Rewriting the Stars? De-Aged Doppelgängers and ‘Youthed’ Performance in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema Seminar

Abstract

A spate of recent franchise films that fall largely within the overlapping action, superhero and science-fiction genres – such as Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010), Terminator: Genisys (Alan Taylor, 2015), Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015), Captain America: Civil War (Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2016), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017) and Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) – all mine the capabilities of computer animation to ‘de-age’ its star performers in feats of astonishing technological expressivity. This talk interrogates how the ‘youthing’ of aged bodies via high-definition computer-generated likenesses represents a possible future for, and increasingly pervasive substrate of, both animated performance and digital stardom. Older actors are now afforded the opportunity to appear as their younger selves, with the star image digitally recalibrated to pass seamlessly and convincingly through specific time periods and to fit particular historical moments. Founded on unique strategies of resemblance, these digitally de-aged doppelgängers invite spectator scrutiny and contemplation through ulterior levels of equivalence, placing the image of aging front and centre of the spectators’ comprehension of different kinds of bodily form. By examining the ‘coming of age’ of computer graphics in a cross-section of contemporary Hollywood films, this talk uses simulated youth as a paradigm to think in new ways about the wider body politics of cinema’s increasingly all-digital residents.