Directors who shoot in high frame rates sometimes cast it as a system for creating cinematic hyper-reality, but the results so far are always distracting and weird, like watching a television with motion smoothing turned up to the max. Less advanced versions of this process have been employed before, on Peter Jackson's first Hobbit film, and on Lee's last movie, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, but Lee's preferred projection method is so advanced that not one theater in the United States will be able to show it exactly as he intended. Some of the disjointedness can be attributed to director Ang Lee's decision to shoot the film using an ultra-high frame rate, in which a digital camera collects vastly more images per second than the 24-images-per-second that has been standard since the days of film.
No, the younger Smith isn't Genie-blue, but there were times when I half expected him to shout a jokey catchphrase and disappear into a cloud of cerulean smoke. There's a slightly unnatural quality to the character's brow and eyes, to the way his lips don't quite seem to be in sync with his words he's more pixel than person, an animated presence rather than a flesh-and-blood actor. But while technically impressive in some ways, Junior still tends to come across as less than fully real. Smith's on-screen opponent is thus a sort of digital clone, a virtual person constructed using a cinematic process that mirrors the biological cloning portrayed in the film. Smith plays a younger version of himself by donning what is effectively a Young Will Smith mask and suit. Junior is better understood as a full-body digital costume wrapped around a motion-capture performance, then tweaked and tailored by an army of digital artists. Jackson in Captain Marvel, a process more like applying digital make-up, so much as virtually replicated. Junior, the name given to the movie's younger Smith, was not conventionally de-aged like Samuel L.
Which is why the better way to view Gemini Man may not be as a story of man versus himself, but of humans versus technology. I can't wait to play him when he inevitably becomes an avatar in Overwatch.
GEMINI MAN MOVIE
Here, the movie seems to say, is the competition: Will Smith used to be young, and beautiful, and…look oddly like a character out of a video game. In an industry that has always treated any perceptible sign of aging as a mortal threat to one's career, there is arguably something courageous about submitting to such a concept, which offers a visceral reminder of the toll of time. Hollywood has always cast aging stars opposite fresh-faced talent, but in this case, the face is literally Smith's own. As a movie, it's flat stilted, an extended visit to the uncanny valley. Where there's a Will, there's a way.Īs a big-budget tech demo, Gemini Man is ambitious and fascinating: Finally! A way to appease all those viewers who've been clamoring for cinematic technology that lets the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air face off against Genie from Aladdin.
The idea for the film reportedly languished in development for decades, and was only made once Smith signed on.
Smith's technology-enhanced dual role anchors the movie, and gives it a reason for being.
GEMINI MAN TV
Looked at one way, Gemini Man is a classic tale of man versus himself: The Bourne-esque sci-fi thriller pits a middle-aged Will Smith against a younger, computer-generated clone, constructed partly from images of Smith as a 20-something movie and TV star.
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