![]() ![]() This definition of a virtual actor can range from composing a face or a head on the body of a substitute (Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Brandon Lee in “The Crow”, Oliver Reed in “Gladiator”, Jeff Bridges in “Tron: Legacy”) to use age smoothing software (also Pitt in “Benjamin Button”, Robert Downey Jr. (The chrome form of the T-1000 in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” recreated in a computer from Robert Patrick’s reference footage, can also be viewed this way for our purposes.) We will only discuss the descendants of “Rendez-vous à Montréal” (1987), the computer animated short featuring 3D approximations of Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart. Serkis gets paid like an actor gets paid, he wears a costume like an actor (in this case, a digital costume), and Gollum’s on-screen presence always contains Serkis’ performance. In order to reduce the scope of this article, let’s clarify that a motion capture actor like Andy Serkis is not a virtual actor. The greatest irony is that a movie that explicitly reflects on how synthetic humans deserve empathy and inclusion is blind to the antithetical practice of using virtual actresses to speed up their expiration dates. One might be a robot and the other an AI, but the film tries to emphasize how real their love is. ![]() There is a scene in “Blade Runner 2049” that acknowledges this truth, when holographic girlfriend Joi consumes her relationship with K by projecting her image onto the replicating fleshy body of prostitute Mariette. To be fair, isn’t every actor ultimately a virtual actor? Just a few bouncing photons, first from their divine cheekbones onto a raw or digital negative plate, then from the reflective surface of the screen into our dark, dilated eyes. And this is the most shocking example of a disturbing trend in new technology of virtual actors treating actresses more imperceptibly than actors, both on and off screen. This is another Rachel model clone made by Tyrell Corporation. ![]() This is the toughest and ugliest scene in “Blade Runner 2049”: Rachel, digitally recreated as a young Sean Young, walking around the screen, tilting her head a little, articulating a few lines of dialogue and then doing herself. (Maybe that’s why it bombed at the box office, with just 29% of ticket sales going to women.) What starts out as an egalitarian attitude towards nudity (there are flabby penises on some inert replicant bodies on display in a lab morgue) quickly spin around the same ancient area of female flesh, usually as a prelude to mutilation, objectification, or a bullet to the head. “Blade Runner 2049” is extraordinarily brutal towards female bodies. The only recurring theme that is crystal clear is the scalability of women. Conversely, the philosophical themes of “Blade Runner 2049” are more elusive, if not downright obscure (like its cinematography) and let Ridley Scott say it: “ damn it was way too long. This compassion is what is supposed to separate us from the androids, and the collective human failure to ever pass a Voight-Kampff test is the knife edge paradox (the edge of the blade?) Which is part of what makes ” Blade Runner “original such an intriguing cult puzzle. ![]()
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