“This is going to be one genie that’s hard to cram back into the bottle”
EMPIRE’S CHRIS HEWITT ON RESURRECTING ACTORS FOR THE SCREEN
THE NEWS THAT corporation’s are reluctant to accept death as the ultimate arbiter of availability for actors shouldn’t come as a shock. Audrey Hepburn flogged Galaxy chocolate bars long after her death. Ditto Steve Mcqueen for Ford Pumas. And on the big screen more recently, Peter Cushing and Harold Ramis were resurrected, via a combination of acting doubles and CGI, for Rogue One and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, respectively.
Yet it wasn’t until I saw Christopher Reeve (and George Reeves, and Adam West) show up for ‘cameos’ at the end of The Flash (which, otherwise, is a perfectly fine film) that I began to feel deeply uncomfortable with the potential for resurrecting actors, without their consent, and using them as action figures. Perhaps because it was Reeve, the Superman I grew up with, and who once went on record speaking out about the diminishing returns that come with “sequelitis”, but this felt particularly tawdry. Morally murky. Egregious, even. A dry run for a soulless future in which AI can seamlessly conjure up movies starring the icons of yesteryear, no matter their current status. Yea, as I walk through the shadow of the uncanny valley of death, I shall fear no evil.
For me, this isn’t quite the same as de-ageing effects. Those can take you out of a movie or TV show every bit as easily, even when they’re astonishingly good (see Kurt Russell in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2), but for the most part they’re done with the consent and participation of the actors involved. Christopher Reeve can’t be consulted on whether or not he would like to appear in The Flash, so why even bother? Even something as tastefully put together as Ramis’ ‘appearance’ in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was approved by his family and was clearly produced with care and love by Jason Reitman, begs the question: would he have appeared if given the choice?
As long as there is even a shadow of a doubt as to whether an actor would have approved of their image being used in this way after their death, it should be left well alone. Sadly, with reports that one of the sticking points behind the actors’ strike in the States is the AMPTP’S moustache-twirling insistence on being able to scan actors and background artists with a view to being able to use their likenesses in perpetuity (for a one-off fee, mind), it feels like this is going to be one genie that’s very hard to cram back into the bottle. The Flash, of course, is about a man who travels back in time to erase an error. Best get your running shoes back on, pal. You’ve got some work to do.