CGI Technology, Fake Actors Harm Real Stars

For more than a decade, I've been vexed by Hollywood's embrace of digital technology, specifically the various forms of CGI, motion capture, and performance capture that give directors the tools to fabricate lifelike portrayals from strings of ones and zeroes. Now that audiences have wholeheartedly embraced "Avatar," which showcases the most photo-realistic digital performances ever created, the genie is almost completely out of the bottle, so it seems like the right time to revisit the themes that have concerned me since the earliest days of CGI fakery.

I'm not alone in this opinion. I started writing this essay several days ago, only to encounter an article on the front page of today's "Los Angeles Times" that addressed this very theme. But rather than rendering my essay redundant, Rachel Abramowitz's piece amplified why the topic at hand needs thoughtful consideration: The rise of fake movie actors is happening simultaneous with the fall of real movie actors.

Around this time last year, film journalists wrote one thinkpiece after another lamenting the dearth of grown-up dramas in cineplexes. Frequently cited in this brace of articles were "Duplicity" and "State of Play," two intelligent, star-driven dramas that failed to find significant audiences despite significant marketing campaigns. Pundits opined that if neither Julia Roberts ("Duplicity") nor Russell Crowe ("State of Play") could persuade viewers to see intelligent movies, then what hope did intelligent movies in general have in the current marketplace?

Despite the glaring exception of "The Blind Side," which is an old-fashioned star-driven, feel-good movie rather than a straight adult drama, the climate for grown-up movies is still atrocious, but it's too simple to point the finger at the drama genre. The problem, I think, is the fact that movie stars aren't really movie stars anymore.

Whereas movie stars traditionally draw relatively consistent audiences from one movie to the next, only flopping when they veer too far outside of their comfort zones, lately stars are wobbling unpredictably between box-office hits and box-office disasters. George Clooney scored a hit with "Up in the Air," but flopped in "The Men Who Stare at Goats." Sandra Bullock succeeded with "The Blind Side," and failed with "All About Steve." Even more dramatically, some stars are teetering back and forth between theatrical releases and straight-to-video movies. After a year that included "2012," "The Messenger," and "Zombieland," Woody Harrelson's next movie, "Defendor," will debut in a Netflix queue near you. Russell Crowe will play "Robin Hood" in theaters this summer -- after he appears in "Tenderness," available soon at your neighborhood Blockbuster Video. And Michael Douglas will soon reprise his signature role as Gordon Gekko for the big-budget sequel "Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps." His last movie, the thriller "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," opened in a whopping five theaters just weeks before its DVD release.

Why don't movie stars carry the clout they used to? I think three factors are involved.

First, audience tastes have changed. I talk to young movie-goers whenever I can to see what informs their decision-making, and the through-line appears to be that they want it all. Instead of blindly following actors they like from movie to movie, they want each movie to have its own unique appeal. That sounds obvious, but it's not, because Hollywood is driven by the business model of repeating past successes. For today's young movie-goers, who are more jaded and movie-savvy than those in any previous generation, it's all about the ad campaign. If the publicity push for a movie makes it look sufficiently cool, the movie's a hit, and the presence of a movie star may or may not be a key element of the ad campaign.

Which brings in the second factor: marketing. It's all about brand names right now, which is why Harry Potter is a star but Daniel Radcliffe is not, and it's why Robert Pattinson shouldn't hold his breath waiting to see if his latest movie, "Remember Me," does anything near the business generated by the "Twilight" films. As the failure of several notable "pre-sold" movies demonstrates, Hollywood hasn't quite grasped how this new reality works; the tricks that worked for selling "Transformers" didn't work for selling "Speed Racer." But both were mega-budget movies in which actors are afterthoughts, the current coin of the Hollywood realm.

Consider this: Megan Fox became a quasi-star because the way she fills out a wife beater pleased fans of "Transformers." It's safe to say than any other starlet could have enjoyed the same career boost, which means that the presence of Megan Fox as a specific individual probably meant zilch to the original film's bottom line. Her return appearance undoubtedly benefited the sequel, but her appeal will presumably diminish as the franchise ages. Harsh as it sounds, the box-office allure of a slinky 20-year-old is predicated on the continued existence of a slinky 20-year-old.

And that brings us to the third factor: technology. As Jeff Bridges notes in today's "Los Angeles Times" story, it's possible to envision a future in which studios build cyber-actors built from the component parts of real people. "We'll be turned into combinations," he said. "A director will be able to say, 'I want 60% Clooney; give me 10% Bridges; and throw some Charles Bronson in there.' They'll come up with a new guy who will look like nobody who has ever lived and that person or thing will be huge."

Or, to return to the example of Megan Fox, what's to stop producers from creating a CGI version of the actress as she appears today? If the real 20-year-old Fox got audiences excited in 2009, wouldn't a computer fabrication of the same thing get audiences excited in 2019? Because, ultimately, I think Bridges' scenario credits the studios with more imagination than is appropriate. Rather than gene-splicing new composite stars, I'm more inclined to think that studios will try to pull sleazy tricks like artificially prolonging the youth of beautiful starlets -- or artificially raising fallen stars from the grave. I'm absolutely certain, for instance, that someone inside the Warner Bros. corporate octopus has floated the idea of creating a digital cameo for Heath Ledger's Joker character in some future "Batman" movie. The makers of the last "Terminator" movie achieved a similar same stunt by creating "new" footage of a 1980s-era Arnold Schwarzenegger, so the precedent has already been set.

To me, that's the danger of CGI in a nutshell: Once an actor's physical data has been digitized, the actor is disposable. It's then a short leap to a dark future in which actors are built from scratch. Why pay the next Megan Fox to appear in a movie when a computer can build a starlet with even more appealing physical traits?

Proponents of the performance-capture technology in "Avatar" claim the technology benefits actors. "One hundred present of my focus is on the actors," James Cameron told the "Times." "I'm not thinking about the lighting, the dolly, or walking around . . . to light the shot." Well, shouldn't you be thinking about those things, Jim? Isn't that what filmmaking is all about? Isn't the sublime joy of creating films found in the myriad ways an artist meets creative challenges? And isn't the satisfaction of filmmaking found in the moment when one realizes that a great performance has been captured on film, or video, or digital media, or whatever? Isn't the art of film the art of making permanent something that existed for only one moment in time?

Put all of this together, and you begin to see why film actors have good reason to fear the future. Contemporary audiences don't feel loyalty toward movie stars. Hollywood is learning how to build ad campaigns without the focal point of a movie star. And now technology exists that can reduce actors to the physical models for performances that will be completed and polished inside of a computer. It's inarguable that the industry was overdue for a market correction, because the days of the $25 million movie-star paychecks were never going to last, but the current dimming of movie-star luster may be nothing compared to what happens to film actors in the years to come.