This post is going to have mild spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story so proceed with that in mind.

The most recent Star Wars film is set within the fictional continuity just before the events of the original Star Wars which was released into the wild in 1977. As there are characters that appear in the original and in the most recent production that raised issues of how to deal with the fact that 40 years separated principal photography on the two projects. Actors who were still with us at the time of production have naturally aged beyond the look of the original characters and Peter Cushing who played Grand Moff Tarkin as not been with us in the veil of tears for decades.

Recasting a part is a Hollywood tradition, most notably with the very successful Bond and Doctor Who Franchises. (14 actors have played the Doctor and 7 have played Bond (not counting the comedic Casino Royale where everyone played Bond.) Recasting turned out to be only part of the solution used by the producers of Rogue One.

For the newest film Guy Henry, best known to genre fans as a minister of Magic in the last two Harry Potter movies, was cast to play Tarkin. Henry has similar bone and body structure to the late Cushing and even performs an admirable vocal impersonation. Completing the digital doppelganger CGI was used to created Tarkin’s image over Henry’s facial performance. In essence a CGI mask of Peter Cushing was slipped over Guy Henry’s face. For some people this effect looked convincing but for other, including me, the effect suffered from the ‘uncanny valley’ and while it looked good it never looked quite like a real person.

To me the technical issues are secondary, they processes will improve and even in other movies have looked quite good, to wit the de-aged Robert Downey Jr in Captain America: Civil War. The real problem is passing Henry off as Cushing.

To my eye Henry’s performance didn’t feel like an authentic Cushing performance. Cushing was an understated actor, doing more with less and Henry, while not eating the scenery, gave a more extravagant interpretation of Tarkin.

As a performance this is neither good nor bad. Acting is more than hitting your marks and saying the words, acting is choices and different actors make different choices. Had they simply applied make-up to make Henry look more like Tarkin, but not doubling Cushing, it be easier to judge Henry’s performance as just that, Guy Henry’s Tarkin.

This is the essential problem with trying to use digital arts to bring back dead actors; you can’t. At best you get an impressive impersonation, but you can never know what choices that actor would have made, who elements that they would have heightened and played down to create their performance. There was only one Peter Cushing an we have his film performances to enjoy, it is time to pass the baton to other equally capable but new performers.