Digital Schwarzenegger Set For New 'Terminator' 309
Hugh Pickens writes "The Governator revealed this week that he may appear in the upcoming 'Terminator Salvation,' but when he said he didn't want to act, he left many fans scratching their heads. Turns out Schwarzenegger has been secretly working with helmer McG and the effects team to reprise his signature role ... without lifting a finger. 'I made it very clear that I don't have the time to do the movie,' says Schwarzenegger. 'I said that I would be willing to be in the movie if they get the technology together, and so they are working on that right now.' A body-cast mold of Schwarzenegger, created when he first appeared as the muscle-ripped cyborg, provided the basis for a digital-effects version of his famous character so the figure can appear in 'Terminator Salvation' as a living, breathing actor. Warner first screens the movie in early May, and opens it May 21. 'I think it's cool to continue on with the franchise ... in case I want to jump over again and get into the acting after I'm through here,' adds Schwarzenegger."
Duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
Soon we no longer need actors and we just need digitized versions of them.
So we may see new movies with Bogart, Wayne, Hepburn, Garbo and many others.
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Fixed that for you.
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Not to mention Fatty Arbuckle...
Fixed that for you.
Re:Duh! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention Keanu Reeves...
Fixed that for you.
I thought he was already a robot?
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Fixed that for you.
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Bill Pullman's presidential speech in Independence Day is better than any speech our last five presidents have given, just putting that out there.
That's because it was written by a professional writer and rehearsed dozens of times.
Oh, wait...
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That was a cool thread and it all fit.
I wonder if that is an archetype and there are silent movie/vaudeville performers before Fatty who we have simply forgotten about?
Re:Duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at classical depictions of Bacchus...never skinny.
Re:Duh! (Score:4, Interesting)
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There's no way the SAG would let this happen if he didn't get paid just like he was there, because it sets a very very bad precedent, much worse than letting him get paid just as if he were there. Or at least that's my interpretation of their mindset, I could be fuck-all wrong. Who knows? Somebody will probably chime in to regulate me if I'm wrong, which usually gets an answer faster than just asking around here, so I'm not sure what to hope for.
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I'm sure that SAG isn't even an issue here. I have a feeling that Arnold is more than capable of creating an agreement with the studios that he is happy with.
That aside, I think your point would be a valid one for a less well known role played by someone who didnt have such clout in the role - so good point anyway (at least IMHO).
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We still don't have the voice technology down yet. Participation by the governator's larynx is presumably still required.
But someday we will all have our own computer-generated Majel Barrett voice!
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If someone can do this, he's hired: :)
http://eeuauaughhhuauaahh.ytmnd.com/ [ytmnd.com]
(No crap, I promise. But turn on the sound.
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Soon we no longer need actors and we just need digitized versions of them.
Computers can't act. Until Dr. Soong comes along and perfects a 'positronic' brain, this still statement cannot be true. Even animators need reference.
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, wouldn't Keanu Reeves have made the perfect Data... or Spock?
I mean, no visible emotions at all... Even Nimoy couldn't do that.
They would have had to skip that episode where he got a emotion chip though...
Re:Duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
You can reference some who acts like they are upset, or you can reference someone who is actually upset. Or happy, or whatever.
Acting is far more complex than chaining together a handful of emotions listed in a kid's book.
As much as actor like to poof it out into some sort of magical mystical thing, acting is just voice and expression.
Yeah, that's why all those youtube videos and student projects have such wonderful acting. On an unrelated topic, space travel's not a magical mystical thing, it's just an air-tight tube with thrust coming out the back.
These will be created digitally eventually. Based on some RnD stuff I have seen recently, this will happen a lot sooner then people think.
No, it won't. Just like mocap didn't kill keyframed animation. Just like photographs didn't kill painting. Jsut like TV didn't kill movies. What would really be needed to pull off automated digital acting is for a computer to have talent. That breakthru is much farther away than tech demos imply.
They could easily make a completly different movie starring ';woody' and 'Buzz' Just use there models in a new setting
Yes, with the right acting talent supporting it. Go watch the maknig of videos of Pixar's movies, there's all kinds of acting involved. Heck, go find that book the Illusion of Life. Look at how Disney animated movies back in the 40's. You're going to find that behind all of that great work are people talented at acting.
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Interesting)
But never Paul Newman. He had this little bit in his will which said his executors should prevent any:
"virtual performance or reanimation of any performance by me by the use of any technique, technology or medium now in existence or which may be known or created in the future anywhere in the universe."
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And wouldn't that at most apply for 50 to 100 years after his death?
Then his works are in the public domain (even by today's ridiculous copyright standards) and folks can use them to create new works.
It might be a lot less-- look what happened to Leona Helmsly's will.
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Corporations are immortal.
You can't even cut their heads off with a sword.
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Paul Newman: a class act, and pretty smart, too.
