Bringing Actors Back from the Dead: Has CG Gone Too Far?

Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin
Image Source

WARNING-- MINOR SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE BELOW.

If you spent part of your winter break watching 2016's best movie-- I'm talking about Rogue One, of course-- then you were in the company of millions of other avid Star Wars fans who shared equal enthusiasm. You also watched a zombie actor in one of the main roles.

Let me explain. If you're like me, you can't stay away from articles and trivia facts about movies-- even at the risk of encountering spoilers. Rogue One was unique in a lot of ways, but there was one choice that the director made that shocked me. So I kept my eye on my husband to see if he noticed what I already knew. When Grand Moff Tarkin came onto the screen, he squinted through his glasses, but kept watching. The second time he appeared on screen, he leaned over.

"Is he CG?" he asked, eyes still on the screen. I nodded.

The whole character of Tarkin-- a character with many lines and a lot of screen time-- was entirely computer generated. The actor who played Tarkin, Peter Cushing, died in 1994.

My first thought was, HOW COOL IS THIS? They didn't need to find a replacement actor who kind of looked like the original. They jut used the original. It was almost flawless-- my parents didn't notice until I told them-- and it kept a fantastic character from the original trilogy "alive."

The process of "creating" Tarkin from a new actor's face.
Image Source

But for some, the idea of prolonging a character's life farther than the life of the actor creates a moral dilemma, and though Tarkin's appearance settled well with me, the appearance of a young computer generated Princess Leia at the end of the film did not. Especially with the recent death of Carrie Fisher.

So what made these two instances so different? Why is it ok for Cushing's character to be recreated but not Fishers? Is it because one of the characters was evil and the other not? Is it because Cushing's death is a distant memory while Fisher's is still lingering in fan's emotions? At what point do computer generated characters go too far?

At first, fans were very excited about keeping a much love-hated character (he is a bad guy, after all) incorporated in the storyline. As soon as fans heard about Fisher's passing, though, they were very disturbed by the possibility of directors using CG to keep the role of Princess Leia alive for the much anticipated Episode VIII. I'm a HUGE fan of Princess Leia, but using a computer generated Carrie Fisher seems extremely inappropriate and disrespectful.

What do you think? Want to read more? Check out this article by the New York Times!