SCRIPT FEEDBACK! - Grand Moff Tintin

Hello Patrons!

Today, we do something a little different. Warning; this post contains spoilers for 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story'.
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Okay, spoiler-time.

In the movie, actors Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing are digitally re-created to resemble how they looked in 1977. Many people have talked about the ethics of doing something like this and I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring with a video editorial.

Below, you'll find the 1,500+ word transcript of the upcoming video. I'd like you to read the script and let me know if it comes across reasonable or if you have a rebuttal that I can address in the finished video or clarify a point or a position.

We can also have our own discussion in the comments section of this post if you like.

So here's the script. Enjoy!
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So it’s been a few weeks since ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ was released so I think it’s time to start talking about a few spoiler-iffic aspects about it. If you want to know my thoughts on the film itself then you can find my spoiler-free thoughts elsewhere but today I wanted to pose a question about one of the stand-out effects of the film; namely the digital re-creation of Grand Moff Tarkin and to a lesser extent, Princess Leia.

For those of you who don’t know, in the original 1977 Star Wars, Grand Moff Tarkin was one of the main villains of the film who at points even acted as a superior to Darth Vader. He was played by Peter Cushing who was in his mid-60s when he played the iconic and memorable role and he passed away in 1994. With Rogue One taking place in such close proximity to Episode 4, it would make sense for Moff Tarkin to make an appearance, but with both films seamlessly linking into each other and in some ways could be seen as an ideal double-feature, the filmmakers elected to digitally re-create Peter Cushing on-screen through motion capture technology with actor Guy Henry giving the character a presence on set but with Industrial Light and Magic over-laying a digital Peter Cushing on top of him.

Make no mistake, Rogue One isn’t the first movie to attempt something like this. Ever since Andy Serkis and WETA Digital pioneered motion-capture technology with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there have been multiple attempts to create realistic, emotive human characters on-screen and make them full-fledged characters as opposed to digital stunt-doubles, such as the case was before. For example, in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films they digitally re-created actors Tobey Maguire, Alfred Molina and Thomas Haden Church and put their faces on digital bodies so they could convincingly emote during dangerous and outlandish action scenes. We also saw de-aged Arnold Schwarzenegger’s in ‘Terminator: Salvation’ and ‘Terminator: Genisys’ as well as a de-aged Jeff Bridges playing against his older-self in ‘Tron: Legacy’ which was a natural extension of this technology. All of which were done with the involvement of the actors in question.

In recent years, Disney have been at the forefront of this digital performance revolution with them re-sizing actors like Chris Evans in the Captain America movies and putting Mark Ruffalo’s face on the Hulk’s body as well as de-aging actors Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. for vital flashback sequences and even using a combination of make-up and digital effects to age-up Hayley Atwell in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. Despite these recent advances, Disney and Lucasfilm are not the first to bring the dead back to life for the sake of a narrative. 2006’s ‘Superman Returns’ takes Marlon Brando’s iconic performance as Jor-El and re-creates it 2 years after his death and a similar approach saw Richard Burton’s iconic narration coming out of a giant floating head on a stage during Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds 2006 tour; 22 years after Burton passed away.

But Peter Cushing’s re-creation is something else all-together. This is a fully-fledged, human supporting character being created from scratch and is essentially taking Peter Cushing’s image and, despite being deceased for 22 years, passing it off without commentary or narrative explanation. This isn’t a hologram, this isn’t someone on a screen, this is an actual key-player in the movie. 

Whether or not the effect was convincing or well-done is entirely down to the eyes of the beholder. Some people weren’t impressed with the effect and I’ve even seen the nickname “Grand Moff Tintin” being bandied about online. I personally thought the effect was incredibly well done, but I was always aware that this was a motion-capture character so it did skew the way I viewed it. Though many younger viewers who had no idea who Peter Cushing was reportedly had no idea that he was a digital creation, but that is anecdotal evidence, I must stress. But the main issue is whether or not this is actually respectful to the actor and respectful to the character.

Now, Disney and Lucasfilm are entirely above-board in using Cushing’s likeness. While California has a law that grants individuals a right to their publicity for 70 years after their death (otherwise known as the California Celebrities Rights Act from 1985), Peter Cushing died in the U.K. meaning he was exempt from this. But Lucasfilm got full permission from Cushing’s estate and they were very happy and moved by his portrayal in the film.

