Why do we go to the Movies?

Why do we go to the theater? Whether it be for film or theater, attending a production showcased at a theater offers us, as humans, many desirable things: Experiencing emotion along with other humans, seeing other humans go through the same struggles that we encounter throughout our lives, even vicariously seeing other worlds that we will never be able to visit ourselves, through the human characters, gives us some level of satisfaction. However, what would happen if those experiences were played out by non-humans? What if everything we saw in the movies, and I’m speaking specifically about live-action productions, was computer-generated? What if the human characters we saw weren’t actually human? Would the empathetic dimension or the emotional resonance of the experience change? This would have been the type of question asked by a group of friends, who just saw a sci-fi movie in the 80s or 90s, only to be dismissed moments later as products of technology too temporally far away to concern themselves with. That is no longer true. We are in an age in which the very idea of actors could be threatened and, as the audience, we have the responsibility to assess the importance of the inclusion of real flesh and blood humans, not just renderings, in our stories.

Over the past few years CGI technologies within motion pictures have become so advanced that the parameters and rules of thumb that exist within the film and television industries, as formulas that maximize profitability, are about to be thrown out of the proverbial window. As one example of this, many predict that the theory of the “Uncanny Valley.” A theory within the field of robotics, but can also be applied to the critical study of cinema, that refers to the phenomenal unpleasantness of seeing a photorealistic human rendering on screen, won’t be valid anymore. The Uncanny Valley is so named due to the way the data points of the theory are allocated. As photorealism of a human character created by CGI goes up, audience acceptance of the character as a human goes down, at least that’s how it’s been since the inception of the theory. In this way, three-dimensional animated films such as Disney’s Frozen or DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon features human characters with obviously cartoonish models allowing audiences to accept them as human characters in a fantastical world, seperate from said audience. These worlds also usually require the characters to constantly perform acts impossible for human actors to complete successfully so that animation benefits the story being told and it benefits the animators to give the a sort of cartoonish stylization. However, when animation leaves the realm of big-eyed and vibrantly colored characters and delves into photorealism, the “selling” of the characters becomes harders, unless you can do what the creators of Rogue One did.

The Uncanny Valley’s validity is dependent on the ability of a human to differentiate between the organic and inorganic portrayal of humans. However, an article by GQ magazine writer Stuart Mcgurk showcases the very real concern that goes along with the notion that humans inevitably won’t be able to tell that difference,

| “It raises, of course, interesting questions about the future of acting. CGI is no longer about a thesp playing the odd motion-capture monster, but playing CGI humans. Just last year, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story brought Peter Cushing back from the dead 22 years after he had met his maker. Holby City actor Guy Henry played the role, with Cushing's likeness digitally mapped on later.” |

Mcgurk asserts that soon we won’t be able to tell the difference between human actors and CGI characters created to portray human characters. Mcgurk goes on to question the financial and market decision-making that goes on with something like this. Will actors be able to sell their likeness instead of their talent? An interesting question, but it misses the bigger picture.

Before producers and studio executives engage in the mad rush of figuring out how to take advantage of this surge of technology, I think it would be more constructive for them to consider why people go to the theater in the first place. Moreover, as consumers of this particular brand of media, we alone have the power to shape its direction. When portrayal of different races and sexual orientations was determined, by the masses, to be imbalanced, we as consumers decided to champion increased representation, in film and television, for these groups. Since then, the industry has made great strides in this area. Now, in a time when live-action acting could go extinct, we have the power to bring about that sort of change again. In fact, we have a responsibility to do so.