The success of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" in using computer generated imagery to simulate the late actor Peter Cushing could open the way for "reanimating" some of Hollywood's film greats, humorist Joe Queenan suggests.
"The more you think about it, the more it's clear that reanimating superstars is the way to go," Queenan writes in a column for the Wall Street Journal posted Thursday.
Dead or alive, Humphrey Bogart and Steve McQueen have way more star power than Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn, two lightweight leads from 'Rogue One.'"
Though Hollywood has been doing "tricks" for years to cover the loss of actors who've died before the film they were working on was completed, but the latest Star Wars entry "is different," Queenan argues.
"Grand Moff Tarkin, the Peter Cushing villain who appears in several scenes in the film, enjoys considerable screen time, even though Cushing died in 1994," he writes. "To simulate his character, the filmmakers found an actor who resembled Cushing, and then a CGI team took over."
Queenan says he loves the idea "of using CGI to bring dead actors back from the grave."
"Why not go back in time and develop CGI versions of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, John Wayne ? Perhaps even the young Clint Eastwood."
There is one possible problem, he notes.
"What if a CGI-revived actor earns himself an Oscar nomination?" he writes. "[I]s it fair to living actors to give an Oscar to CGI-enhanced actors from beyond the grave?"
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