Seems like the effects themselves and the new film are symptoms of the desire to keep going back to the nostalgia well even for "new" works and the failure (or perhaps conscious decision not to) cultivate new movie stars. Not to take away from the achievements of any of the greats of yesteryear, but imagine if we were still watching Kareem or Larry Bird shuffle around in the NBA finals.

It’s a symptom of the wider mentality in media production nowadays: why innovate, when you can recreate?

We see this time and time again. Live action X, sequel Y, reboot Z, ad nauseam because once a company reaches a certain point the marketing budgets and brand loyalty can convince anyone to see anything. So, why take on “risky” new ideas when the old ones still work?

We also see what happens to these “new” ideas, even when successful. Cartoons such as “Infinity Train” and “The Owl House” getting canned partway through their run for literally no reason while other shows like “Raven’s Home” and “The Legend of Korra”, both spinoffs of mid-2000s shows, were pushed to extremes with the former still running to this day.

This isn’t a new phenomenon though. Think about how much of Shakespeare is retelling older stories.

Coming to a theater near you: Antman, The Wasp, Romeo and Juliet

It’s a bit different when it’s someone coming at it from a totally new angle and doing their own interpretation than the same rightsholder churning out more of the same because it was commercially successful in the past.

Half the theater history is them churning out the new version of the same with not much twist.

Yes, there was lots of forgettable crap in every era but we don’t spend a lot of time admiring it.

Some of the thinking appears to be "let's create something that both kids and their parents can relate to" ... this may have started with Popeye (1980 starring Robin Williams) but remaking cartoons or comics into live action TV had started earlier, since at least the 1960s with Batman.

Then there are the familiar story reboots. The Jazz Singer has had multiple remakes since the 1920s (and we're overdue for another one). A Christmas Carol has been redone even more.

> let's create something that both kids and their parents can relate to

There's a fair amount of sly humor in The Wizard of Oz (1939) clearly directed at adults.

Same reason why AI models are popular. They remix what exists, instead of coming back to the source. We can definitely make AI which puts more effort, at more cost, but that's not the point. The point is quick, cheap, seemingly high-quality result, just good enough to fool you in a hurry, so you make money. And the more it works, the more doomed we are.

It will be super funny to see nostalgia of Gen Z. And how we, older folks won't even get it.

Suspension of disbelief is a critical component of storytelling. Whether it's aliens, laser swords, or a basketball player being guarded by a cartoon character, previous efforts look silly by today's standards, yet the audience fell in love with the story. It need only be "good enough" for a person to make that conversion in their mind.

Some special effects just look bad, regardless of the time period. The lightsabers from Star Wars: A New Hope (the un-remastered version) still look pretty decent. Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy looks ridiculous, and he always did.

I will argue that Gollum looked better than the goblins in The Hobbit trilogy, however. It helped that Andy Serkis played both the mo-cap portion and provided the voice and subsequent acting.

He certainly looked better than Legolas trying to be Mario.

But in this case there’s a rather simple alternative of just getting a young actor to play a young person.

Many people go to movies to see specific actors.

Seems like kind of a breakdown of the whole Hollywood system if the only stars that will get people to see a movie are approaching or in old age, yet they want to see movies about young people.

It's working fine, and getting better.

A movie is a story. If the story is good, we're all ready to accept imperfect VFX, SFX, sets, costumes, props and so on as long as they're in service of a good story.

So the story is the problem.

The problem is the story is very often the problem in modern movies. So my feelings about that WGA strike are very mixed. The industry has seen an influx of young, inexperienced, at times obnoxious writers, whose union insists "you'll hire them in greater numbers, for longer time, at higher salaries".

I'd say:

Attention, Hollywood: the WGA isn't working, so please stop using it.

> The industry has seen an influx of young, inexperienced, at times obnoxious writers

Yeah.

Young and inexperienced isn't that big a problem. But obnoxious certainly is a problem.

