Rogue One is one of my favourite in the series. It was set just before the beginning of A New Hope and it will be great if the audience will see some familiar characters. The problem is a major character known as Grand Moff Tarkin was played by Peter Cushing who passed away in 1994. The filmmakers are left with the following choice: they could just omit the scene with Tarkin in it, or they could hire a look-alike. A younger version of Tarkin made a cameo in The Revenge of the Sith played by Wayne Pygram.

But somehow filmmakers felt that Tarkin is too important to be left out in the Rogue One film. And no body double could bring out the essence of Peter Cushing. After all Wayne Pygram wore prosthetics to achieve the likeness of the Grand Moff, and he never spoke. Hence they hire Guy Henry, an actor with the same built and close facial features, and a team from ILM. Henry will play as the body double, and the ILM team will do the rest.

And voila! Tarkin was brought to life.

As for me I found it ingenious and amazing. It’s very realistic and lifelike. Some people don’t agree.

And I do understand why reactions differ and people freaked out. On the positive note the boldness of Rogue One to bring out a CG Tarkin paid well. He’s incredibly alive, with detailed conversations with the unfortunate Krennic. In fact it’s like Peter Cushing came to life to mock the hapless director. Tarkin appeared as we knew him 40 years ago, but not without flaw.

The acting of this CG actor is great (thanks Guy Henry!) the face looks real but unfortunately not real enough. I dug into the dark reaches of the comment sections of every forum, blogs and even reviewed clips of Rogue One’s Tarkins to check what others found wrong. Firstly is the facial expression. We see faces every day and we know every natural movement they make. Our brain is made to recognize faces after all. We also know how faces made slight changes of expressions when people talk. With such familiarity on how live faces function, it’s no surprise how people found the CG Tarkin to be strangely stony. No matter how life-like it looks, the CG face doesn’t approach the level of expressions real faces had. The expression is too cold and the movement are still too stiff. Some reckons that the facial movements are incomplete. And the way the CG Tarkin blinks is also too slow. And although the skin texture approaches a new level of detail, it is still not as natural as real skin

Now our aversion to slight unrealistic spasms CG face displays reflects the Mortality Salience in our psyche. The unnatural movement is basically telling our brains that the individual is sick or dead. Hence we must stay away so infection won’t spread. Whatever the reason is, I don’t think that the CG Tarkin deserves all those hates seeing on how good he interacts with everyone in the movie.

I could live with the CG Tarkin, but what happened in the end of the movie gave me chills.