-rogue-one/

Edited to add: for a long summary of likeness law, see: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-anoth...

It's interesting that of among these promotional articles and videos about the Tarkin and Leia CGI reconstructions, there's not a single frame grab or video clip. There's absolutely nothing on YouTube. With all the gushing about how they managed to bring a dead actor to life, you'd think Disney would release some clips.

(FWIW, I was among those who thought the CGI characters were awful, in an otherwise brilliant film.)

Tarkin was excellently made. I'm pretty sure most people not knowing of the trick didn't suspect anything. OTOH I've found Leia, for the few seconds she's visible at the end, quite poorly done; in particular her lips moved in a very unrealistic and artificial way.

I was horribly unimpressed with the CGI versions of both Tarkin and Leia. I've seen video games that do better. And then it hit me a few days later: modern CGI is perfectly capable of rendering a very realistic person but the teams are told not to, either because actors have lobbied against it or on orders from high up.

EDIT: Y'all are blind as bats :) I saw it in IMAX 3D and it was like watching a video game character mixed in with real people.

I have not seen more realistic human characters in video games. Please give an example.

It took me a second to notice Tarkin wasn't real, and I saw it in IMAX.

I'd say it's remarkable that we've reached the point where this can credibly be done at all, and done confidently without hiding the characters in shadows or strobe lights and avoiding close ups.

In terms of video games - the first time I saw it, I spent a good chunk of the opening cut-scene of Halo 4 trying to figure out if Dr Halsey was live-action or CG:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3zcO28JbHxI

I wouldn't go so far as to call that better than the Rogue One CG work, but it's... comparable quality, at least. I don't really care to rank them, they're both downright incredible in my book.

Great CG playing against good cg (not all characters/env are created equal) makes the great CG stand out as realistic. Great CG playing against real life makes the great CG look off and less realistic. I think your example is a matter of contrast more than technology.

For what it's worth, my family members went into the movie not knowing ahead of time that Tarkin was CGI, and they didn't realize he was throughout the movie. I had to tell them after it was over.

I didn't realize it until I read about it earlier today. My wife had no clue either, she was shocked when I told her. So I think they definitely did a good job with Tarkin.

I mean, it has to be pretty good if it took my brain a couple seconds to ask "Wait, isn't Peter Cushing dead? Oh shit, it's CGI". We may still be in the Uncanny Valley, but we've climbed pretty high out of it.

Had no idea either. Ironically, while watching, I was most impressed with his 'acting' performance of all the characters.... Perhaps because the total lack of humanity came through visibly.

I didn't know about this going in, and I don't recall the details of Star Wars well enough to know that this character was in Episode 4.

My though process was something like this: "That character seems weird...is it CG? It can't be, that would be too weird...but something about the character just seems off." I may be more sensitive to this than others. It was pretty impressive, though for me still in the uncanny valley.

I went in not realizing Tarkin was in it, and the moment I saw him my reaction was "AAAAAAAH! CREEPY!" It was most impressive, but still creepy. I think... I feel that the upper half the face wasn't quite right.

I knew going in. Tarkin is a bit wooden and unexpressive but overall it is climbing out of the uncanny valley for me. At least on par with the young Professor X and Magneto.

Yep, I had the same unnerving feeling of watching a video game cut scene. Really took me out of the film :(

I didn't notice Leia being CGI as much, but Tarkin was fully in uncanny valley. His face texture was a little too smooth and you could contrast with the live actors in several shots. The lighting/shading on his render wasn't right in the bridge, either.

It's weird to me that they would choose a goofy CGI when they could have just taken a similar looking actor. I was getting flashbacks to Tron Legacy the whole time

That's funny, I had the opposite reaction - CGI Tarkin didn't bother me too much but Leia was creepy.

It's a challenge, I bet a lot of Lucasfilm fx guys were thrilled at the prospect and did their very best.

Still, I agree that the result is underwhelming and, above all, gratuitous: there was no need to involve Tarkin directly, and Leia could have been handled in better ways (e.g. camera shooting from the back, or showing only her hair -- Leia has such a distinctive hairdo, you'd need very little to know it's her).

I cringed every second he was on screen. While it was clearly better than any CGI character I've seen, it was still strikingly obvious, especially as the editing cut between CGI-Tarkin and real-human Krennic.

The textures are superbly detailed, but Tarkin comes across as a botoxed-up; there's something very wrong and jerky about the movement of his eyes and mouth. There's also something horribly wrong about his skin colour. In the film he looks like he's deathly ill — reddish eyes, deep purple eye sockets. Cushing was elderly in the original trilogy, but he wasn't near death.

I don't think it's a coincidence that you (or, rather, I) can't find a single clip of the CGI Tarkin on YouTube. I did find a low-res cam screenshot [1], and you can see the uncanny valley even there. He looks a bit vampiric.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/kAwm23P.png

I thought the vampiric look was the point - that all that evil sucks the life out of you.

Die hard fans cringed. I thought the Leia part at the end really hurt the film. Instead of focusing on the story, I immediately started wondering how they achieved it.

I took me out of the moment, in other words.

> Y'all are blind as bats

i don't remember tarkin from the first film, i didn't know he was CGI'd, and I didn't notice anything while i was watching the show.

i thought he was just another campy actor acting in the spirit of the original film, which was super campy. the x-wing battle at the end of the film convinced me that some of these actors were likely intentionally hamming it up, like a command and conquer cutscene.

some of those pilot contributions were filmed in 77.

Thanks NYT! - "Warning: This article contains spoilers about “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."

Sadly they need to use this for one more familiar face. :(

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