The biggest problem is these people know nothing and they are very preachy in their writing. It makes it miserable to experience. No one likes to be preached at by the young and inexperienced.

Yeah, oh my god the new Top Gun could have not been more in your face "look how cool and good the American military is facing evil vague but unspecified foreigners." Or how new romance movies are like "wow city life is miserable, soulless you should move out to this idilic countryside." And the ridiculous amount of movies that basically exist to ego stroke middle aged white dudes, like yes I get it you saved America or whatever using the your old man wisdom. Oh, and my favorite "isn't the nuclear family great, so great that you should put up with toxic familial relationships -- they can change just try harder."

At least in the dad movie category they've switched to the hot girl half his age being the protagonist's daughter instead of love interest.

How dare they put military coolness into a top gun movie

Yeah I’m sure the execs’ vision of using LLMs to write scripts is going to lead to more interesting writing.

The sad state of affairs is that it might. You need to study more what deal WGA forced on the industry in 2007 and it’ll explain a lot of the garbage Hollywood produces these days.

This is just a way to avoid failures and not try new stuff. Let's revive Indiana Jones or others, young people are not going to the movies anyway, better invest in the old folks that like old movies.

I think series has pretty much captured the young adult market, I can't remember the last time someone recommended an actual standalone movie that wasn't a die-hard Marvel fan.

Edit: Everything Everywhere I think a was the last one.

Not least, young adults are also probably the least able to actually shell out nearly £20 to go and see a film. Younger kids get taken by parents, older adults might get a living wage to afford it. Plus, in car-centric places, it's hard to even get to the cinema if you don't drive a car. Meanwhile Netflix is probably are already subscribed to, so it's "free", and it's right there at home.

I feel like adolescents are actually the key audience for theaters.

Rob Deniros curb stomp scene in The Irishman is hilarious because of this. A 75 year old actor made to look 40, supposedly beating up the store owner, but looks like he’s trying not to break his hip as he shuffles around.

Jump to 1:15 -

https://youtu.be/XqGV0IuodWE

That scene is ridiculous, but the de-aging was worse than ridiculous. At the beginning of the movie I thought De Niro was supposed to be about fifty years old. I knew he had been digitally de-aged but it never crossed my mind he was supposed to be in his twenties. For a good chunk of the movie I didn't understand why the gangsters were so interested in recruiting a middle-aged truck driver.

The de-aging prevented me from understanding the story.

I recently rewatched this movie as the first time I saw it I couldn't get into it (mainly because of the de-aging I think).

It was the scene at the gas station where Joe Pescis character says to De Niros character something like "what's your name kid?" that made me laugh out loud. De Niro literally looks like a 50 year old.

In his twenties? What? I just thought he was like 50 ish haha.

They went so technically heavy with IR cameras (Watch the making of) and some dude on YouTube made a better de-ager with a deep fake. Not marginally better, but dimensions better.

The Irish Man is just comically bad.

They could easily have just made him his actual age and a high ranking mafia guy

The hilarity of this infamous scene isn't because of the de-aging tech (which is quite good), but because they inexplicably used an elderly Rob Deniros to do a fight scene. The effect would've been unremarkable had they used a body double for wide shots like this.

How old do you think he is supposed to be?

I believe in that scene, 36.

Haha I didn't even notice that! That is amazing!

This is sort of related to putting an actor's face on another, often in the case of the original actor being unavailable, including being deceased - the ultimate case of unavailability.

I suppose there are two ways to include an actor if they are unable to perform in the role. Given that the reason why you want a specific performer back is because this current production is a sequel or takes place in the same universe, you can always use archival or cut footage from a prior engagement. The problem with this approach is that it leaves the character seemingly in their own world: they don't react to anything and events just happen around them. Audiences pick up on this quickly and the movie magic is lost as a result.

