And Have Eternal Life: The Resurrection Trend in Hollywood

Peter Cushing Digitally Recreated for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

“Your time today is through, but you'll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.” This sentence in Damian Chazelle’s Babylon caps off a sermon from Jean Smart’s gossip journalist in which she preaches to Brad Pitt’s burnt-out star that, although his career is finished, he has achieved a legacy and immortality through his movies most can only dream of having. While this is certainly a nice and enlightened sentiment, it is ultimately just hyperbolic philosophizing. Cary Grant's inability to leap through my screen and evade being mowed down during North By Northwest proves as much. Yet in recent years, Smart’s 20s-era speech on immortality has taken on an eerie, new meaning. With advances in modern technology, it seems Hollywood is no longer content to let actors rest in peace. Instead, they have resolved to nullify one of two certainties in life thanks to a twisted form of digital necromancy.

Although many audiences first became familiar with this practice thanks to 2015's Furious 7 & 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, they aren’t actually the first example of digital reanimation in film history. For that, we must turn back to the tragic 1994 film, The Crow.

During the production of this action, revenge film, star Brandon Lee was killed in an on-set accident involving the misfiring of a a prop gun’s blank. This awful death halted production, but after time, the director decided to finish production so that Lee’s final performance could be seen. To finish the project, the creative team used a computer-generated model of Lee’s face on his stunt double and some creative camera positioning to finish the project. Following The Crow, this technique would continue to be used in similar situations like the film Gladiator when Oliver Reed had to be replaced in a scene

after a sudden heart attack during filming. These instances of digital trickery were seen as necessary to deliver a final product/performance that honored the work these performers had put in up to the moment they passed. Even Paul Walker's revival in Furious 7 felt more in line with these, as it was utilized to give his character a satisfying conclusion in the series (though any further revivals of the character would not receive the same benefit of the doubt). It wasn’t until 2016 and the Star Wars debacle that things really seemed to take a nosedive into the uncanny valley.

Despite having died over two decades before Rogue One was released, Industrial Light & Magic used motion capture and CGI to bring English acting legend Peter Cushing back to life as his character Grand Moff Tarkin. I’ll concede that it is a fairly impressive rendering when viewed purely from a digital effects standpoint (This video from ILM illustrates the technical achievement: https://youtu.be/vlSn50_BePU?si=v-o1AsnRd7dN56tp). However, when viewed alongside real actors the performance and visuals become incredibly uncanny. Not to mention the moral quagmire created when a studio uses the synthesized visage and voice of an actor who cannot consent. The debate soon began, raging on to this very day thanks to even more franchises ghoulishly deepfaking their own actors. Recent examples include Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Harold Raimis), The Flash (Christopher Reeve and George Reeves), and, just this past week, Alien: Romulus (Ian Holm).

This trend is certainly a cause for concern for filmgoers and armchair philosophers alike, however, the recent use seems to be merely a symptom of an even greater issue plaguing modern Hollywood.

Looking back, what is the one thing unifying the three recent examples of this trend? Exactly, they are sequels. And not just any old sequels but the dreaded legacy sequel that has risen to prominence in the past decade. For those unfamiliar with the term, a legacy sequel can best be defined as a sequel that is either a traditional follow-up or a soft reboot that aims to pay heavy tribute to the franchise roots. To illustrate my point, let’s look at the most recent example, Alien: Romulus. The new film consistently references the original series with quotable lines (despite their making no sense in this new context), returning plot beats that mirror the original’s, and a returning character despite the actor's absence. That final trait connects all three legacy sequels mentioned here and illustrates precisely what is wrong with the entire endeavor. Hollywood’s fixation on what came before is so preeminent that it prevents them from moving forward creatively. Their need for fan validation and box office success is so powerful that they can’t even let mortality stand in the way. The ironic and devastating part of all this is, that the worship of these popular classics causes everyone in the franchise machine to lose sight of what made these films great in the first place: their individuality and creativity.

All in all, the technology is not to blame for our current state of play. As we have seen, there are instances where tech like this can be useful, especially following unforeseen or tragic events. But, we have come a long way from those compassionate and desperate beginnings. These digital revivals now represent little more than a deep wound. A wound that, if not left untreated, will permanently infect these franchises and spoil the only thing that should matter to these works of art, their legacies.