Rogue One [Speculation] Peter Cushing in Rogue One

I think it'd be much better to have the actor's face resemble Sebastian Shaw's face from ROTJ.

 

Sith Advocate here: as others have teased, how about just hiring an actor with a similar body type and having a terrific make up artist recreate Cushing's appearance (*cough, cough Rick Baker*.) Wouldn't this be cheaper, easier to do?

I certainly won't scuttlebutt the CGI version yet, especially in light of the videos posted above and the fact that we haven't seen anything.

I would hope that TPTB do get clearance / rights from Mr. Cushing's family and honor his legacy.

 

Agree on all these points Lok - maybe CG makeup though - a merging of that Antman tech maybe?

 

I usually despise this sort of thing but...but I love the sound of it!

 

Sounds cool, but couldn't another actor provide the voice and maybe Skywalker Sound could do some digital magic and alter the actor's voice to make it sound like Peter Cushing?

 

Remember the attempt in ROTS... I'm all for Modern day CGI as this looked awful!

 

That's interesting.

Might I trouble you to ask for a link? I'd like to learn more about this.

For the quick scene in the film, I thought it came off well enough. People watching surely made the connection that they were looking at a younger Tarkin and, since this is all Pyrgram's appearance was meant to convey, I can understand why George Lucas may have decided that it was "good enough."


But every time I look at a photograph of Wayne Pygram in makeup as Tarkin, I shudder a little, too. Whether or not Cushing would ever have admitted it (he seemed a genuinely humble man with a bit of that old self-deprecating humor about him), Peter was a handsome man.

Eh, if ROTS had called for a meatier role for Tarkin (or even a single close-up), I'd like to believe that Lucas would have gone to the trouble of having the actor look more like the dashing young Mr. Cushing.

 

Wow, I totally disagree. The Tarkin in RotS is awful and effort is worth the bother when it comes to such a man's legacy. (Sir).

 

Most likely, Satipo. While I am vocal proponent against the Ant-Man de aging (not the process but the final look), I'll keep an open mind.

Wow. I'd never seen that practical make up of the actor standing in for Tarkin in RoTS, they got Mr. Cushing's bone structure right, but something is very, very much off. ( I can be critical of practical FX too...)

 

Oh it think it was enough for the few seconds of the scene. It said what they wanted to say. At the time it got a "Oh that's whatshisname" out of me. It worked.
Sure in 2015 they'd do a bit of face replacement.

 

I recall an interview with Lucas before ROTS where in reference to Cushing he had said he is totally against recreating dead actors with cgi. He thought it was in poor taste. Odd now that Disney is the new master and one of the first things they attempt is exactly this..... I am usually against the idea of such digital resurrection but the tarkin idea has me interested....I respected Lucas' opinion then but all this Star Wars hype as of late has me dreaming of possibilities...

 

Well, like I said, I think the photo shows that Lucasfilm didn't do a particularly "good" job of turning Pyrgram into a young Cushing, either.

Only that, for a five-second, mid-long angle shot, it was enough for the audience to comprehend that who they were seeing was supposed to be a younger Tarkin. That, on the "Oh, there's Tarkin" level, it succeeded (and that, as far as Lucas was likely concerned, that's about the sum total of what he was shooting for).

Would I have preferred something better? Surely.

EDIT: In fact, I much prefer this, myself:

 

I think way too much importance is attached to having an exact physical match. Re-casting happens all the time. A decent performance quickly overrides the need for a forensically perfect double.

I'm not a prequel fan but that's certainly not down to Ewan not looking identical to a 1950's Alec Guinness.

I always thought Tarkin should have featured more prominently in the prequels. A vague physical likeness and a good actor would have worked just fine.

I guess the situation is different for Rogue One in that its the same era but again I don't think it's really that big a deal. So long as it's obvious to the audience that it's meant to be the same character i think it should work fine just with a decent actor.

If they go CGI I hope it's just a brief cameo because frankly the tech whilst very impressive just isn't truly there yet.

 

I was thinking that also. Of course the face should look a bit younger then his ROTJ face.

 

The problem with Pygram isn't Pygram, it's that the facial prosthesis and make-up work was horrible and over the top. His cheekbones for instance were constructed to stand out too much, and the chin is also all wrong. With good make-up and prosthesis work done, Pygram would probably look just fine as Tarkin. I'd prefer it to CGI in any case.

 

I'd prefer that they not do this. MAYBE if he's in like one scene via holo-video or something. But if he's actually going to be physically onscreen interacting with other characters, then they should recast. Not only is the track record for doing this sort of thing, mixed at best. But it just feels, wrong on some level.

 

Yes, hire Lola! Get a actor and digitally map Cushing's features onto his face.

Seriously though, nothing…nothing will replace the legendary Cushing. Just look at that man's bone structure. Good God almighty those are some distinctive features. So, since any direction they go in will be second-best(but still potentially very good), then they should go either the all-CG route or, better yet, a hybrid approach that people like Lola fx do so well.

Look what Lola did to Hayley Atwell in Captain America 2: For this, they shot an older actress and Atwell separately and then mapped the older lady's features onto Atwell's face, neck and hands. I watched this scene in the theater and it was flawless. Originally, I thought it was just really good makeup. Nope. All digital makeup. It wasn't practical! So ILM could take old Cushing footage and map it onto whomever is portraying him on stage. It could work…it had better work. They're taking an awful risk here JCers so it had better work.

 

It never bothered me in the slightest, it's a background cameo.

 

Could technology provide PC's distinct voice? Taking from his vast library of performances they could recreate both visually and vocally, after all they managed to re-edit Mark Hamill's the Force is strong in my family speech from ROTJ in the 2nd TFA teaser.

 

I thought people wanted Lucasfilm and ILM to keep pushing CGI technology forward. Jar Jar was the first fully CGI supporting character in a film. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are still amazing to this day.

 

Maybe? If it's feasible to do so, then I think it's probably worth it to get as much of the real Cushing into the performance as is possible. Peter embodied the role so wonderfully.

Though I still think Stanton is probably capable. I recall being impressed with his Tarkin, the first time the Governor appeared in Rebels:

 

I always skip that scene, but I have to admit this digital make up works up to a point (a lot of it still looks fake despite being an actresses' face mapped onto Attwell's own.) I think it can be done, but as you say, Peter had distinctive features. We'll see.

 

I got a bad feeling about this

I will wait before I completely decide.

 

This would be a HORRIBLE idea, for a number of reasons:

-It's incredibly time consuming and expensive. And since I don't think that Tarkin will be the main baddie here, what's the point?
-The past results with this have been mixed at best. Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy and Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen in X-Men: The Last Stand all looked meh. Stewart in X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked terrible. Michael Douglas in Ant Man looked good, as did "young Arnie" in Terminator Genisys. But those were like one scene each and the T-800 was in a fight scene.
-In these cases, you had Jeff Bridges, Michael Douglas, Arnold, etc one-set to model off of. Peter Cushing has been dead since, what 1994? So that makes things even more difficult (not to mention kind of creepy/awkward).
-They're recasting Harrison freaking Ford for the Han Solo movie. If they can recast him of all people, then they can recast Cushing.
-Oh and they've already recast him once, with the guy from Episode III

Basically what I'm saying is, just get a different actor. Then you can use make-up/prosthetics/CGI/camera tricks to make him resemble ANH-era Tarkin to a passable degree.