Chris McQuarrie cracks the problem with de-aging

[Jon Dent]

From a Variety interview:

“One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, ‘Boy, this de-aging is really good’ or ‘This de-aging is not so good,'” McQuarrie continued. “Never did I find myself actually following the story…I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.”

I had this exact problem with Dial of Destiny and the sections of The Irishman that I've seen.

The best applications I've seen so far is when the actor looks more or less the same as they did when they were younger (Sam Jackson, Kurt Russell, Robert Downey Jr.) and they didn't de-age them too much. They tried to take 40 years off Ford and while the effort LOOKED good (outside of some jankiness around the mouth), my brain never engaged.

[Jim Cassedy]

(edited) “Never did I find myself actually following the story…I was so distracted . . .

I had sort of the same problem with "1917", the WWI movie that came out a few years
ago that was shot in a series of incredibly choreographed extra long takes stitched together.
It wasn't till about the 3rd time I sat through it that I stopped thinking "WoW! How did they
manage to stage that shot in one long take? - - and actually started paying attention to the plot.

[Frank Angel]

Ah, this is the curse of being a film techie...too hyper aware of how things are done. And it's even worse when we can't figure it out right off the bat. It took me three, maybe four viewings of 2001 to figure out that the floating pen was stuck to a big piece of rotating glass in the shuttle sequence, but for those first viewings, that was the only thing I could think about. At least nowadays you can just calk anything spectacular up to CGI and forget about it.

Anyone who was a film projectionist in days of yor (there is no such thing as a projectionist in the post film era) who watches a film (video streaming, whatever) today where they've left cues in the image, it is literally in possible for him/her not to mentally count down to the change-over cue. Impossible. How's THAT for 8 seconds if complete distraction?!

[Jon Dent]

It's not getting any better the older I get either. If anything I'm even MORE aware of tech stuff now. For the longest time I was impressed at how they got Leo and Kate to outrun that hallway of water in Titanic, only to get the Blu Ray and go "Hey that looks a little weird" and discovering that their faces were pasted over the stunt people that actually did the scene.

[Mike Blakesley]

I still get irritated every time I see the scene in Titanic where Leo is chained to a pipe, and one of them (I can't remember if it's him or Kate) breaks the chain by hitting it with an axe. That would have about a .000001% chance of working in real life, if that.

I also wonder how many favors Cameron had to call in to get the PG-13 rating, what with all that nudity, which is enjoyable, don't get me wrong. But films have been rated R for less nudity than that.

[Mark Ogden]

From a Variety interview:
I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.”

You cannot truly de-age a person as a GCI effect, I believe, because of something that many pointed out after watching The Irishman: while DeNiro looked somewhat younger, he still walked like the old man that he is. Older folks (as I am coming to learn myself) have a certain gait, a certain way of carrying themselves due to unsteadiness or osteo issues. You'd have to create a wholly CGI character in the way that has been done to various Star Wars characters, and that gets back to the concern SAG-AFTRA has about AI generated performers.

[Jon Dent]

That's one of the things I didn't buy about young Indy was Ford's grizzled 80 year old voice. It wasn't bad but you could definitely hear 'old man throat' a few times.

I think that full CGI recreations of identifiable characters goes over even worse than de-aging or even full head replacement. As far as I know they haven't tried that yet to any real extent. Even Tarkin in Rogue One and Rachel in Blade Runner 2049 were head replacements on a real bodies.

[Bobby Henderson]

The Uncanny Valley is still a very difficult chasm for technology to cross. The more real they try to make a CGI altered/generated person look the more fake it seems to be. There are so many subtle details in human faces and details in the way a human body naturally moves. As humans we know how things are supposed to look even if we don't understand all the reasons why.

Faked still images are easier to pass off than video. Some deep-fake videos, with help from AI-based trickery, can be very good. But it's not difficult spotting the flaws.

There is a lot of moral hand-wringing going on about AI deep-fake videos. Companies like Adobe are pushing for content credentials to be encrypted into still and video images when they're captured/created. The encrypted metadata would be appended further anytime the image was altered and/or edited. The idea is to protect creators from plagiarism as well as help fight misinformation. A potential downside is the data could be used by government to suppress free speech and dissent. Someone creates an insulting meme about the President, posts it online and a short time later the police are knocking on his door.

We probably wouldn't be in this position if so many members of the general public weren't so damned gullible.

I also wonder how many favors Cameron had to call in to get the PG-13 rating, what with all that nudity, which is enjoyable, don't get me wrong. But films have been rated R for less nudity than that.

It's all about the context of how the nudity was displayed. Nudity that is clinical or artistic is more likely to pass under the R-rating bar than any nudity that is sexual in context. There have been other PG/PG-13 movies featuring bare female breasts and/or butts on camera. Broadcast TV has even had bare breasts shown in dramas and documentaries; again, the context was typically clinical in nature. These days parents have to worry far more about the sexual content their kids can gain access to via the Internet and social media (not to mention the streaming services on their TV sets). Hollywood movies played in cinemas are pretty tame compared to what can be seen on other "platforms."

I have bigger questions about the amount of graphic violence being shown in movies and TV shows that aren't deemed for adults-only audiences. This past weekend one of the basic cable networks aired Dredd (the Judge Dredd re-make) during the afternoon. Dredd is an R-rated movie with very strong graphic violence. Any nudity and R-level curse words were edited out, but I was surprised they left nearly all the bloody graphic violence intact.

[Jon Dent]

[I]Any nudity and R-level curse words were edited out, but I was surprised they left nearly all the bloody graphic violence intact.

That's not surprising at all. USA culture is much more accepting of violence than language or the human body. I was really surprised when I found out that "Hannibal" was an ABC series, as it featured some truly stomach churning gore.

On the flipside, one of the hands down DUMBEST 'R' ratings I've ever seen was for Nomadland. Very mild language (not an 'F'enheimer in sight), no violence, no sex, but a five second shot of Frances McDormand bathing nude in a river, BY HERSELF. Apparently that was worthy of an R. So stupid.

Even though no hanky panky occurred in the scene itself, I would argue that the sketching in Titanic has an unmistakable sexual subtext, especially with Leo's infamous verbal gaffe ("lay over on the bed..er...couch") left in and old Rose's comments about how erotic it was immediately after. Titanic pulled some slight of hand to get the PG-13, even in the 90's.


Back on topic, I doubt Hollywood's obsession with de-aging and CGI characters will abate anytime soon, and the technology will continue to get better. I don't think Adobe can really do anything to prevent disinformation, as many people accept what they see on the internet without question, and so long as it fits into their worldview they will refuse to listen to any reason, no matter how factual it is.