I bet his obits were chockablock full of people calling him a "class act".
Ob: digital actors, can we resurrect William Powell and Myrna Loy first?
And if the executors are dead? (Score:2)
What would happen then? Maybe he has an estate who could fight it. Weird legal ground I bet.
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I'm pretty sure the Paul Newman Foundation is his executor. As long as you see Newman's Own food on the shelves, I think they'll be able to fight it. ;)
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Soon we no longer need actors and we just need digitized versions of them.
So we may see new movies with Bogart, Wayne, Hepburn, Garbo and many others.
Oh, you mean Remake: http://www.amazon.com/Remake-Connie-Willis/dp/0553374370/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240514628&sr=8-16 [amazon.com]
guv no longer has to appear in person (Score:2)
Soon we will no longer need human governors.
No more need for blackmail or extortion or bribery to make sure the puppet politicians stay in line.
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> So we may see new movies with Bogart, Wayne, Hepburn, Garbo and many others.
They already did this with Laurence Olivier in the otherwise-forgettable Something Something and the Something Something, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but it really was that forgettable, just as The Last Starfighter would have been, despite the best CGI available at the time, without Robert Preston).
And, as my parenthetical indicates, you may get Katherine Hepburn's body, but you wil
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
May not work until they get the voice synthesis and the mannerisms right. They might as well start from scratch if they're going to develop digital "actors".
The character is an emotionless cyborg. There aren't a lot of mannerisms to get right, and voice inflection is minimal as well.
In this particular case, since he plays a robot, the only real way to keep him in the movies is through digital enhancement, unless they want to come up with a reason the unchanging cyborg turned into a wrinkly old man and why his giant muscles turned into sagging manboobs.
I worry that the new movie will be too CGI-heavy, but the Terminator series has done pretty well with the special effects so far, so I guess we'll just wait and see.
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Funny)
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Since the terminators are based upon real people, he could play an older spec ops type that Skynet captures and studies. Perhaps would make a good sequel/spin-off some day. The finale would have the digitized, younger, cyborg Ahnuld fighting the grizzled veteran real-life Arnold. Bale could cameo as John Conner and save the day, or if Ridley Scott is directing, get there in time to watch the old guy die and join his family in the wheat fields.
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So is Spock.
It takes a good actor to pull of a supposedly "emotionless" character.
Pixar and Dreamworks have gotten pretty good at "improvisational" stuff for their animated actors tho.
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Spock (at least Nimoy's portrayal) was highly emotional. Nimoy just portrayed the emotion through subtle facial mannerisms (the raised eyebrows, how much he opened or half closed his eyes, the tilt of his head, and the way he would glance at certain people - much of the time, those "people" being McCoy, or the (many a time) "I'm glad you're safe, Jim" look to Kirk (for instance, end of "Doomsday Machine"s "Welcome aboard Captain")).
Because all of the mannerisms were there, and were more subtle, and quite often; Spock (as portrayed by Nimoy) would be far more difficult to pull off. Harder to make it noticeable, believable and yet still understated.
The Terminator (as portrayed by Arnold) on the other hand showed no emotion and at best, an obviously faked smile when commanded to. Much easier to portray via a CGI actor.
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There aren't a lot of mannerisms to get right, and voice inflection is minimal as well.
Voice synthesis technology is still nowhere near capable of convincingly simulating an actual human voice. It's a bit of a head-scratcher for me - especially the dead-end "sample a bunch of phonemes" approach that has been in vogue for the last couple of decades, instead of using a physical-modeling approach.
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Because computers, regardless of which method is used, create perfect versions of the speech - and proper use of inflection is still a problem. Humans (at least very few) almost never perfectly say a sentence - or at least almost never say that sentence the same way - and that's not even taking into account inflection which is something second nature to humans.
This is also why it took so long for speech recognition programs to get to even the point they are at now.
Thus when a computer speaks something, it
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new terminator movie is garbage (Score:3, Informative)
Don't pin your hopes on this one being worthwhile. It's directed by McG, who is best known as the visionless tool who does producers' bidding to churn out crap like Charlies Angels. Other than music videos, Charlies Angles has been his biggest gig [imdb.com]. This isn't the kind of movie where a creative genius presents a bunch of images and concepts tha
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Not necessarily. Total(ly) Recall that (at least in the movie) ...
Sorry couldn't help myself.
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"Additionally, digital actors have less of an impact (episodes IV, V, and VI vs. episodes I, II, and II for example). "
Ahhhhh... so it WAS a robotic reproduction of Natalie Portman in the new Star Wars movies?
Finally something explains that performance...
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I thought it was a reaction to the hot grits being dumped down her pants...
Oh the irony (Score:5, Funny)
He did not act in the first one either!
