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George Lucas to Resurrect Dead Movie Stars?
According to his director friend Mel Smith, George Lucas has a plan for upcoming movies more insidious than a whole Gungan cast. Smith says Lucas is buying the rights to old movies in order to put dead actors in his films. He says, "George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you'd have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck alongside today's stars." Even if Smith is lying, it makes you wonder who long it will be until Hollywood starts to recycle actors as well as scripts.
If Orson Welles doesn't crawl out of his grave and strangle this arrogant, money-grubbing motherfucker with his own intestines, then at least we finally know that the dead are *truly* and *forever* gone.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Part of me thinks this is very creepy and even morally wrong.. but a bigger part actually wants to see it work. Pulling this off in a way that doesn’t look terrible would be pretty neat.
I could care less about seeing some dead actor brought back to life... I’m definitely interested in the work required to make it happen though.
The ethical/legal stuff is a little interesting. This falls somewhere between a family giving permission to use a dead loved one’s image for a product, and publishing something while claiming said loved one wrote it. Does anyone have the right to do the later (or even the former).. should they? Personally I don’t care what people do with me after I’m dead but I imagine some people do.
It’s probably BS anyway
Also lunch time is over. Gotta stay late enough as it is ya know. LOTS OF THINGS TO DO!
Interviewer: Mr. Lucas, fifteen years ago you made Episode III and a lot of people thought you were done with cinema. ...
Lucas: That's right, I had found that children appreciated my advanced work far more than any adult so I was doing a lot of Cartoon Network programs after that.
Interviewer: So what caused you to return to the silver screen?
Lucas: Well, I was sitting at my ranch watching some old Akira Kurosawa films -- looking for some plot or scene I had missed that I could possibly turn into a Star Wars movie -- and I got up to retrieve another sandwich from my Carl's Jr. dispenser in my living room. The machine was several treacherous feet away from the couch and as I got up, my snuggie caught on the ottoman made of hate mail and death threats. Well, I fell and a disc slipped in my spine.
Interviewer: That's right you were in the hospital for several months.
Lucas: Yes, and as I lay there calling for help in serious pain, an apparition of Ed Wood appeared to me. 'Use the cash, Lucas' he said. And I immediately understood that I had primarily ruined careers of living people when today there were whole sloughs of dead actors whose careers I could ruin with advanced computer technology.
Interviewer: Ah, yes, so at that point
Lucas: I started buying the film rights to a lot of dead actors and actresses.
Interviewer: Which led to Katherine Hepburn playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars Holiday Special II last year.
Lucas: That's right, as well as Bela Lugosi having a classic lightsaber fight with Charlie Chaplin.
Interviewer: Well, I think it's clear how you maintain such a hated profile.
Lucas: Well, you know, I try. I try. And I often remind my adopted children that they're what keeps me going. Even though at times it's hard, I can look into my son's eyes and he'll say with so much emotion, "Stop dad, just please stop, people don't want this. Please, please stop." And that keeps me going.
My work here is dung.
We all know why he's really doing this. Once all the original actors die, he can release Christmas specials every year for as long as he wants with the original cast and no complaints.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Will the same technology work with porn? What am I saying... That was probably the original intention.
an adaptation of Frankenstein would seem appropriate.
I am officially gone from
Don't we have plenty of dead actors nowadays on our screens already ? Aren't people like Keanu Reeves (or Hayden Christensen, fergossakes) lifeless enough for you ?
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
LucasFilm have already denied the rumour. A very simple Google search prior to publishing this summary would have shown that. I googled "Mel Smith", because I wanted to know if it was the Mel Smith from NTNON/Alias Smith & Jones. Top result, News for Mel Smith... "George Lucas NOT Digitally Resurrecting Dead Actors". On Collider.com, originally reported by On The Red Carpet. I would post a link, but I can't paste anything.
Total shit webcomics are never obligatory.
Learn it. Know it. Obey it.
I don't know if this counts, but I'd pay $5 for a movie involving a resurrected JarJar Binks and the guy from Temple of Doom who rips out beating hearts.
Who's with me!?
Hello?
Well maybe, but it's been done before with Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid and Zelig not to mention Fred Astaire's posthumous commercial for the Dirt Devil (at 3m02s).
It'd be interesting to see the end product but I'm certain it will cause nothing for grief for various estates despite any good intentions.
I seem to remember a movie by Carl Reiner and Steve Martin back when I was a kid where they did this.
The film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow featured Laurence Olivier, 15 years after his real life death, in the role of the villain, Dr. Totenkopf, using previously recorded archival footage.
Otherwise we might end up with a situation like in the movie "Looker" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Like Warner Brothers forking over big bucks on the unproved Wachowski brothers to make the Matrix?
Or Nolan making Inception?
There are good original movies. I just skip the crappy remakes and vote with my wallet to go see movies like Inception instead.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Remember all the outrage over colorizing Casablanca in the 1980s? There were even congressional hearings that warned of the dire consequences of unmitigated technology (someone even imagined at the time dead actors being re-inserted in new movies, unthinkable at the time). Sounds crazy....
