Movies That Have Digitally Re-Created Actors

Captain Marvel Isn't the Only Recent Movie to Digitally Re-Create Actors — Here Are the Others

One of the key players in Captain Marvel is Nick Fury, the character who has been the glue holding together the Marvel Cinematic Universe since his first appearance in the stinger of 2008's Iron Man. In the present-day Marvel films, we've gotten to know Samuel L. Jackson's character as the tough boss of SHIELD, but in Captain Marvel, we meet a younger version of Fury, since the film is set in the 1990s, over a decade before the bulk of the MCU. Rather than recast the iconic role, the filmmakers brought Jackson back, but with a twist: they used digital technology to de-age the actor to play a younger Fury who looks just like Jackson did in the '90s.

Captain Marvel isn't the first film to use CGI and other digital tricks to recreate an actor. In most cases, the technology has been used to fill in for an actor who's passed away, but there are a whole variety of techniques that have been used over the past decade or so. Ahead, check out five more movies that famously used digital technology to recreate an actor (or two!), and read all about how they pulled it off. (And stay tuned for Netflix's The Irishman, which will notably de-age both Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino.)

Image Source: Everett Collection

1. Gladiator (2000)

On a break from filming the action epic, actor Oliver Reed died of a heart attack, leaving some of his scenes unfinished. To complete the film on schedule and without going wildly over budget by having to completely reshoot with a new actor, director Ridley Scott and his screenwriters retooled the film's finale to require less of Reed's character, then used a body double and CGI to recreate Reed for a few minutes of footage.

Image Source: Everett Collection

2. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

The legendary British actor and director Sir Laurence Olivier died in 1989, but was resurrected for the 2004 sci-fi adventure film, which was created entirely using CGI and motion capture. Olivier "played" the film's villain, but he only appears towards the end as a hologram. To achieve the effect, Entertainment Weekly reported that Olivier's likeness was culled from archival footage and clips from his movies, with a new actor recording the dialogue.

Image Source: Paramount Pictures

3. Superman Returns (2006)

In 1978, Marlon Brando played Superman's father Jor-El in the original Superman film. For 2006's Superman Returns, the filmmaking team wanted to bring him back in a cameo — but Brando had died in 2004. According to IGN, the team got permission from Brando's estate to sift through unused footage from the 1978 film to find visuals and dialogue that could be used in a new scene.

Image Source: Everett Collection

4. Furious 7 (2015)

After actor Paul Walker died in a car crash in 2013, the fate of Furious 7 came into question, since it had barely begun filming. Through a mixture of CGI and the assistance of Walker's brothers as doubles, the filmmakers recreated his character for the 2015 film.

In a Hollywood Reporter article, the filmmakers explained the basic process. In some shots, camera angles were used to conceal the fact that one of Walker's brothers was doubling for him. In others, which required clear looks at his face, the process was more in-depth. Caleb or Cody Walker would perform the scene, then filmmakers would composite it with pre-existing footage of Paul Walker, often re-lit and re-edited, or a CGI recreation of his face, using the previous footage and digital scans of the Walker brothers as references.

Image Source: Everett Collection

5. Rogue One (2016)

The Star Wars anthology film, set just before the original A New Hope, actually used digital techniques for two separate characters. In the final moments of the film, Princess Leia is revealed in a brief cameo. According to The New York Times, the moment was achieved by using a body double — Norwegian actress Ingvild Deila — and digital recreation of footage of Carrie Fisher from A New Hope for her head and costume.

Another character was digitally recreated for Rogue One, and for far more than one scene. Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, died in 1994, but Tarkin has a major supporting role in the film. The filmmakers used a body double during filming, wearing motion-capture technology so that the team could add a digital recreation of Cushing's face. The process was laborious, with small details such as lighting and the shape of the mouth while speaking all coming into play to create a figure that seemed realistic.

Image Source: Walt Disney Studios

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