9) Young Stark
Uncanny valley is the term used to describe the unease that comes with seeing a computer-generated character that moves and acts human, but is still quite clearly a fake. There isn’t anything much creepier than a character that’s languishing in the valley, that dreaded cinematic realm between realism and artificiality. Unfortunately for the Russo brothers, they find themselves there within the first 30 minutes of Civil War.
The younger version of Robert Downey Jr. that appears early in Civil War – played by Downey and some heavy post-production de-aging – in a flashback-cum-Stark presentation at MIT, is located firmly in the uncanny. It’s distracting enough that Downey tries his hardest to alter his body language into that of a moody teenager’s, but that doesn’t quite top the fact that young Tony Stark is a blemish-free, android replica of the adult version. Sometimes CGI can’t fix everything.
Published: May 5, 2016 01:08 pm