-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
The digital de-aging of DeNiro in The Irishman is terrible
- Thread starter NTGYK
- Start date
Let's keep in mind that this character is quite gaunt. Deniro lost a lot of weight for this lean wolf look.Here's what DeNiro looked like when he was 30:
You are more describing the exact problem: they want to just quickly deage current DeNiro, but it is uncanny valley for us because we know how he looked like. it is also the reason why they shouldnt until they can pass that valley. Especially for people with pronounced facial features that changed over time.
What's more convincing than this:
When people know what to look for and are actively hunting for mistakes then they'll find them. The majority of people will overlook the slight uncanny valley nature of even the best de-aging/digital humans.
If I showed that to my wife she would have no idea that wasn't just Will Smith made to look younger. Show it to my mum and she'd just assume that it's just normal Will Smith. Hell I think I'm really good at spotting dodgy VFX and even I was amazed that the character's entirely digital and not just de-aged.
I think some people think being able to spot if something is 'fake' automatically means that the FX are crap.
Those sam people actively look for flaws when you tell them something is CG too. Hell you can even trick them into making a fool of themselves and show them a real picture, say it's CG, and they'll insist they know is CG because at the end of the day it's more about being a contrarian than anything else. 😂
The one is Travis Barker in his 30th, the other is Frank Sheeran, a way bigger guy than Travis was:Here's what DeNiro looked like when he was 30:
This is how The Irishman thinks he looks:
He looks really weird especially since we have so much footage of him when he was younger.
it is not about how the actor looked, when he was younger, but the character he is playing.
This just makes it look like De Niro lost the ability to emote compared to his younger self.
This is how The Irishman thinks he looks:
These threads are pointless because it's entirely subjective. What looks good to you may look bad to someone else. Whether or not you find the model to be uncanny is based on your familiarity to the person's face and what features you happen to notice.
It's obvious by the various opinions in this thread that the de-aging tech is as subjective as any other effect. It works for some and not others from film to film. In the case of The Irishman Scorsese was more concerned with capturing DeNiro's performance, specifically the eyes. So his creative goals aren't going to line with a certain amount of the audience that thinks the young Sheeran should look how they remember DeNiro looked at that time, plus add in sensitivity to digital manipulation.
It's interesting that he chose to digitally alter DeNiro's eye colour to blue though, which I've seen reviewers note as off-putting.
The cases in Star Wars weren't de-aging is why. In the Marvel movies they had the actual actors doing the performances. In SW they CGd younger faces on actors who looked liked the originals
Yup.
Leia and Tarkin were complete digital recreations of actors heads and fully rendered.
Lola which does work for Marvel do their work in compositing and actually do not render 3D objects for their magic.
Speaking of Tron Legacy, do you guys think they will remaster it with a better CGI tech for the dudes face? Still doesn't look that good.
Yeah i dont see the issue with these most of the time. They look like passable and younger versions of the character they're portraying. Why are you comparing them to their real life counterpart?
Sheeran believably looks like the same character but at different stages of his life. Young Sheeran isnt supposed to be young DeNiro. They've had completely different life experiences.
Vanity Fair had an article discussing the de-ageing where they say the younger characters looked like believable decades younger but complained that they didnt look like the real versions of the actors themselves. Come on now.
Last edited:
Tron was done by Digital Domain (who also did Benjamin Button) .. Nothing to do with Disney.
Anyways, 90% of the de-aging/aging done in Hollywood productions is done by LolaFX (an independent studio) in the past 15 years (this includes the Marevl movies).
I saw the Gemini man trailer and young will smith looked terrible. No where near on par with Marvel's stuff. Weird to see people praise it here.
I wonder when we'll start to just see deepfake being used in movies. With complete control over the footage they're shooting, actor's hair and clothing it should be much easier and cheaper to make the face fit in.
I really think the issue with CG Tarkin was the effects crew deciding to tweak the expressions of the mocap actor attempting to make him move closer to Peter Cushing's mannerisms. That likely just made his entire movement feel more artificial.
I really think the issue with CG Tarkin was the effects crew deciding to tweak the expressions of the mocap actor attempting to make him move closer to Peter Cushing's mannerisms. That likely just made his entire movement feel more artificial.
Last edited:
I think DeNiro would have looked about as 'de-aged' with just a hair dye job. OP is right, it does not look good.
Last edited:
The pic as a soldier doesn't look that bad, the next two... are you saying he's supposed to be 30 in those OP? Because you made it sound like that. Please tell me this is a mistake.
I think it looks fine.
Also just because Deniro doesn't look like young Deniro from Taxi Driver or the Godfather doesn't mean that is a problem with the tech or budget, it could be the directorial/production direction the director and producer wanted.
Like... when I first saw Godfather II, I didn't even know that was Robert Deniro... until I saw it mentioned and was like "what the fuck..." and then it's obvious that it's De Niro, you see his trademark expressions, but at first I Didn't see it at all.
Godfather II De Niro is quiet, reserved, he takes the back seat and lets other people doing the talking... It's Vito, he's calculating, speaks in few words, doesn't fly off the handle. This is a far from from the characters he ends up playing, even mob characters, who are the scene...
De Niro as an adult plays very different roles and people than De Niro as a young person. His role in Taxi Drive and Godfather II are so different than his roles in even Casino, a Bronx Tale, etc... And especially different from any movies from the "Robert De Niro Either Loves Money or Hates His Family" phase of his career.