The CG case is where we can "de-age" or bring an actor back to life, which I suppose is a sort of de-aging in itself. It involves mapping a digital prosthetic to the stand-in's face and remaping movements from the body double back onto the mask. In the case of de-aging, the body double is just the older version of the same actor. This is done with mo-cap typically and more and more special effects are being done within video game engines and development suites like Unreal and Unity, also contributing to the cutscene look of the final output.

In the past, film editors have been able to "live paint" as if using photoshop to retouch an image. The software follows the image between frames an applies the transformation. This additive method of altering the image is used in every single medium to high-production value piece of video media and we are used to the retouched look of it to the point where we don't notice it whatsoever. A skilled artist can do the de-aging here.

Hollywood is behind the high-tech world of AI-driven facial replacement by a few years even thought it all feels like old news to us. I suspect it will only get better and move from "uncanny valley" to "passable" within about five years and firmly into the world of "undetectable" within a decade. However, I believe that AAA video games will show us more realistic renditions a few years in advance of cinema because that industry's technology is driving film and TV and I believe will continue to do so for years to come.

Yeah, they're not going to stop. They get better every time, and the better it gets, the more flexibility they have.

Soon enough the results will be sufficiently believable that actors/celebrities will be selling the right to use their image and voice for a role in a movie without ever actually being on camera.

SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, is actually about to go on strike for partly this very reason. Turns out unless you’re already very famous, boilerplate contract clauses claiming to own your image and likeness in perpetuity and forever outside of the specific project you are working on is a pretty bad deal!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/act...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sag...

> use their image and voice for a role in a movie without ever actually being on camera.

The upside to this is that tech might be able to fix up some actors.

Who will get the Oscar?

Or 20 years from now… “would you like 45 year old Tom Cruise in your movie? No problem, just pay his estate $20M.”

Also, talent agencies have been paying for 3d scans of their top talent for years, just to have banked in case anyone should need it. I would guess that all the A list actors plan on getting scanned every 5 years so they can be in a movie at any age.

I don't see why existing actors would play into the picture at all. By that time there will be famous AI actors. And you can license the model for $99 per film!

Is Shrek a famous AI actor?

The next step is where the real money will be made: completely generated actors.

And I see two scenarios too:

1. You can pay the studio (?) some semi-trivial amount for the use of a completely generated AI actor that perfectly fits the Director's vision for the role.

2. You get legal knock-off actors. Sure, it's $20 MM to use Tom Cruise, but for only $1 MM you can use AI-generated Thom Ruse, who looks exactly like Tom Cruise, but just slightly different enough to be legally considered his own IP.

Remember S1m0ne? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/

This is the plot of “The Congress” with Robin Wright as herself.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/

Until it is literal weekend at bernies.

Wonder how long it will be until entire actors (voice, image, movement, etc) are commonly generated entirely?

Like (virtual) Japanese and Korean music idols, but for tv and movie actors.

• https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63827838

They are still making money. so, working as expected.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, the only criteria for “working” is whether people still go watch the movie, not how uncanny it looks.

They did it with Indy because the sequel is out 40 years after the original. It wouldn't make sense to do a Godfather Part II style dual-actor for the film.

That's not to say the technology isn't overused.

It’s hardly unprecedented to have a new actor play the same character. How many people have played Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot or James Bond?

Please just stop with CGI in general. Like we can’t tell when it switches to video game mode

When it's done well, you can't.

I would have liked more stills that show bad de aging

Hollywood has always used makeup to age actors to have them play older versions of their characters, and even with modern techniques an "aged" actor looks creepy compared to a genuine old person. That doesn't seem to have inhibited them at all.

I also find an uncanny valley with Tom Cruise on Top Gun Maverick, but because de-aging surgeries instead of de-aging CGI.

Reminds me of the Luke in the mandalorian. The cgi luke looked like a teenager, but Luke wasn't a Jedi until he was older and the actor had scarring from being in a car crash before The Return of the Jedi.

If i had to guess, because contractually Harrison Ford wouldn't allow it?