But the fact of the matter is that Peter Cushing IS Grand Moff Tarkin. In Episode 4, his voice, mannerisms and interactions with the other actors informed that character and were down to Cushing as well as the direction he was given by George Lucas. But despite Tarkin LOOKING like Tarkin in Rogue One, that isn’t Cushing performance. On account of him being dead, he has done nothing to inform that character, he didn’t read the script, he didn’t approve anything Tarkin did, Cushing had no say on how HE would be portrayed in Rogue One. I’m not saying that is a good or bad thing…that’s just a fact.

While Marlon Brando and Richard Burton were re-created, it’s still their voice and their performances that were informed by their authorial decisions to an extent. And Paul Walker being digitally re-created in ‘Furious 7’ was done under very different circumstances as he died halfway through that film’s production, had signed on and agreed to how he’d be portrayed in that movie and director James Wan had DIRECT help from his family to digitally re-create him for certain scenes. In the case of Tarkin, people find THIS ground-up recreation a dishonest representation of an actor and a character in a movie and while I don’t entirely agree with that argument or hold that against the filmmakers, I’m not exactly going to tell people how they should feel about a topic like this. The topic also takes on an entirely new light after the death of Carrie Fisher recently, though obviously her digital re-creation was made while she was alive and it’s a much, much smaller role than Tarkin’s.

After the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher with filming having finished on Episode 8 but reports coming out saying she would have had an expanded role in Episode 9, how do you deal with this? Do the C.G.I. her like they did in Rogue One? That may seem disrespectful to some people but would it also be disrespectful to cast someone else in the role in order to see the character’s role see a satisfying conclusion? This isn’t on the same level as Michael Gambon taking over as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series after the death of Richard Harris. Carrie Fisher IS Princess Leia and has been for several decades so some people could consider a re-casting the actor to be equally, if not MORE disrespectful than trying to represent her digitally.

But this is entirely new territory. Just to emphasise, I’m not taking a side in this debate. Rather, I’m just throwing the topic out there because as technology advances and as franchises and nostalgia becomes more profitable for Hollywood we’re going to be seeing more of this. One of these days, technology is probably going to get to a point where we could see a biopic and the main subject is entirely digital and motion-captured. That’s where we’re heading so it’s important to ask these questions right now. 

But I know people who can be quite hypocritical about this topic because even THEY don’t know where they stand on it. I know someone who thinks it’s disrespectful for Disney and Lucasfilm to profit from ‘Rogue One’ by using Peter Cushing’s likeness without HIS express permission…but he also bought a Grandpa Joe Funko Pop from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory despite actor Jack Albertson being dead for nearly 30 years.

And this is different from, say Audrey Hepburn being re-created to sell chocolate which actually comes across as rather disrespectful considering that the reason for her slim physique was because she was starved close to death as a child during the Dutch Famine in World War 2. Or Bruce Lee being used to promote alcohol in commercials despite the guy being staunchly against the stuff. The main objective of those re-creations is “Buy our products”. Whereas the re-creation in ‘Rogue One’ is more along the lines of “Here’s Tarkin’s role in this STORY THAT WE WANT TO TELL…and ALSO buy our products”.

The reason I disagree with the interpretation posited by many people online is because bringing a character back from the dead or taking the actor out of the creative process has been a staple of franchising for several, several decades. Keeping with ‘Star Wars’, actors likenesses have been used in comic books, video games, novels and more in order to expand the universe. Tarkin himself was the focus of a 2014 novel called ‘Star Wars: Tarkin; written by James Luceno and Tarkin has also appeared in the ‘Star Wars: Rebels’ TV series. Peter Cushing never had a say in how his character was portrayed in that novel or in the TV series but when you’re dealing with a franchise as vast and as expansive as Star Wars, people are willing to accept different interpretations or different points of views when reading words on a page, or seeing still images in a comic book or living through them as a player-avatar. Speaking as a ‘Doctor Who’ fan, for years despite many of cast members from the original series passing away for growing older and being unable to play their original roles, that’s not stopped me from appreciating dozens of comic books with their younger, original faces re-created through ink or their voice being written by a talented author in the page of a book. It allows a fandom and a community to continue appreciating a character who was previously lost to us and it allows different writers and voices to tell stories with those characters. But those differences are slightly harder to appreciate or comprehend…when a deceased actor’s face is…literally…right there on the screen.