The Acting Dead

So, according to a story that first ran in The Hollywood Reporter, actor James Dean, who died in a car crash in 1955 after making only three films, will be resurrected digitally by a new film company in order to star in a new feature film, one set in the Vietnam War, which began a full ten years after his death.

This is apparently legal, given that the fledgling filmmakers have already approached Dean's estate and secured its permission, most likely with a big wad of cash. That said, however, there is something distinctly repugnant about these people's declaration that they have "cast James Dean" in a role when it won't be James Dean actually playing the role, but rather a digital avatar bearing his likeness. It won't be James Dean reciting lines, or emoting, or doing pretty much anything onscreen, but rather a combination of computer-generated imagery, possibly someone in a motion-capture suit and a voice actor. So, however lawful this planned project it may be, it feels all kinds of wrong.

The sad part is that Hollywood has only itself to blame for creating an atmosphere in which people could even begin to think that this was okay. They've been resurrecting dead recording artists to star alongside living ones in commercials since the 1990s. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole have all done television commercials well after their death, and in feature films the line was crossed quite some time ago when Laurence Olivier appeared in 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a movie filmed approximately 14 years after his death. Disney basically sealed the deal when they grafted the late Peter Cushing's digital face onto a double in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story three years ago.

But Olivier's appearance, while off-putting, amounted to little more than a cameo in a movie that almost no one saw, a bit of an oddity designed to show off how digital technology could pay homage to the pulpy movies of old, and Cushing's "reprising" his role as Grand Moff Tarkin, while arguably even more off-putting, served a greater narrative purpose.

In the great scheme, this planned film with its digital star would probably be ignored were it not for the gimmick of casting someone who's been dead for over sixty-four years. In fact, even with the press it's been getting over the last couple of days, there's still no guarantee it'll be any more than a blip at the box office. James Dean has been dead for so long that only the oldest of baby boomers would even remember watching him in any original theatrical release. He's only relevant to film buffs and hipsters, which means this movie, even with this gimmick, is far from a sure sell. One might argue that the filmmakers aren't even doing this to make an easy buck considering that most moviegoing audiences these days don't even know who James Dean was. Maybe they're sincere "Deanphiles," motivated by a sincere albeit misguided desire to do him some form of homage. The scary thing, however, is the gates this movie, even if it's only moderately successful, could kick wide open.

The people representing Dean's estate already offered a somewhat chilling preview of what the success of this movie could portend, as they basically referred to their entire portfolio of dead actors and actresses whose likenesses could be plundered for future films. And surely, the big boys like Disney and Warner Brothers are now paying attention to how this will play out as well, even if the stars of their movies are voicing their disagreement. Disney, for one thing, has already borrowed a dead actor's face.

Considering how amoral the likes of Hollywood producers are, I could see them justifying this practice in a heartbeat. Why bother looking for Daniel Craig's replacement as James Bond when you could just pay Sean Connery for his likeness, or Roger Moore's estate for his? Why wrangle out contracts with Henry Cavill when you could just put "Christopher Reeve," the actor best remembered by most people in the role, in all future Superman movies? Why put up with Joaquin Phoenix's eccentricities when you could have Heath Ledger "play" the Joker forever? And then there's the question of how the folks at Marvel, who doubtlessly have terrabytes of digital footage of Avengers stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and many more, may use this data in the future, when Kevin Feige has retired and been replaced by an exec who's less interested in telling stories and more keen on cashing in on nostalgia. The possibilities for exploitation and really terrible creative decisions are quite numerous.

Frankly, I don't really care if things like this mean that actors can no longer demand eight-figure salaries. One of the reasons I love superhero movies apart from the fact that they bring to life the comics I grew up with is that they effectively killed the superstar system that was so en vogue in the 80s and 90s, where films were star-driven rather than story-driven and during which we got some pretty shlocky stuff. But I do sympathize with the struggling actors and actresses who won't be able to get decent work because some asshole in a suit would rather pay some long dead actor's estate than help a living one put food on the table. It's dehumanizing, if I'm honest, and justifying this practice by saying crap like "the family approves" doesn't really help matters any. I'm sure the relatives of James Dean, many of whom have probably never even met him, are thrilled to get a big bag of cash that they didn't lift a finger to earn beyond signing on the dotted line. In short, their motives are somewhat suspect as well.

As a moviegoer, though, I'd have to say, again, that this utter dehumanizing of movie performances is something that could doom cinema in a way that Martin Scorsese, in his anti-Marvel rants, never imagined possible. One reason I have loved movies since childhood, whether these are live-action or animated, is the fact that, however fantastical many of the movies I enjoy may be, there is still a very human element in all of them. Whatever the snobs may say, even these movies convey emotional truths that are at the very core of our humanity, even through the art of make-believe.

But there is a world of difference between the humanity conveyed by a character in an animated film like Coco and the inhuman monstrosity that James Dean's prospective grave robbers will soon unleash upon whoever pays to see their movie. One is the work of loving creators who work from scratch to craft something authentic, while the other is distinctly inauthentic, with its purveyors appropriating something they didn't create in the hope of evoking emotions in the audience that the likeness of the living person might have done had he been alive. Of course, to even attempt to compare the digital avatar to an actual, human actor, which is something the sorry excuses for filmmakers have attempted to do, isn't something that anyone with even a vague sense of human decency should do.

This is one of those times in which we, as the audience, have infinitely more power than the high-powered Hollywood producers and their ilk. Whether it's a stunt being pulled by some two-bit, unknown filmmakers like these guys, or whether it's the big players like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony or anyone else trying to sell us movies with resurrected stars, we have to reject this affront to storytelling. The art of movies is part of what makes us human, and there is quite honestly nothing human about what could follow if this becomes, to paraphrase Elijah Wood, "a thing."