Okay maybe I’m late to the outrage train here.
But let me be the next person to say
Bad on so many many levels
First off, bad for actors everywhere, because they’re saying “posthumously cast” as if that’s actually James Dean. They’re listing ‘‘James Dean” in the credits! But it is not James Dean, it is a really convincing puppet. So what does that mean for all living, human actors? If I can animate your likeness convincingly enough, you’re no longer you. You’re a name and face I can slap on anything I want. Letitia Wright could be shooting Black Panther 2 in one part of the world, while Letitia Wright could be posing for a close-up in a completely different part of the world via computer imagery. They’re both Letitia Wright! Who cares if one is cobbled together by pixels? If it looks and walks and talks the same way—
Oh but WAIT a minute! It does not look, talk, and walk the same way! It can’t. Especially not the James Dean-puppet.
I mean. Digitally insert someone else into a movie, and maybe the mistake wouldn’t be so glaring. But you can’t put James Dean on the casting list if all you have is pixels. You know why? Because James Dean was infamous for being really sucky to work with for most directors. They’d tell him to say one thing and he’d say another. They’d tell him to go stand over there and look at the camera and he’d go stand over there and look out the window. And it was gold. The other actors were confused and the directors were happy to get his disobedience on film because it was better than what was in the screenplay! He freaked RONALD FREAKIN REAGAN out when they did a TV show together because he wouldn’t stick to the script.
Here’s an excerpt from what the director of his last film, Giant, experienced with James Dean, as told by a Texas-attitude coach:
And that, ladies n’ gentlemen, is THIS:
Which is, by the way, the bumper image for Giant.
You cannot take James Dean, who was a creative genius, and make him from scratch. There’s something human about really good actors that comes across onscreen, and when they act just a little different from what’s written on paper, or put their own spin on what’s written on paper, and cameras happen to catch it, almost by accident? That’s movie magic! Digitally puppeting the actor who was literally known for refusing to be micro-managed is bad and horrible.
And in conclusion, it’s CREEPY.