Why It's Wrong to Resurrect Dead Actors With CGI, From Furious 7 to The Flash's Christopher Reeve Cameo

I think Hollywood may have finally crossed the line with its increasingly brazen resurrections of deceased actors to cash in on nostalgia points, and I want to explore why Christopher Reeve's posthumous cameo in The Flash is so disturbing, whether or not Reeve's estate gave its blessing and whether or not people in your theater gasped, cheered or cried at it. My answer is that it may be legal to do this with the permission of a family or an estate, but it is unethical.

Audiences were willing to accept the recreating of Paul Walker's likeness to complete Furious 7 when Walker died midway through production. Now studios are routinely reanimating actors like Carrie Fisher, Harold Ramis and Christopher Reeve, significantly long after these actors have passed. So what are the ethics of doing this, and is it okay if the family approves?

Paul Walker's Furious 7 recreation changed my career, and Steven Spielberg has dipped his toes in too

Before you say that Steven Spielberg would never do this kind of thing, he did start to dip his toes into it by recreating the Overlook Hotel from The Shining in Ready Player One, a movie that I will never ever break down because it's terrible.

Over eight years ago, in April 2015, one of the first pieces I ever wrote was a brief analysis of the technology behind the late Paul Walker's CGI recreation in Furious 7. It was our first viral success, it shifted our focus toward film analysis, and it altered my career forever. The overcoming of film production obstacles has always fascinated me, and the exploitation of on screen talent has become a major concern of mine.

Bruce Lee's Game of Death and Brandon Lee's The Crow were completed out of necessity

Using post production gimmicks to complete a dead actor's performance used to be a matter of necessity, and it wasn't always respectful. Bruce Lee died during the making of Game of Death, originally a 1972 film, The Game of Death, which was later edited again into the 1978 Game of Death using portions of Lee's footage from the 1972 film and from Enter the Dragon. They filled in Lee's performance using his stunt doubles and, insanely, in one scene taped a cut out of his face on a mirror to cover his stand in's reflection.

His son Brandon Lee, part of what some call the Lee family curse, tragically died on the set of the 1994 film The Crow from a gunshot wound. His stunt double Chad Stahelski filled in, and they superimposed Brandon Lee's head over his body. Because of the flash of lightning, it actually worked out a lot better. Stahelski would go on to direct all the John Wick films.

Gladiator's Oliver Reed showed technology enhancing a performance, while The Sopranos stumbled

In 2000's Gladiator, Oliver Reed died during production, and they reused Reed's face from other scenes to digitally recreate his likeness in later scenes. This was really the first example of technology truly enhancing the actor's performance rather than the film just trying to "pull a fast one on us." They repurposed Proximo's earlier line about winning freedom to turn the moment into a solid callback.

Sadly, a year after this, The Sopranos season 3, episode 2 used "some of the all-time worst face mapping" of the late Nancy Marchand as Tony's mother, Livia. They also had to digitally recut Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mockingjay Part 2, but really just limited him to reaction shots in that movie.

Furious 7's Paul Walker remains the highest profile and most delicately handled case

The highest profile instance of this was the death of Paul Walker during the production of Furious 7. Peter Jackson's effects company Weta Digital created 260 shots of a computer generated face of Paul Walker, plus 90 repurposed shots from outtakes and older footage.

They used Paul's brothers, Caleb and Cody, as stand ins, as well as another actor. Even today it's considered one of the most delicately handled and respectful times this has been done.

Rogue One's Grand Moff Tarkin marked the turn from emergencies to planned resurrections

Here is where we hit a turning point, from production emergencies to films thinking, from their conception, what if we could resurrect somebody. In 2016's Rogue One, Wilhuff Tarkin was recreated. He was originally played by Peter Cushing, who died in 1994. Guy Henry played Tarkin on set and provided the voice, and ILM created a wholly digital version of Tarkin's head and mapped it onto Henry's performance. The final result with Tarkin, and later in the film with a digital Carrie Fisher as Leia, had mixed results, especially when it came to the mouths.

But ILM wasn't done. They went back to rely on archive footage for General Leia in The Rise of Skywalker. As the effects team described it, they cut out the face of Carrie Fisher playing Princess Leia and built a digital Princess Leia around the face, hair and costume, which meant she could have a new hairstyle and a new costume to make her feel unique to that project. Look at even the way they talk about it, "cut out her face," and the way they play dress up with her like a doll. Also, at this point in Leia's life, she was General Leia.

Loving a character's appearance is not the same as connecting with the actor's soul

These are artists with, I'm sure, a lot of respect for Carrie Fisher, and I know I'm being hard on them. But I think artists can sometimes love a subject without realizing that their love is a Pygmalion fascination with the aesthetics of an actor's appearance and their memory of the character, and not a true connection to the soul breathed into that role by a human being in a particular take, on a particular day, on a particular set, sometime in history.

As I see it, "that irreplicable spark is what makes film acting magical and why the audience will always be able to see the difference."

California law requires estate permission, which Cushing, Fisher and Ramis's families reportedly gave

Legally, in the state of California, film productions must obtain the permission of the deceased actor's estate to use their image, their voice or their likeness, after a state law passed in 1985. Reportedly, Peter Cushing's estate gave permission to use his likeness in Rogue One, as did Carrie Fisher's brother Todd for Leia in The Rise of Skywalker.

Similar permission was given by the family of the late Harold Ramis for the conjuring of the ghost of Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Director Jason Reitman, son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, grew up on the set of the Ghostbusters films and was close with everybody in the cast. The idea of them coming back as ghosts was something discussed by Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd for a future Ghostbusters movie someday, and Jason Reitman said that Ramis's wife and daughter were frequently on set and in the editing room.

No one had confirmed Reeve's estate approved The Flash cameo, and George Reeves left no estate to ask

When it comes to the producers on The Flash reanimating Christopher Reeve as Superman, remember that Reeve died in 2004. Some outlets speculated that they would have had to get permission from Reeve's estate, but at the time I wrote this, no one had actually confirmed it. Others pointed out that George Reeves left no family behind after his tragic death in 1959, so there was really no estate to approve his cameo.

Circulating at the time was an excerpt from Christopher Reeve's 1982 interview with Playgirl magazine, in which he said that "one of the few things you have to hang on to is your integrity about your work and I think work defines a great deal of who you are."

Integrity and an actor's known intent matter more than an estate's permission

That's what I think this comes down to: integrity. It's not enough to get permission from the family or some estate that, for all we know, could be run by descendants the actor hated and who might just want a payout. You have to honor the known intent of the actor when they were still alive. Paul Walker, Oliver Reed, even Bruce Lee knew what movies they were signing up for and probably would have wanted some version of the project to still be completed.

But Peter Cushing never signed up for a Star Wars prequel where another actor would do an impression of him and wear his face. Audrey Hepburn never signed up to be in a commercial for Dove chocolate in 2014. And for Christopher Reeve and George Reeves, there was just no possible way for them to consent to being rendered as "ghostly reanimated puppets" in a future Flash movie. It may be legal with the permission of a family or an estate, but it is unethical.

If you want to honor these men's memories, just use some of the great archive footage from one of their films or TV episodes, something seen from the outside in, and don't use CGI to make them react to new things. Otherwise, "I promise you this road will eventually lead to an Avengers Secret Wars with a digitally recreated Chadwick Boseman waving at us from the other side of a ... portal," while an AI version of Stan Lee tap dances in, winking at us.

I know this is a controversial subject, so where do you stand: is a family's or estate's approval enough to justify bringing a late actor back with CGI?