NBC: George Lucas Wants to Resuscitate Dead Actors Using Computers

[China]

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John Wayne wants to buy you a beer:

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[Henry]

I'll play a DA here. I have no problem with this whatsoever.

Lucas is not some evil guy bent on taking over the world through Star Wars. He loves technology. He loves special effects. He didn't just make millions from Star Wars. He made many many more millions from ILM. Pretty much any movie made from 1980-2000 with any decent special effects has ILM in the credits. Lucas and his people invented CGI, and have been at the forefront of special effects for thirty years. PIXAR, the studio that pioneered the style of animation that 99% of animated movies use today, was originally a division of Lucasfilm.

I don't think Lucas is trying to do this solely because he want to keep making Star Wars movies. I think he's doing it because it's possible. Because there are TONS of directors and writers out there that would love to be able to use a tool like that. I have no problem with maintaining the continuity of a movie character through CGI animation. If it troubles some of you so much, give the poor exploited actor (or his estate) royalties for the use of his image. I don't see how that's any different than re-mixing an Elvis song with a dance track. If anything, it serves to give a younger audience an appreciation for an icon of a previous generation.

Look, I know some of you feel Lucas is some evil sell-out because Jar Jar Binks was stupid and the prequels raped your childhood or whatever, but that's not his mission in life. I swear. The guy is first and foremost a pioneer in moviemaking. And that's more what this is about.

In my opinion.

['Skins_&_'Stons]

[Mr. Sinister]

Well they already keep rehashing old movies and tv shows, the next logical step would be to bring back dead actors in their prime, and put them on the big screen. There is so little creativity in films nowadays that it is sickening. Keep the past in the past.

[Burgold]

Just wait til virtual Elizabeth Taylor demands thirty million dollars and a private dressing trailor for her dog to do a cameo in Porky's 17. Ya'll might just change your minds when you see what some of these ghosts start demanding for each resurrection.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Oh come on guys are we forgetting that we could get Marilyn Monroe back!?

That said, I'm pretty much against this. I didn't like when they digitally inserted Brandon Lee into scenes of The Crow after his death, and as a purist I like my memories the way they are, Marilyn is gone and the images of her that I want are the ones that are the classics, I don't want Marilyn co-staring with Sandra Bullock in Speed 3, or Terminator 7.

[artmonkforHOF]

I love it. The ultimate thief in the movie world finally gets enough money to steal actors and scenes from other movies, alter them and use them for his. Is anyone surprised this is from Lucas? The man who has ripped of Buck Rogers, The Hobbit and basically every other classic sci-fi/fantasy story he could get his hands on, and hopefully now people will be able to see how big of a fraud he is, because there is no way to spin this as a Lucas creation, it is as direct a theft as you can get.

[HighOnHendrix]

I don't see how that's any different than re-mixing an Elvis song with a dance track. If anything, it serves to give a younger audience an appreciation for an icon of a previous generation.

By perverting it? And it's not just about Star Wars. He put aliens in an Indiana Jones movie.

[Prosperity]

Oh, I pretty much agree. I'm just having fun being difficult.

I do think that as an artist, I deserve both credit and a piece of the pie. That's one of the scariest things about this internet universe we live in. Intellectual property theft is incredibly common and almost no one even has qualms about doing it. How many of us cut and paste copy written materials or images? How many illegally download songs or videos?

So, I hope that the publisher is paying the estate of Roddenberry or Ludlam or even compensating living artists like Stan Lee for the use of their creations. I hope that the artist isn't getting abused and ripped off as usually or so often happens.

I do think though when you see STAR TREK or SUPERMAN that branding links you to a creative mind that deserves honor, credit, and perhaps money. Afterall, if Baum hadn't written about it no one would know that we're not in Kansas anymore.

People aren't as concerned about Intellectual Property Theft, because it's not really theft, because IP is not anywhere near the same sort of property that we associate w/ theft, and because the costs of allowing theft of most other types of property causes way more harm to society than IP theft.

I just wonder if money is really that much an incentive for valuable IP in music or the arts... the most profitable books or albums almost always pretty bad. Academics create new work so they get recognition and tenure. How many awesome writers died dead broke? How many great ones made it big based off of book sales? Artists can get the same deal w/ myspace and post their music online and then it could go viral. Yeah now there isn't a huge demand for their albums, but the marketing costs are barely anything since the internet kind of does it's own work, they don't have to pay middle men a huge slice just for that. No they probably won't go to huge concerts, they'll make less but they'll spend less too.

