CGI de-aging - Will it happen to Bond?
As we are living in the age of CGI de-aging, or deepfake, or whatever it is... do you think this will happen to Bond films? Will we get another Connery/Moore outing using their likeness? Will they de-age Brosnan? Will they make Dalton's lost 3rd film as an early 90's period piece with a de-aged Dalton? Perhaps a de-aged Lazenby will finally get a proper revenge story? Or maybe a de-aged Daniel Craig for some missions set between QOS and SF? Thoughts?
1 - LALD, 2 - AVTAK, 3 - OP, 4 - LTK, 5 - FYEO, 6 - DAF, 7 - NTTD, 8 - GE, 9 - TMWTGG, 10 - TSWLM, 11 - SF, 12 - DN, 13 - TLD, 14 - OHMSS, 15 - YOLT, 16 - DAD, 17 - MR, 18 - GF, 19 - TWINE, 20 - TND, 21 - SP, 22 - QOS, 23 - FRWL, 24 - CR, 25 - TB
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Comments
No, it won't.
Touche, straight to the point!
Personally I'd agree but part of me wonders if it is less crazy than we think...
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
In a series which has long established that different actors take over the main role, I don't really see what part it could play. I don't think old actors are coming back any time soon; there's just no point.
We might have a scene where we see the baddie of the current film, for example, in a flashback looking younger, but the director of Mission Impossible has been saying he looked into such a scene and it cost the same as one of their major action setpieces.
The problems aren't just technical and economic. The ethical and legal problems with doing this are huge.
Wouldn't worry to much about them de-aging old actors, in a few years AI will generate a Bond and we won't need to worry about what actor is going to take over the role next. Nightmare scenario.
Could they de-age, rewig and slim down Connery in DAF, make him more like the version we got in the sixties? That'd be cool.
Would Sean Connery have wanted that? How would we know?
Well, he didn't object to this -
https://youtu.be/3kamPVs-a9w?si=57-wPW6Ka8qt6L4h
It’s already been said on here that Connery’s family will not allow it…
A comparable suggestion would digitally making Marilyn Monroe slimmer and taller in "Some like it hot" to make her look more like today's supermodels. I'm against that sort of thing.
Are you sure digital de-aging hasn't already happened in the franchise?
Could that be Craig from an earlier role in another movie?
It’s just a kid isn’t it? Never actually looked like Craig to me.
A few seconds of parts of a face doing nothing can't be that hard or expensive to do digitally. For example a digitally de-aged Connery playing the lead in a movie must be dramatically different.
Really? I thought it was uncanny.
I mean, I think so? I can't really be sure but they look like two different people to me- the shapes of all the details are different, nose shape, eye shape, eye detail etc. I think they may well have comped in Craig's ears, or warped the model's ears to resemble him, but I couldn't say I'm 100% sure, maybe it is an altered photo of Craig. If I were forced to pick I'd probably say they chose a young model of a similar colouring and possibly warped him and played with the colours a bit, but I wouldn't put money on it!
I'm sure I read something that they had to digitally expand the image of Craig because they'd gone in too close(!), but I don't remember any mention of the kid version so it doesn't really prove anything either way! 😁
What do you guys reckon?
That there is an altered photo of a young Craig. They used similar in SPECTRE. De-aging costs a fortune and that would probably have blown the title sequence budget.
Yeah it's interesting, if you look at a younger Craig it's not dissimilar:
I don't think it's likely to be an actual archive photo of the young Craig as there's not much chance of finding one high resolution enough (even that one on the left has had some dodgy AI run over it to try and upscale it so isn't going to be useable) and in focus to go on a movie screen, him making the right facial expression, plus having the right, very distinct lighting to simulate hiding in a cupboard 😁
But one technique I know folks were doing around then was to take a high res professional photo of a model in the lighting you want (in this case some kid) and then use a reference photo of the actor (Craig) and manipulate the new photo to vaguely match the position of the features of the actor, so you end up with a high res image with pores and hairs etc. visible and the lighting you want, but the right facial structure. I can imagine they might have done something like that.
I've already seen de-aging, and its very disturbing.
Asp usually has the goods, so all I can add is that if you watch the clip, if that's a photo it's been turned 3D and animated, because the kid kind of widens his eye and raises his eyebrows as the camera closes in (at 1:12).
Yeah it's not going to be an old photo of Craig, but it could well be footage of the young model they shot for it and with his ears etc. manipulated to look like Craig's, as it's only his eye which moves once zoomed well in, you're right. Kleinman describes his young eyes as “witnessing something we know not what, yet” so it seems right that he intended that eye widening to be a bit of performance of James seeing something, yeah.
i would expect that to get that extreme zoom effect it’s likely a number of different photos/footage taken at different levels of zoom, moving into the macro, all stitched together. The lack of perspective changes on the faces points to that. It’s quite Eames Power of Ten, really.