I read this story ages ago. It won the first Hugo award for best novelette. "The Darfsteller" tells of a time when actors sell their likeness and are replaced by robots (apparently, Keanu Reeves did this early in his career).
George Lucas must've dusted off his copy of this story and said, "Hey, I can do this!"
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
That comment is so rife with irony...
I guess I need to say something interesting in order to keep myself from getting modded down.
In regards to the story posted and Eldavo's comments - no I don't think George has been ruining acting Careers. He merely takes the whole talent pool from an entire set of actors and imbues it into a SINGLE actor or actress in every trilogy. In the original, it was Harrison Ford. In this latest one, its Natalie Portman. You MIGHT be able to argue that Hayden Christensen is another one - but I actually think he's some sort of anomoly that was immune to this process, he didn't get any better or worse. But seriously, Ford and Portman seemed to be the only ones who have managed to successfully LAUNCH their careers into the higher echelons of Hollywood, who can now demand millions for being on set.
So - here's what I'm hoping. George takes a bunch of Dead Actors and Actresses. They're already famous, and George will put them along side someone we haven't seen before on film. If my understanding of Osmosis is correct - George won't be able to take the skill of 1 actor and spread it throughout the Dead Actors. Dead people can't GET any better at acting, unless they are playing the role of zombie. No, I think more appropriately, George will make all the dead actors SUCK - like it will be really painful to watch and you'll wish it was just the Star Wars Holiday Special. But somehow, this one live actor he has in the film, will manage to escape with the power of multiple famous dead actors and actresses, producing another celebrity for people everywhere to fantisize about while not doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Well apparently grammar rants aren't obligatory. I keep hitting F5 wondering who long it will be until someone points out the glaring issue with the summary.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Just out of curiosity, is the rage more from "reviving" dead actors, or Lucas doing so?
Pretty sure I know the answer already, but feel like asking anyway.
For me, it's "in general". George Burns is a great actor and comedian, but he's passed. The thought that we're going to pull a Weekend At Bernie's for a quick buck strikes me as deeply disrespectful. Owning their "likeness" strikes me as a bit cheesy too - I'm pretty sure the intention wasn't to let Elvis' estate start making new movies.
Sadly, it won't even come to that. What'll happen is that the new "standard movie star contract" will include some fine print giving the studios the rights to the actor's likeness at that point. The actor'll get paid for one cheap movie, and then the studio will keep them in movies for free for all eternity.
with Tron, grafting a younger looking Jeff Bridges face unto another actor.
So why not for porn? You could have anyone you want in your porn movie.... and make it look even more realistic.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101207/ap_en_ot/us_tron_digitally_young_3
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The media has been doing this with politicians for years now. Reagan being the test run. That guy died somewhere back in the 70s and he still managed to hold office in this country for two terms. A movie actor as a president???? of course they just needed rights to his movies and poof! another public leader is born. So you never notice half his speeches mysteriously flickered black and white depending on the angle of his head and the vowels in the sentence??
Fast forward to 2010 and what he got now? inside the senate and house its just a big blue screen and fat noisy cgi puppets. by comparison lucas is just... doing it for entertainment
Just kidding but, have you been watching jay leno with the fake bits of obama throwing a tantrum during his speeches. Did anyone feel the hair raise on the back of their neck when they did that? Theres just something about this type of editing of our political representatives that should be illegal. Is anyone concerned about this for more important reasons then just preserving the movie classics? George Lucas is perfecting the technologies of something far more sinister.
The rights to reproduce an actor, if they aren't in the public domain, are generally held by the actor or his estate.
The rights to reproduce the character, where the rights aren't in the public domain, do generally follow the movie.
Whether the "looks like" and "voice sounds like" rights to follow a character that had only one actor exist and who controls those rights is an open question.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But hasn't Hollywood been recycling scripts for years now?
"Women. Can't live with 'em. Pass the beer nuts." -Norm
Lucas is a smart, smart man. Right now, the Uncanny Valley makes these depictions and representations of actors cheap. Nobody wants to buy them. But it's a damn fine bet to assume that the tech for making them look much more real will improve vastly over the next ten or twenty years. It's a smarter business plan than a lot of valley startups I've seen. You can't have Brando in your movie right now, but someday soon you will. Buy the rights now while you can.
Perhaps the fact that he posted a link to a total shit webcomic?
You mean like xkcd that gets quoted in every story?
I'm not affiliated with the following website, but they make a lot of good points:
xkcdsucks.blogspot.com
has an entertaining bit about traveling back in time to 1978 and beating Lucas to death with a shovel. This is just adding fuel to the 'build a time machine' fire.
In 20 years there won't even be be any film or movie actors. They won't be needed anymore because it will be far cheaper to create them digitally.
Quite frankly I will be surprised if the number of live actors isn't severely reduced by 2020.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As much as I despise this entire idea, and agree with all the posters above that this is an insult to the memory of dead actors, the sci-fi geek in me knows it is only a matter of time before this is done. If not in the next ten years, then in the next hundred or two hundred. I suppose Lucas is just trying to take us into the Brave New World sci-fi reality sooner than we all expected.