It doesn't seem like a big deal to not worry about property rights to that much of an extent

[Henry]

By perverting it? And it's not just about Star Wars. He put aliens in an Indiana Jones movie.

You guys are mixing up your distaste for his writing and directing with his role as a pioneer in the field of special effects. Quite frankly, whether or not you like the super-secret special golden edition of Star Wars is irrelevant to what Lucas has done for movies over the years.

Forget Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, did you like Iron Man? That was ILM. Harry Potter? That was ILM.

The Narnia Movies? The Star Trek Movies (all of them)? The Terminator Movies? The Transformers? Pirates of the Carribean? The Jason Bourne Movies? Saving Private Ryan? Forrest Gump? Jurassic Park? Back to the Future?

ILM ... all of them. Pretty much anyone not named Peter Jackson who wants decent special effects in a movie calls George Lucas. The guy literally invented 99% of the special effects techniques used over the past thirty years.

I think it's hilarious that some of you are shocked and horrified that he's still innovating, as if the only reason he does this stuff is to ruin the handful of movies he directed or wrote. I guarantee you that regardless of what he does or doesn't do to Star Wars or Indiana Jones Lucas will never stop trying to figure out new ways to give directors more freedom, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

[Seabee1973]

Cut cut cut, will someon eplease tell the dead guy here to put more emphasis on that word he is saying

[scruffylookin]

By perverting it? And it's not just about Star Wars. He put aliens in an Indiana Jones movie.

The last Indy movie was weak but no more than the Last Crusade. Really only the first two were truly great.

As for the aliens, they were in line with the themes setup in the previous films.

As for Uncle George, Henry is absolutely right. He has pioneered the way films are made but I do think that this digital thing may be being pushed too far now. Who really wants to see John Wayne in a western again or how about a modern war movie set in Iraq knowing that it's not really John Wayne but just an artists creation? For lack of a better word, there would be no soul in that character or performance.

Now we have seen some great cg performances in recent years. Gollum and the folks in Avatar spring to mind. But those are not dead stars who we the audience know are dead and thus know cannot be there. The suspension of disbelief that must take place for a film to work on a moviegoer will simply not be there.

I think it's cool as an exercise and I'd love to see some results just to see how far the technology has come, but it should stop there. To actually make films with people that we know are dead seems like a pointless endeavor.

[Burgold]

People aren't as concerned about Intellectual Property Theft, because it's not really theft, because IP is not anywhere near the same sort of property that we associate w/ theft, and because the costs of allowing theft of most other types of property causes way more harm to society than IP theft.

It's sad you feel that way. IP theft is equally bad if not worse. If you steal my idea for an invention and patent it and make billions off it and I get nothing. That's a very real effect. If you like my song and make an illegal copy and then make it available for millions to have an illegal and free copy of that song. That's potentially a million sales that I lose. That impacts me as the artist, the production company, the studio musicians, engineers, graphic artists, and even the guys in the record stores... huh, there are no record stores anymore and they even began going out of business before there ever was an itune... do you think there's a correlation?

[Prosperity]

come on dude, people that have gigabytes of music weren't going to spend $15 per album. It amuses me how RIAA and others think "oh this guy downloaded 1000 albums this year, he destroyed $15,000 worth of potential sales".... "loss of potential sales"

Who the hell would have spent 15k on albums in a year? No one... so where's the potential? How does that "Theft" actually deprive the "owner" of anything if the person wasn't going to buy it anyway? How does it deprive the owner if the owner still has his own copies? It doesn't. But if it did it wouldn't be anywhere near close to what the "potential sales" where.

huh, there are no record stores anymore and they even began going out of business before there ever was an itune... do you think there's a correlation?

Who cares? A record store is pointless, it's a waste of society's resources. A brick and mortar store for music? This is the problem with extreme protection for IP. It actually hampers technological innovation. Myopic companies defend their obsolete product. What would happen if the ENTIRE musical recording industry collapsed tomorrow? We would have lower production value music, but MySpace would take over for marketing. No more Lady Gaga or Fifty Cent... BFD there is an overabundance of artists, removing one incentive is not going to kill art, it would probably actually make it better.

Patents are a bit different, but companies have been able to patent lines of embryos, genetically engineered bacteria, even human genes... That's a bit ****ed up. Now some patent protection is very useful, there isn't an over abundance of ingenious engineers and scientists unlike artists so an additional incentive is important, but when it gets to the point that companies race to patent genes one actual cost to society is that now all the research done on that gene will require paying licensing fees. That especially sucks because so much of that field is based on public grants from the NIH.

[Burgold]

Excuses of a thief. You are just rationalizing getting something for nothing.

