CGI is used for weird stuff too!

De-aging in cinema has been around since 2006 with X-Men: The Last Stand. It was used to make Sir Ian McKellan's Magneto and Sir Partick Stewart's Professor X younger for a flashback scene. But, Brad Pitt's de-aging in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button really launched the technology  into popular use. It has prominent use in the Marvel Cinemtic Universe, notably being used for establishing older characters into an already dintinguished universe with a flashback backstory. The Hobbit films used the same technique for Orlando Bloom's Legolas.

 This article from The Ringer adds feedback to the uneasiness associated with this technology: "...the characters appear as chilling amalgams of human beings — someone’s real arm, and someone’s real head, and a weird CGI’d face on top of the whole thing. As an audience member you get the creeping feeling that you’re not watching a person, but rather an entity imitating a person. It’s weird — much weirder than seeing a younger actor who only kind of looks like the character he’s playing a version of."

 Is this an amazing innovation in digital storytelling? Or is it just plain creepy? Attached are some photos of some de-aging examples.

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Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 30, 2018 at 4:52 PM

    Yeah this is definitely weird, and also sort of hilarious. I remember seeing the Pirates of the Caribbean film and feeling completely taken out of the story when I saw the "younger" version of Jack Sparrow. For me the technology is never really convincing and I'd rather just see a real actor in the role.

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  2. Rose PinnisiDecember 1, 2018 at 4:27 PM

    Not only is it kind of weird, it's sort of pointless, no? It doesn't break immersion to see someone slightly different looking when they were younger, but it's always weird to see a de-aged version of someone. So even using the technology doesn't really get a more realistic world...
    I did like the technique in the new Tron, when they made a de-aged version of the actor for CLU. That made sense, since that character was supposed to be a digital version of a person captured at a certain age. The slight uncanny-ness actually worked in their favor there, I thought.

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