Shwarzenrubber (Score:5, Funny)
Remember that the first terminators were made of rubber and could easily be identified as robots from close range. Arnie should totally reprise the role: old, wrinkly and saggy parts would make for an awesome first generation terminator.
-Matt
Re:Oh the irony (Score:5, Funny)
No, he's just afraid of walking into Christian Bale's eyeline.
Even cooler is the voice actor (Score:2, Funny)
They tapped Henry Kissinger to do terminators voice.
Good news, but not great (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Good news, but not great (Score:5, Insightful)
And how, exactly, did he fail to do what any other somewhat successful politician does? He avoided answering questions and did whatever the hell he wanted to do after he was elected.
So far, I'd say he does a pretty darn good job as a politician... just not as a leader of a state. But if we wanted leaders we wouldn't elect politicians in the first place, now would we?
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But if we wanted leaders we wouldn't elect politicians in the first place, now would we?
And if we didn't elect people into office, there wouldn't be a market for politicians.
Re:Good news, but not great (Score:5, Insightful)
Arnold was rich and famous years before he acted in The Terminator.
Conan the Barbarian was a decidedly non-android role.
And after Terminator, he had many very successful human roles. "Predator", "The Running Man", "Commando", "True Lies", "Total Recall"... anyone?
Re:Good news, but not great (Score:5, Funny)
"It's not a too-muh!"
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The TV series shows how deep the story that first movie was based on.
Interestingly, there is no person on earth who can fill the place of Arnold in the first movie. Without Arnold, the Terminator would be a regular 1980s sci-fi movie.
Running Man anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only one that remembers the bad guys digitally changing the face of a guy who dies in the Running Man to be that of Arnold?
I find it interesting that we are now getting to the point where the future in sci fi films is becoming the reality. . .
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Running Man? Try Logan's Run [wikipedia.org]. They used robots with Fricken Laser Beams to change peoples appearance.
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YES! Now we need a sci-fi in which Humphry Bogart and his sidekick Charlie Chaplin to investigate an evil cartel of cyberninjas headed by Bruce Lee and Toshiro Mifune. In the end it truns out the mastermind was Cary Grant and his minion Peter Lorre. Epic!
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Yeah, I was trying to forget it.
THANKS A LOT.
Re:Running Man anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm... I was thinking further back to Looker [wikipedia.org].
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I'D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR!
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The Running Man book predicted the prevalence of reality TV [...]
It also predicted the use of a very effective method for the destruction of a skyscraper.
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If you want an astonishingly prophetic look at where television programming was going to go, read Arthur C. Clarke's short story "I Remember Babylon", and just change the bad guys from Red China to corporations.
So, is there still time... (Score:5, Funny)
...to get a digital Shatner in the new STAR TREK film?
!Governator (Score:2)
Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Why was a body-cast taken in the first place? Did the producers send someone back in time to get the mold so it would be available for 'Salvation'?
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Have you even seen the original in all its pre-CGI glory? There's that ultra realistic rubber Arnold head featured prominently in one scene that would have at least required a full torso mold of him. They might have made a full body cast at the same time just to have it available for other effects shots they had in mind. Total Recall would have needed one too. Hell, there are probably several full body casts of Arnold from various points in his career floating around because of all the special effect he
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
And somebody probably got a ultra-realistic blow-up doll of him at home. ^^
Do they have to pay him? (Score:5, Interesting)
That, of course, would probably put a halt to actors willing to be greenscreened and bodysuited, and do voiceover for tie-in games like Jackman and Wolverine.
Re:Do they have to pay him? (Score:5, Interesting)
They could digitize him, and as long as he didn't have a speaking part, they could even have an action sequence with him fighting Bale/Connor and all of that, and say "hey, it's all covered under the same contract that lets us use your likeness for Terminator toys, etc. We don't owe you anything."
That strikes me as incredibly unlikely. There's no way he'd sign a generic 'use my likeness for everything' contract. Everything's isolated on a per-movie basis, even the merchandising, down to the point that the production companies are often created just for that particular movie to make all those arragements. Let me give you an idea: Crispin Glover sued, and won, because footage of him in Back to the Future was used in Back to the Future II without his permission. Even if the contract is open ended, there's still an understanding that movies, even in a series (which Terminator Salvation barely qualifies for), are individual entities.
Re:Do they have to pay him? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, its not like there are a million other people in LA who'd sign their souls away to be on the radio... tv...movies... Not like those contracts would become standard and then comeback to haunt someone 20 years later...
You're right, those contracts wouldn't become standard. What do you think the Actor's Guild is around for?
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Let it go (Score:3, Funny)
You know, when your main actors are getting so old they have to be digitally reproduced - that might just maybe possibly be a sign that you should let it drop already.
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I don't know about you (Score:2)
...but I think the world would probably be a better place without that particular movie. Don't you?
See "Nuking the Fridge" for details.
