An amazing amount of work and cleverness went into it, but those characters still look like creepy sadness robots. It would have been so much better to just use lookalikes like they did with Mon Mothma.

To me, they were 100% acceptable, and *almost* entirely out of uncanny valley territory.

Two possible sources for my tolerance are lots of time spent playing video games, and a highly introverted nature. Would be interesting to see survey results to see if there is any positive correlation between those or other factors and being generally easier to impress / satisfy with CG movie effects.

"So why did you feel Tarkin needed to be in this film?"

"Because Peter Cushing would have been too expensive."

...

But in all seriousness, being able to "photoshop" video likenesses of dead people this well could have all kinds of implications on how we view reality in a few years once anyone can do it with their home computer....

I saw the film on Wednesday night. The quality of those characters was appalling. It's terrible, Special Edition CG Jabba all over again.

I saw it on Monday mawny to avoid the crowds and save money in a local cheap theater. I enjoyed it. See http://aqfl.net/node/11994#comment-3440 for its details.

uncanny....valley

Seriously I was much more bothered by the strategically placed switches right out of LEGO Star Wars.

I thought both were well done, but they overused Tarkin. A scene or two would have been fine, but he was on screen for so long you had time to spot the imperfections. Leia's appearance worked much better because it was so brief.

Also they just couldn't get Tarkins voice right. Cushing had such a distinctive clipped tone, and it was painfully obvious that it was someone else.

Y'know, the first thing the new Tarkin brought to mind was LA Noire. To be honest, I think LA Noire did the whole face-scanning thing much better. Now, they had an easier job to do, where the whole game is already CG so perhaps the faces don't stand out as much, but it does feel like they did a better job.

I actually think they tried to control Tarkin's face a little bit too much. I think there will perhaps be a 'realization' in the industry that adding a host of very subtle random fluctuations to a face will make it seem more real.

I found the discussion about lips sticking together to be fascinating, and that's certainly headed in the right direction. There's probably something about gravity being applied to faces that make them seem realer, too. Like that they subtly jiggle and bounce as they move and that at a miniscule level the skeleton of the skull moves first to push the musculature and skin of the face around second. Those kinds of subtle movements are probably what could make this kind of thing realer.

Tarkin's eyes still seemed "soulless" somehow. I hope they continue to tweak the effects before the Blu-Ray release, but I doubt it. I think Kathy Kennedy and crew think they nailed it. For me, it was close but no cigar.