A sandbox pertaining to digital resurrection.
The age of CGI has brought along various techniques that go beyond practical effects, including new roles for long-dead actors, often done via a Digital Head Swap.
Of course, being that actors tend to be more regarded after their deaths, this is a controversial practice, especially when it’s a film the original actor wasn’t involved in. When not done well, it can also fall into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
This is often used when the actor has died in the middle of production.
For advertising uses, digital or not, see The Dead Rise to Advertise.
Real Life examples:
Film - Animation- An Ur-Example is in the 1987 computer animated short Rendez-vous in Montreal, which used virtual actors of Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart.
- One of the earliest uses was in The Crow (1994). During filming, Brandon Lee was accidentally killed by a dummy round from a prop gun. The script was rewritten with body doubles, changed angles, reused footage and digital insertion of Lee’s face on the body double in closeup scenes.
- One of the selling points of Forrest Gump back when it came out was its use of manipulated archive footage, allowing Gump to meet John F. Kennedy, for example.
- Oliver Reed unexpectedly died during the filming of Gladiator, so a 3D digital mask of Reed’s face was made and inserted into the climax of the film. It still holds up well today.
- In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, archival interview footage of Laurence Olivier was digitally manipulated, disguising the splices with glitches in the hologram.
- Marlon Brando reappears in Superman Returns as Jor-El, stitched from heavily manipulated footage of his performance in the first film.
- Paul Walker was able to reappear in Furious 7 using an extensive combination of old footage and a digital mask of Walker’s face.
- Guy Henry played Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One with a CGI head of Peter Cushing over it.
- The same film also featured a 1970s Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the ending.
- The CGI method used for Tarkin was considered for Leia in the sequel trilogy, but ultimately averted for the remaining parts of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, with it using footage from the previous two films for Leia.
- James Dean was controversially resurrected 65 years after his death for Finding Jack, provoking outcry from Chris Evans, Elijah Wood and Zelda Williams, whose father has prohibited use of his image for 25 years after his death.
- Listen to Me Marlon combines audio recordings of Marlon Brando with a 1990s scan of his head, done in a low-tech style.
- The Trope Codifier is Tupac Shakur’s "hologram" (actually a version of an old stage trick known as "Pepper’s ghost") performance at Coachella in 2012.
- At the beginning of The New '20s, Whitney Houston went on a posthumous tour via hologram. Unlike the Tupac performance, it does not use Pepper's ghost, instead using a military-grade projector with various tricks to appear 3D.
- The creators behind Finding Jack launched Worldwide XR for future digital resurrections, holding rights to various people from Aaliyah to Malcolm X.
In-Universe Examples
Live Action TV- In the Black Mirror episode "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too", Ashley O has one after she falls into a coma with "Ashley Eternal", a hologram that can dance, sing and record Ashley O music.