Link [newsweek.com]
Link [urbandictionary.com]
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I personally disagree. I thought the movie was decent, although certainly not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark or Last Crusade. It was certainly better than Temple of Doom, so you can't even say it was the worst in the series.
Seriously. Anyone who can look me in the eye and call Crystal Skull worse than Temple of Doom is most likely lying to themselves, bitter because they had impossibly high expectations built up over time, or on drugs. I will never understand how the fans can bitch about Crystal Skull,
It's aliiive! (Score:5, Funny)
... so the figure can appear in "Terminator Salvation" as a living, breathing actor.
To recap, we will have a CGI farm pretending to be an actor pretending to be a robot pretending to be a man.
Imagine if we could get a Beowulf cluster of these things.
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To recap, we will have a CGI farm pretending to be an actor pretending to be a robot pretending to be a man.
Yes, sometimes even Hollywood writers can't outdo the weirdness of reality.
Re:It's aliiive! (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if we could get a Beowulf cluster of these things.
Judgement day?
it would be a nice meta-commentary (Score:4, Insightful)
if a real life skynet evolved out of the computing power needed to make the next terminator movie realistic ;-)
How long (Score:2)
Until we don't even need the flesh to model after, and have 100% digital entities as actors?
Ya, i know there was a movie about that, but how long until its actually going to happen? I think we could just about do it now, technically.
Re:How long (Score:4, Funny)
Oblig Futurama (Score:2, Funny)
Why Schwarzenegger? (Score:2, Insightful)
All that technology and they do Arnold? Why aren't they putting digital Jessica Biel in more movies?
Doesn't Have Time? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect this is less about Arnold not being able to find the time than about the changes in his appearance. He's 25 years older, he's had heart-valve-replacement surgery, and although he's still physically active, he doesn't have the muscle-bound physique of his Pumping Iron days. A CGI Arnold will be a lot more convincing than the real thing!
A standard problem when you have people playing "android" robots. Actors age. (So do machines, but not the same way.) I think the main reason they killed off Data in the last Star Trek movie was the difficulty explaining away Brent Spinner's signs of age. So they set up a new character who's supposedly a sort of continuation of Data, all ready to to play the role in the next sequel — which, I dearly hope, never gets made.
BTW, every time our Governor is on the news, I keep expecting him to turn to the camera and say, "Ai ahm ah macheen!"
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They killed Data? huh. Maybe now I'll watch it.
Don't. They didn't, and it's a horrible movie. Yes, Data "dies" but not before transferring his memories into another Android that was a prototype to Soong's other androids. They did this specifically because they wanted to be able to resurrect him in another movie (but then Nemesis bombed, and that was it for TNG movies), so I'm pretty sure they didn't kill him because of his appearance.
Replacing Arnies voice? (Score:2)
They could cut and splice existing Terminator dialog like they did in South Park for Chef after Isaac Hayes went goofy with scientology. Or mabye have Seth MacFarlane do the voice ala Stewie. That would be cool.
Schwartzeneggar as terminator != acting (Score:4, Funny)
The Governator revealed this week that he may appear in the upcoming 'Terminator Salvation,' but when he said he didn't want to act, he left many fans scratching their heads.
I don't see why, that's perfectly lucid if you ask me.
So in 10 years... (Score:4, Interesting)
So in 10 years when we have the hardware to do this kinda thing on the average home PC... how scary is THAT going to be?
Poser pr0n is already bad enough now, can you imagine when it's a) Photorealistic and b) Based on real people?
I can see the scandals now.
"IL&M Apologizes for accidental leak of 3d Model Data"
"Jamie Lynn Spears / JFK sex tape confirmed fake"
"George Washington Punk Rock Show a surprise hit on new Youtube 5.0"
"'Jesus' starring in new Talk show on UPN, Neo-Christian groups object."
It has begun! (Score:3, Funny)
They will have to build a server farm code named "Sky Net" in order to reproduce Arnie!
If the star wars prequels has taught us anything (Score:5, Insightful)
It's that a puppet version of Yoda for $5,000 is far, far superior to a pixel version of yoda for 5 million dollars.
This was done reasonably well on The Sopranos... (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livia_Soprano [wikipedia.org]
After the second season, a storyline was planned where Livia would be called to testify against her son in court, giving evidence on stolen airline tickets she had received from him, but [the actress who played her] died in 2000, before it could be filmed. Existing footage and computer-generated imagery was used to create a final scene between Tony and Livia in the episode "Proshai, Livushka" in Season Three before the character too passed on.
Arnold should have acted in this movie and taken as much money as he could and just donated it to his state's budget.
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Yeah, Susan Dey nekkid!
That's all I remember about it though...
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Toy Story is not really realistic. It's just an enhanced cartoon. A better example would be Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4747223420939375550)
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The same reason that he calls what he does now governing?
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Why is Arnold calling [what] he does acting?
Because he's a politician.
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