[Prosperity]

Excuses of a thief. You are just rationalizing getting something for nothing.

way to ignore everything I said

whatever, it's ok, have a good day

[NavyDave]

Wow can you think of the possibilities?

He can bring Kevin Costner back from the dead to do Waterworld 2.

only his career is dead not him? my bad.

Well we could have Batman Begins Again with that version of the Joker.

or Jayne Mansfield in a NC-17 remake of The Girl Can't Help it.

[Cept One]

Who the hell would have spent 15k on albums in a year? No one... so where's the potential? How does that "Theft" actually deprive the "owner" of anything if the person wasn't going to buy it anyway? How does it deprive the owner if the owner still has his own copies? It doesn't. But if it did it wouldn't be anywhere near close to what the "potential sales" where.

How is the artist expected to sell those copies if you have already d/l and stolen their work? or uploaded their work so that millions of others can steal it?

[Darth Tater]

This sounds like a movie I saw many moons ago.

[HighOnHendrix]

You guys are mixing up your distaste for his writing and directing with his role as a pioneer in the field of special effects. Quite frankly, whether or not you like the super-secret special golden edition of Star Wars is irrelevant to what Lucas has done for movies over the years.

I have a problem with him going back and messing with a classic movie like Star Wars on principle alone. But the really big problem I have is that he didn't do a " super-secret special golden edition of Star Wars" - he added in a bunch of CGI garbage and made that the official version. Do you know how hard it was to find the original non-raped version a few years ago? It is only out there now because so many fans threw a fit about having to watch Greedo shoot first so Han wouldn't look like such a bad guy. And even then, it's like an add-on, with the "enhanced" version as the main thing.

I think it's hilarious that some of you are shocked and horrified that he's still innovating, as if the only reason he does this stuff is to ruin the handful of movies he directed or wrote. I guarantee you that regardless of what he does or doesn't do to Star Wars or Indiana Jones Lucas will never stop trying to figure out new ways to give directors more freedom, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

I think it can be a bad thing, because instead of concentrating on story structure and dialogue they just try to cram as much **** into every frame as they possibly can. I believe they call it saturation. Lucas himself now does this with regularity, the last three SW movies being a good example. Many of the scenes in those movies served no purpose other than to serve as an excuse for another effect-laden action scene. IMO movie-making is heading in a bad direction right now and there seems to be no end in sight.

The last Indy movie was weak but no more than the Last Crusade. Really only the first two were truly great.

As for the aliens, they were in line with the themes setup in the previous films.

In what way were aliens in line with the previous movies? I mean, ghosts...sure. But aliens? It just doesn't fit. Not to mention how contrived the story line was with him discovering dude was his son, that weird Russian chick, etc. And I think Crusade was better than Temple. Not really the point of the thread, though.

[Prosperity]

How is the artist expected to sell those copies if you have already d/l and stolen their work? or uploaded their work so that millions of others can steal it?

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." -US Constitution

The goal is promotion of progress, for the reasons I've state above progress of the arts (useful or not) can be met without strict copyright laws concerning music sharing. I buy music, and I download music. If I didn't download music, I'd buy the same number of records as I do now, or fewer because I wouldn't know as many artists that I'd like to listen to...

But, progress of the arts is more than just giving money to artists, it's allowing the diffusion of arts. There is benefit to crediting artists, but there is also benefit to society by allowing their works to more easily reach more people. Strict enforcement of copyright laws doesn't keep art alive, art's alive because it inspires artists... strict enforcement of copyright laws keeps the record publishers alive... and really they've done so much to hamper technological progress (remember when the film producers tried to forcefully ban VCR's?... VCR's were an awesome technology back in the day) and their role in progressing the arts is well... I'll just say I'm skeptical.

[Tastes Like Chicken]

I don't care about dead actors. How about Jessica Alba in adult films? :paranoid:

[Mad Mike]

They've been talking about this for so long... ever since re-doing those Fred Astaire bits in the commercials. I think it's a terrible idea as we lose the craft of the actor. Sure, you get that familiar face, but it's often what's going on internally that makes a great actor great. Still, it'll be easy as hell to use computer modeling to make these animated actors say or do anything and look realistic.

Ding.

This isn't new and Lucas isn't the first to propose it. He just happens to be one of the most capable of doing it. Personally, I hate the idea. I don't care who wants to do it. It just feels wrong.

[Pick6]

As they say, "Let sleeping dogs lie."

[Darth Tater]

Brainstorm (1983) had this as one of its story elements. Interestingly, it was Natalie Wood's last movie.