Hi guys, I'm Eric Voss, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is now in theaters
and so much about this movie blew me away
but for right now I just want to talk about one thing in particular:
the visual effects and the surprisingly good CGI
that was used to re-create certain characters from the original Star Wars film and
obviously I'm about to get into some major spoilers so
you should probably just go watch Rogue One first
but honestly this story, and the characters that I'm
going to talk about, have all been around for like
forty years now! So, what? Am I supposed to Not talk about this?
Come on! This is my Life! This is All I have!
Okay, so Rogue One tells the story of the events that led up to the
original Star Wars: A New Hope. Literally catching us up
to the exact moment that Princess Leia
receives the Death Star plans that she hands off to R2-D2 at the beginning of that movie
And I don't know about you guys, but when the opening
night audience that I watched the movie with
saw the face of Princess Leia, Carrie Freakin' Fisher herself
but like, forty years younger somehow? We
lost our freaking minds!
There was this massive gasp, and no joke,
I literally heard someone whisper:
*It's Magic*! ...It was Me! I said that.
...I shouted it, actually. But
the thing is, it's not magic
it's just really impressive, and probably super expensive
visual effects, by George Lucas's special effects
and animation studio Industrial Light and Magic.
So, I guess magic was kind of part of it.
And obviously Rogue One did the same thing
to recreate Grand Moff Tarkin, originally played by
Peter Cushing, who died in 1994
as well as the Gold leader and the Red leader
in the Battle of Scarif.
So how did the filmmakers pull this off?
It's a complicated process, that uses a mix of
body double actors and computer generated mapping
of archived footage over the stand-in's face.
Using motion capture and re-animating it all to
make the facial expressions and move the lips
in a way to make them speak the new dialogue.
“We're mutants Jean, we are like you.”
And for this to look even close to authentic
you need an actor who can closely match the original
actor's facial structure, expressions, gestures...
Just pretty much do the perfect full body impression of them.
And you may remember the video that we did when a
similar process was used, to finish the late
Paul Walker's scenes in Fast and the Furious VII
and in that case, Paul Walker's brothers
stepped in as body doubles and
the finished product was pretty good.
But this was not easy to do for Tarkin.
Last year, rumors from a source close to
Rogue One called it one of the most
complex and costly CGI re-creations ever.
Now, apparently when George Lucas filmed
the first Star Wars, Peter Cushing didn't feel
comfortable wearing the awkward leather riding boots
that the Imperial officers had to wear,
and he complained so much that George Lucas
allowed him to wear slippers on set, and he
just shot him from the knees up, or
from behind the Death Star conference table.
So, for Rogue One they didn't have a lot of footage
options to work with, and they had to rely on some
of Cushing's previous work on horror films.
And by the way, that might be why this version
of Tarkin that we saw briefly
in Revenge of the Sith looked, kinda weird.
So, they hired British actor Guy Henry.
You may remember him as the corrupt minister of magic
in the final two Harry Potter films,
or, if you're into BBC hospital soap operas,
Dr. Henrik Hanssen on Holby City...
So this Guy has a very similar long, angular face
as Peter Cushing, and the way he talks is eerily
similar. “You have nothing to fear” … and
if you look closely at the Star Wars celebration reel
footage that came out last summer,
you can see Guy Henry on set
before he was transformed into Tarkin. And in case
you were curious, that's actually Guy Henry doing Tarkin's voice.
“You have made time an ally of the rebellion.”
A source close to the film actually confirmed this for us.
Now for Princess Leia, they used young Norwegian actress
notice that she has a strikingly similar, round, full face
and round eyes that Carrie Fisher had when
she was twenty years old.
Now, Deila hasn't appeared in much other than a minor roll in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
So then it was a matter of going through hours
and hours of archived footage, and using it all to
create 3-D animations of Peter Cushing's and Carrie Fisher's faces
to map over the body doubles, rendering them frame by frame
with realistic skin textures to make it all seamless.
And in addition to Fast and Furious VII
you may remember this effect being used recently to make actors look younger
Like Anthony Hopkins in Westworld and
Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War.
Actually Industrial Light and Magic did the effects for Civil War too
And the animators on that film talked about how
ILM has this massive library of image scans
to use as references.
And knowing George Lucas, that library probably includes
all kinds of footage and angles, and digital re-masters
and he's probably like, [high voice] "Ohhh, I got Ani and Jar-Jar too, if you guys need it!...Uh, no? Oh, okay."
In Rogue One all the effects were overseen by Oscar winning visual effects wizard John Knoll
of Industrial Light and Magic. This guy is one of the best.
He did all the Star Wars prequels and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies
a ton of stuff. In fact, it was John Knoll who originally pitched the initial idea for Rogue One's story.
And obviously, a lot of the success of this movie
depended on Knoll's confidence and
his team's ability to authentically re-create
Tarkin and Leia, to have that payoff when we see
how this story fits in with the original Star Wars.
And according to director Gareth Edwards
"...after a lot of blood, sweat and tears..."
and Knoll assuring them "We can do this, we can do it..."
I think they pulled it off.
Now, Tarkin didn't look 100% authentic
especially the movement of his mouth, but...
he looked better than any other time this has been used
And to be honest, I couldn't see any difference at all with Leia
And maybe that's just because as a younger actress at the time, Carrie Fisher had fewer wrinkles
and blemishes on her face, a lot less detail than Peter Cushing had as Tarkin
and so it was easier to kinda recreate that.
And whether or not this looked believable to you
you've got to admit, it ended up being a huge part of what made Rogue One so enjoyable
That cold, menacing presence of Tarkin as they have him say
“You may fire when ready.”
And then that closing image of a young, radiant Carrie Fisher, saying “Hope.”
as the story moves right into ‘A New Hope’.
Now, I know using old footage like this can come off as somewhat in poor taste
especially when the actor has passed away, as in Cushing's case
and some people were saying this took them out of the movie a little bit
kinda like they were bringing the actor back from the dead and it looked a little video gamey
and they should have just cast a similar looking actor
Like Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma
but just to be clear, the film did get a blessing and the rights to use Cushing's likeness
from his family and estate.
They also credited Carrie Fisher.
Not sure about Garven Dreis or Jon Vander though.
and sure, it's fair to be concerned about what this could lead to in filmmaking
like it's possible to get to a point where every actor's past performances are repurposed
and distorted in a way that they didn't initially agree to when they signed on to make the film
But honestly, so far, that hasn't really happened.
Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia were brought back in a specific way
by the same digital effects company
to complete the story as the characters were in the original film
while giving Tarkin's cruelty even more depth.
That's not changing the character
and it's definitely not Greedo shooting first.
Alright, keep an eye out for other Rogue One videos that we're puttin' out.
I'm gonna talk about how exactly Rogue One's story connects to A New Hope
and I'm planning a larger, super in-depth breakdown
of all the Easter eggs and references to the Star Wars universe in this movie
because there were SO freakin' many.
It's gonna take me at least like five screenings to catch all of 'em.
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