10 Movies To Blame For The Current State Of Movies
8. Digital De-Aging - X-Men: The Last Stand
Digital de-aging is all the rage right now in Hollywood, with filmmakers harnessing cutting-edge CGI to create impressive - if not quite impressive enough - youthful versions of some of the industry's most iconic faces.
The real test case for this was 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, which infamously de-aged Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen for an opening flashback sequence, smoothing out their faces in a manner which better resembled creepy waxwork models.
Yet casual viewers didn't seem to much mind, and so that was enough for Hollywood to ramp up their de-aging efforts in the years that followed.
Memorably, Jeff Bridges was extensively de-aged to play Clu in 2010's Tron: Legacy, and since then the tech has been used pervasively in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Blade Runner 2049, It Chapter Two, Gemini Man, Terminator: Dark Fate, The Irishman, and countless times in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Results vary between projects, of course: Blade Runner 2049's de-aging was subtle and brilliant, and despite its flaws, it served a major storytelling function in The Irishman.
But too often the tech feels like Hollywood's next big gimmick, and it frequently turns out more offputting than immersive.
The techniques are only going to get better, for sure, but it's obviously a slippery slope going from this to digital recreations of late actors.
It's already happened with Peter Cushing in Rogue One, and James Dean is reportedly next up for the digital resurrection treatment. Yikes.