Also just because Deniro doesn't look like young Deniro from Taxi Driver or the Godfather doesn't mean that is a problem with the tech or budget, it could be the directorial/production direction the director and producer wanted.
Like... when I first saw Godfather II, I didn't even know that was Robert Deniro... until I saw it mentioned and was like "what the fuck..." and then it's obvious that it's De Niro, you see his trademark expressions, but at first I Didn't see it at all.
Godfather II De Niro is quiet, reserved, he takes the back seat and lets other people doing the talking... It's Vito, he's calculating, speaks in few words, doesn't fly off the handle. This is a far from from the characters he ends up playing, even mob characters, who are the scene...
De Niro as an adult plays very different roles and people than De Niro as a young person. His role in Taxi Drive and Godfather II are so different than his roles in even Casino, a Bronx Tale, etc... And especially different from any movies from the "Robert De Niro Either Loves Money or Hates His Family" phase of his career.
Last edited:
The Marvel ones are pretty average too except maybe Jackson but he looks young anyway and doesn't have that weird heaven glow CGI white people have. Tarkin was poor, especially when he moved but the guy is dead so tougher than the others. I'll have to see more but I'm more distracted by the hair, necks the more I see this tech, it's getting better.
Yeah that's a fuckin lie. It's common for actors and directors to downplay the work of vfx artists, but I read a whole article about how they digitally de-aged Kurt for GOTG2, there's a lot more that goes into it than makeup.
The techniques used have gotten pretty impressive though, personally I barely noticed in Captain Marvel.
Trrence Stamp in The Limey is the absolute BEST it's ever been. I mean look at this shit man!
to
subtle, accurate, brilliant. Heck even the film grain effect is spot on. GENIUS.
Shoutout to Christopher Lambert in Highlander also. They basically make a 700 year old man look like he was thirty - although the hair is a bit off.
to
subtle, accurate, brilliant. Heck even the film grain effect is spot on. GENIUS.
Shoutout to Christopher Lambert in Highlander also. They basically make a 700 year old man look like he was thirty - although the hair is a bit off.
/s
Deepfakes, and this tech, only really works when you have tons of reference images and footage of the person. That was another reason it was difficult to recreate a de-aged Tarkin, because there wasn't much footage and it was old and presumably not good quality
I don't know what movie this is, but the film grain was probably to minimize the imperfections
Haha for real. People really acting like that fucking waxworks nightmare was just as good as Sam Jackson in his prime XD Kurt Russell legit looked like modern day Kurt Russell with a bad wig and a ton of plastic surgery.
Honestly Josh Brolin playing a young Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black 3 worked way better than any of these fucking golems.
Last edited:
No matter how good it looks or will look in the near future with improved tech, I'll never be a fan of this digitally aging or de-aging actors. If you want to portray e.g. a 70 years old character, get an actor who actually is in that age range. Same if you want a younger version of the character. It's what movies and series always did before CGI became a thing. And the movies weren't worse for it.
It makes even less sense if there aren't even different aged versions of a character in a movie.
Also I hope what was done with Peter Cushing in Star Wars doesn't become more common as the tech improves. I find it tactless to be honest.
It makes even less sense if there aren't even different aged versions of a character in a movie.
Also I hope what was done with Peter Cushing in Star Wars doesn't become more common as the tech improves. I find it tactless to be honest.
Honestly, I haven't seen very many good looking implementations of de-aging.
I'm hopeful about the Will Smith movie, but I am prepared for the inevitable moments where it just doesn't look right. The De Niro de-aging does indeed look awful. In the trailers, at least.
I'm hopeful about the Will Smith movie, but I am prepared for the inevitable moments where it just doesn't look right. The De Niro de-aging does indeed look awful. In the trailers, at least.
That doesn't make any sense. Of course it matters. If it doesn't look like him (or otherwise looks like a poor computer-generated copy) it takes some people out of the moment and makes scenes less enjoyable as a consequence. Just like any other instance of bad CG fucking up a scene.
yeah it looks like they left a lot of old guy stuff in there. The pronounced facial lines and the big ears come to mind. I wonder if that was done on purpose so the audience relates to the character? I dont know I am certainly not in the business.
Let's be fair here -- Real Life 90's Samuel Jackson actually looks way older than Marvel's 90's Samuel Jackson:
Jackson looks like he was crossed with Stromae in the CGI posted in the OP.
I disagree that it looks like a poor-computer generated anything. The cgi looks fine; so if that's the point, I already disagree.
But if the critique is that it doesn't look like Robert Dinero from the 70's. Well Scorsese isn't trying to accurately depict Robert Dinero in the first place, because the movie isn't about Dinero; he's telling the story of the "Irishman". It shouldn't matter in the sense that young Frank Sheehan didn't look like young Robert Dinero. Why should they look the same? It adds nothing to story one way or the other.
When people know what to look for and are actively hunting for mistakes then they'll find them. The majority of people will overlook the slight uncanny valley nature of even the best de-aging/digital humans.
If I showed that to my wife she would have no idea that wasn't just Will Smith made to look younger. Show it to my mum and she'd just assume that it's just normal Will Smith. Hell I think I'm really good at spotting dodgy VFX and even I was amazed that the character's entirely digital and not just de-aged.
I think some people think being able to spot if something is 'fake' automatically means that the FX are crap.
Young Will in the trailers looks pretty fake and distracting, but I have to admit this shot here looks real impressive. Something about it still looks too 'clean'.. but on first glance I wouldn't have known this was pure cgi