The Ethics of CGI De-aging and Resurrection in Film/TV

The power to bring back the dead exists through CGI’ing characters whose actors who have passed away. The power to reverse aging exists through the same tool. Is it ethical to use this technology?

SUNDAY:

We can look at one major franchise in particular to discuss this technology: Star Wars. I saw Rogue One in theater and I think I was surprised at how well Tarkin looked…considered his actor was dead and what was on screen was a recreation. The Leia bit looked funky on rewatch, but I didn’t find it as offensive as others. Speaking of Leia, Carrier Fisher’s passing threw a wrench into the latest major Star Wars movie, but they managed without a full CGI version.

I’m not clear on whether they could have done that, based on Carrie Fisher’s wishes/her estate, but the question applies to all actors who have passed away already who didn’t know of this technology (the aforementioned Peter Cushing)…would they have wanted this? If they haven’t provided explicit consent, can this be done? Should it be done? (Interesting article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/carrie-fisher-star-wars-legal-issues-dead-but-demand-actors-997335/)

Beyond resurrection, there’s CGI deaging—also featured in Star Wars via Luke Skywalker. This case is different than Leia/Tarkin ones in that Mark Hamill is alive and was still acting in the role. CGI is like super makeup in this case. If this technology was perfect, I’m not sure if there’d be much backlash (given that the actor is still alive at filming). Since it’s not perfect, it can look uncanny and strange and raise the question of: why not recast?

Solo, featuring, well, a young Han Solo, went the recast route instead of CGI-de-aged Harrison Ford. The upcoming Indiana Jones movie, however, went the CGI route.

Budget not being a problem, the parties living and willing, is de-aging digitally an issue?

MONDAY:

I think digital de-aging amounts to nothing more than super make-up, like you said. I am hyper-aware of faces, so I've often found casting someone else in a younger or older role to be jarring. For the sake of the movie, if de-aging can be done successfully, I'd prefer it to alternate castings. The issue of resurrecting people is dicier. I see how it could be necessary for some films and some situations. And the legal issues could be ironed out depending on what contracts people sign. However, it could open up a lot of cans of worms. One could say to the actors or "estates" involved, "Well, you signed up for it." And that is true to a certain extent. But Hollywood is sleazy and awful, so I have zero hope that such tech won't be used to make to do damaging things to people's legacies. They've already been digitally resurrecting dead actors and putting them in commercials, like Audrey Hepburn. If she can't consent to appear in it, why do we think that's ethical?

SUNDAY:

I agree with the idea of de-aging, if extremely effective and not something that thus constrains the story (i.e. they have budget for 10minutes of successful de-aging, which they do instead of doing something cheaper to get the 30minutes that’d seem better). Alternate castings can be funky. People get an idea of a character in their head, and deviating it from it can be unpleasant to the audience—a stark contrast.

This relates back to the ethics of digital resurrections, in my mind—the character is being brought back as it was. That’s the goal. The character from X year is being reinstated decades on. The actor’s state is a bottleneck on aesthetically perfect story telling. This goes for all sorts of situations: the actor gaining or losing weight starkly, the actor having to be recast due to contract issues—or even the character they play being written out for some real-life reason.

Characters are the actor, the writing, the aesthetic, and a bunch of other things. Different people have written for the same characters in long running series. The actor being replaced…isn’t that just the evolution of movies/tv? Actors too are entirely replaceable?

Maybe, ideally, the future would be that everything is digital that we see—animated features wouldn’t have this problem (ignoring deliberate style changes or upgrading the visual detail) in movies/tv. In that case, there’s no…jump to resurrection. It’s a continuation.

But, going back to the ethics of resurrection, on one hand, yes, the actor didn’t explicitly consent. But in cases of Tarkin in Rogue One—the character is being brought back and the character (which is a product of the actor and other members of the crew) isn’t the ownership of the actor. CGI is the actor that has recasted for the deceased.

But…actors do influence the characters. So removing them from future installments is like creating a divergent path of characterization. It won’t be perfect—it could be contradictory. But so would bowing to real-life and dramatically adjusting the story aesthetically and content-wise due to something in real-life. It’s kind of a no-win situation.

As for CGI resurrections being used to bring back actors as themselves or random people as themselves to do whatever…I feel that is akin to deepfakes in that it is wrong. Their identity is being ‘stolen’ and ‘appropriated’.

For the case of movies/tv, the characters weren’t entirely theirs’ to begin with so I consider it different.

But, anyway, I think, ideally, in a way, physical acting would one day be replaced with digital versions, and voices would also be synthesized. This way long form story telling could be pure and unimpacted by real-life elements.

MONDAY:

It would be hypocritical of me to advocate anything where a creative person might lose their job, considering I’m in that position myself. So, I’m not for real life actors or actresses being wholly replaced by CGI. At least not without a UBI rollout. Still, I can’t help but think that humanity going more and more digital is a step up from what we have now. People get hurt, or killed, in movie accidents, for example. There’s obviously exploitation issues that come up.

I think with any new technology, there’s often plusses and minuses and people have to learn how to adapt and work with it. Technology, in effect, constitutes a new environment for us. We live in our technology like animals live in their environments. Expansion or change in tech is an expansion or change in our environment and we must act accordingly. Even so, my main fear — selfishly motivated, in large part — is that creative work positions get increasingly scaled back. I just hate that idea for the future, even though I’m sure it’s coming.

I honestly think none of this would be a problem if it weren’t for the viciously capitalistic nature of the whole system. A lot of industries are going to require less and less human involvement as A.I. and tech improves, so there absolutely needs to be some type of profit-sharing from the top to the bottom in order to keep those affected afloat. If not, the future is going to be a grim place. And grim places have a tendency to spread…

SUNDAY:

I agree with all of that. I suppose, I see the ‘elimination’ of the actor as a way for creatives to be untethered and to allow more creative positions to open up. One position would be lost, but the opportunity over all would go up. If you didn’t need actors, and people could create visual stories all by themselves if they had the script and vision, then there’d be a whole world of new content—the creative vision of an individual fully realized. It’s a change, with problems and benefits.

But in this future, where so much content could exist, the money aspect would be a big problem…which goes back to the issue of capitalism in the system…which is a perennial problem. Which maybe….one day…we get away from.

For now, though, we keep pushing on with new technology to change our environment, as you said.

What is your opinion on CGI resurrection and de-aging? Is it ethical or not?