While Marvel Studios has become well-known for using CGI to de-age its actors so they may play younger versions of their respective characters (such as Samuel L. Jackson in 2019's Captain Marvel), do not expect the studio to hop on the emerging trend of using similar effects to posthumously cast deceased performers.
Marvel Studios' Executive Vice President of Production and Avengers: Endgame executive producer Victoria Alonso was recently asked about the company's stance on CGI resurrections. "We haven't considered that," she told Yahoo Movies.
Alonso went on to describe the process of using visual effects to create CGI characters, and how it has informed Marvel's position on the matter. "The experience of doing Thanos and Hulk brought it into very clear view that you need the live performance of Josh Brolin and Mark Ruffalo," she explained. "That’s the magic that’s onscreen; we do everything we can to put them in a position with their counterparts so that we’re getting as much of their brilliance was we possibly can in the final imagery."
The decision to abstain from posthumous castings separates the Marvel Cinematic Universe from fellow-Disney-owned franchise Star Wars, which used CGI to allow the late Peter Cushing to reprise his role as Grand Moff Tarkin in the 2016 film Rogue One -- a direct prequel to 1977's A New Hope.
While Cushing's posthumous reprisal did initially spark debate among audiences, it was in late 2019 that this practice really came under fire when it was revealed that CGI would be used to resurrect the legendary James Dean -- who died in 1955 -- for the upcoming Vietnam War film Finding Jack. Even Chris Evans -- Marvel Studios' Captain America himself -- voiced his thoughts on the matter, tweeting, "This is awful. Maybe we can get a computer to paint us a new Picasso. Or write a couple new John Lennon tunes. The complete lack of understanding here is shameful."
Industrial Light & Magic VFX supervisor Craig Hammack -- who worked on Captain Marvel -- chimed in on the matter as well, explaining posthumous CGI castings are not a matter of if you could, but a matter of if you should. "It’s a little bit of a philosophical and moral decision that is always going to be a studio level decision," he said. "It is something that we’re all aware of, because the possibilities are coming and our hope is that it doesn't happen in an irresponsible way. Personally, I don't want to see something that's not the performance of the person represented as the person."
Hammack's sentiment is echoed by Captain Marvel additional VFX supervisor Janelle Croshaw Ralla. "It's a very sensitive subject to bring people back from the dead," she explained. "I think it has to be used wisely. Some projects that I've been exploring this year are creating people from scratch: creating new pop stars and creating new digital humans that don't exist. Even with that, you have to have this underlying person giving the performance. So far, that essence has to come from a real human being -- the computer can't do it. But who knows in the future?"