Man…that CGI Cushing is just not good. It doesn’t even MOVE like a human. And what’s silly is they had a perfectly good actor who looks sort of like Cushing standing there as Director Krennik.
They should have recast. But to get the same effect of “Whoa! That Star Wars dude is back!” It needs to be a famous face. So who would you have replaced Cushing with? Aiden Gillen? I’m hesitant to say Benedict Cumberbatch cause I think the producers would have aged him to the point of looking silly.
I was fine with the CGI Tarkin. But if they were going to recast the role, going with someone famous seems like the wrong move. You want people to go, “Look, it’s Tarkin!” You put Benedict Cumberbatch in the role, everyone’s going to go, “Look, it’s Benedict Cumberbatch!”
Maybe it looks different on television (haven’t rewatched it), but in the theater I remember thinking, “wait a minute, isn’t the guy who played Tarkin dead?”
It’s possible I was enjoying myself so much that I had a higher suspension of disbelief threshold than normal. Helluva movie.
Yeah, even upon re-watching it several times, I’ve had no issue with Fake Tarkin. And who cares if it looks fake? It’s *all *fake.
Haha. Good point.
I suspect that uncanny valley affects people differently in their perception of such. And admittedly the scenes of Tarkin after Jedha is destroyed look better than the initial ones.
None of the people I asked who were unfamiliar with Cushing or Grand Moff Tarkin noticed absolutely anything wrong with it.
I recall in Walt Disney’s biography Walt was quoted as declaring “I don’t want realism; I want believability.” Looking for a cite to link to, I found it attributed to both animation legends Richard Williams (cite) and Chuck Jones (cite).
Point being, if you’re prioritizing realism over believability, you’re failing at visual storytelling.
I don’t know if a thirty-foot-tall CGI ‘Tarkin’ face worked on the big screen, but – as per the thread title – I can assure you, it looked fine to me on the small screen.
My reasoning is that its already a gimmick cameo, so…some of one is same as a little of the other. IMHO.
Would you be ok if it looked like who framed Roger Rabbit?
When I saw the film in the cinema, it was Leia that looked wrong to me; Tarkin was fine.
^^Agreed. She looked a little too pudgy in the cheeks.
Also, not being familiar with the actor’s name, imagine my surprise when I googled “cushing”…
They only replaced the actor’s face with CGI. The rest of the body, and the voice was all Guy Henry.
This is, I think, correct. And he did move human. I think they did a really good job, actually. However, we have yet to reach a perfect CGI human.
Agreed that Tarkin looked fine, and I’d have never noticed anything off if I hadn’t known Cushing was dead.
Leia, on the other hand, was so obviously CGI, I couldn’t help but think that they added the scene in the last week or two of production.
With Tarkin they had a perfect face-cast that had been made of him for the movie Top Secret, so the accuracy in recreating his face was 100%. But for Leia they had to model her from scratch, and that’s where errors tend to creep in.
There’s a VFX company called Lola that have become experts in this particular effect, they do all the youthifying for the Marvel movies, i.e. Robert Downey Jr, Michael Douglas, and Kurt Russell were all their work. But for Rogue One it was done in-house by ILM, and though they did a creditable job for the most part, they fell short of Lola’s skills.
Damn straight. In a way it’s the best Star Wars film. It’s not really a Star Wars film even. The Father-daughter dynamic and scenes are so far above anything featured in the other films. And the directing is amazing.
Hopefully they can get a Vader solo film in while JEJ is still alive. They should stick Starkiller back into canon.
They had a very good live-actor substitute for Peter Cushing’s “Grand Moff Tarkin:” Wayne Pygram.
Anyone who’s seen Farscape knows he’s got the chops to pull it off, too.
It wouldn’t be a Star Wars film if it didn’t try to push the edges of special effects technology. Better they try and fail than not try at all.
Do or do not. There is no try.
I thought Tarkin looked pretty darned good on the big screen. The Leia was far less convincing though.