The visual effects supervisor and co-writer of the Star Wars prequel, John Knoll, has addressed the ethics of digitally resurrecting dead actors

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s visual effects supervisor John Knoll has hit back at critics of the decision to digitally resurrect Peter Cushing as the Grand Moff Tarkin, a character who previously appeared in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope.

Speaking to Yahoo Movies, Knoll – who shares a story credit on Rogue One, as well as being chief creative officer for FX house Industrial Light & Magic – responded both to criticism of the look of the work, and the ethics of doing it in the first place.

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On the first point, Knoll said: “There are people that have said quite vehemently that it looks terrible and looks like a video game, and I will assert that that is not the case.” The film-makers used actor Guy Henry as a digital stand-in for Cushing, and employed motion-capture and a facial-expression tracker to animate footage and photographs of Cushing. Knoll said: “Essentially, we’re using the computer graphics as a tool to alter his appearance.”

As for the ethics of working with images of an actor who died in 1994, Knoll said: “We weren’t doing anything that I think Peter Cushing would’ve objected to. I think this work was done with a great deal of affection and care. We know that Peter Cushing was very proud of his involvement in Star Wars and had said as much, and that he regretted that he never got a chance to be in another Star Wars film because George [Lucas] had killed off his character.”

Knoll added: “This was done in consultation and cooperation with his estate. So we wouldn’t do this if the estate had objected or didn’t feel comfortable with this idea.”

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Knoll also touched on the digital recreation of Carrie Fisher’s young Princess Leia, as seen in A New Hope, which was accomplished with a similar mix of stand-in, motion capture and archive material. Knoll said he didn’t have direct contact with the actor – who died on 27 December, a fortnight after Rogue One was released – but heard via Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy that Fisher approved of the result. “Kathy [Kennedy] called me right after she showed it to [Fisher] and said how fantastic she thought it was. So she was very much in favour of it.”

Disney and Lucasfilm recently denied they were negotiating with Fisher’s estate over further use of the actor’s digital image.