PULP & POPCORN

Page 39
Now that I’ve seen it in action here, I’m less opposed to it than I was. I find
the Tarkin scenes absolutely hypnotic. I’ve seen the film twice, as I said, and I
couldn’t tell you one word he says in the movie. The entire time he’s onscreen, it’s
like my brain is vibrating at some weird frequency. It is dark sorcery, and it is so
completely strange that it actually does have a biochemical effect on me. There is
some beautiful work here, and Tarkin’s second big scene in particular is a stand-out.
The lighting in the scene and the subtle details of Tarkin’s facial performance,
complete with a slight curl of the lip that is 100% Cushing, really blew me away. And
the final shot, the Carrie Fisher shot, is just surreal. We’ve seen versions of this
before, but never like this. Marvel’s getting bold with it, using the effect in both Ant-
Man and Captain America: Civil War, but never with quite the dramatic flair that is
used here. Gareth Edwards had to know what kind of ruckus it would cause to use an
all-CG Tarkin, but I love that he made that choice and then shot the character in
bright light and in close-up. He’s not trying to hide the character. He’s just treating
him like any other actor in a scene. He’s got close-ups. He’s seen from all angles. He’s
treated like an actor who played a role, not like a special effect, and it’s part of what
makes it really work for me.
I’ve seen people already say that it ruined the film for them, that they hate it,
that they hate how it looks, that it doesn’t look real at all. I’ve also seen people who
admitted that they didn’t know it was an effect. They assumed it was an actor in
make-up or that they found someone, and considering how spot-on the casting is for
young Mon Mothma, that’s not outside the realm of possibility. It’s funny to see
reactions that diametrically opposed, and I think in the end, you have to call the
work successful. We’ve reached a point where audiences are starting to simply accept
the absolutely impossible as mundane, and while I love that because it means the
craft is so impressive, I also wonder if that is part of why so many of our big-canvass
blockbuster filmmakers seem to cling so tightly to formula and the familiar.
Everything is so safe, and it doesn’t need to be. We can create anything now,
technically speaking, and so it’s time to dream bigger. I love guys like John Knoll who
do things like this simply to see if they can, and other filmmakers will benefit in big
ways from the work that was done here because of the path it establishes for others
to follow or even expand on.