In the film, Will Smith played two different personalities. He played Henry Brogan, a middle-aged assassin who was on the run from the government. Junior, a younger clone of himself, was the second character, and he was after Henry.
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Will Will Smith be seen in both roles in Gemini Man?
Will Smith portrays two roles in “Gemini Man”: a middle-aged government assassin named Henry Brogan and his younger clone, Junior, who is dispatched to assassinate his elder self.
Is Jaden Smith in the sign of Gemini?
On the red carpet, Smith and his family were all smiles as they posed for photos. Smith and his sons were dressed in matching black outfits, while Jada was dressed in an orange pantsuit with a dazzling overlay.
Smith has two sons: Jaden, 21, and Willow, 18, who he has with Jada, and Trey, 26, who he shares with ex-wife Sheree Zampino.
“I’m in a good mood!” At the premiere, Smith told Entertainment Tonight. “The Smiths are in a good place right now. We’re having a good time together.”
In Ang Lee’s latest thriller Gemini Man, Smith plays Henry Brogan, a skilled assassin and a younger clone of himself. The younger version of Smith is created using computer technology in the film.
Clive Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Benedict Wong appear in Gemini Man, which releases in theaters on Friday. In July, a new trailer for the film was released, depicting Henry appealing to his clone.
In Gemini Man, how did they create a Will Smith clone?
Is it merely a light show for the deafeningly deafeningly deafeningly de I honestly don’t know how to think about this perplexing, very unsatisfactory film. It’s either a dreadfully uninteresting rip-off of a shit-blows-up thriller, or it’s a fantastically subversive satire on Hollywood’s approaching dark future a slick bit of meta-commentary on itself, la Black Mirror.
None of it was enjoyable for me. And I can’t deny that I was a little afraid when I exited the cinema.
Gemini Man employs some hyper-realistic technology to make a very weird movie
On one level, Gemini Man is a straight-to-video vehicle for Will Smith, an action star who, at 51, is still ripped and capable of going about shooting stuff. (The screenplay includes Hunger Games’ Billy Ray, ShazamDarren !’s Lemkey, and Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff, among others.) There are two Will Smiths in this Will Smith comedy; the plot, which contains no surprises, concerns Smith as elite agent Henry Brogan attempting to retire from his career of killing people but learning he’s being pursued by a 23-year-old version of himself. Clay Verris (Clive Owen), who runs a clandestine private military company called Gemini, sent younger Will Smith to kill senior Will Smith. You’re aware. As if they were twins.
Probably, you’re wondering how a younger Will Smith makes an appearance in the film or maybe you aren’t! After all, this year’s great prestige drama (Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman) features de-aging effects. The filmmakers created a digital mask of Will Smith at 23, sometimes using old footage of Smith, and then stretched it over the face and body of current Will Smith, rather than using de-aging, which uses special effects to smooth out the signs of aging on an actor; the best way to describe the movie’s process is that the filmmakers created a digital mask of Will Smith at 23, sometimes using old footage of Smith, and then stretched it over the face and body of current Will Smith.
The end result looks a little uncanny, but overall fairly convincing especially because we’re used to seeing Will Smith, who is 23 years old. (Having hours and hours of footage of Smith at that age undoubtedly helped.) For the most of the film, Henry and fellow agent Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) are chasing down Henry’s doppelgnger, who goes by the unoriginal title of “Junior,” with the help of a pilot named Baron (a charming Benedict Wong). There are numerous fights and chases, as well as numerous explosions. The twists may be seen from 100 miles away. It’s all right.
The Smith mask isn’t the only piece of technical wizardry in the picture (which isn’t surprising given Lee’s history of messing with technology in films like 2016’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk). It’s also shot at 120 frames per second (rather than the standard 24 frames per second) and in ultra-high-definition 4K 3D yet there isn’t a single cinema in the United States that can show it in that format. The film will be shown in 14 theaters across the United States in 120 fps 2K 3D, which is the closest you’ll come to Lee’s intended viewing experience.
But it should suffice to get the idea. Gemini Man is made to look hyper-realistic and super-detailed, as if you’re sitting right there in front of the camera, and to make the double-Smith effect and extreme action sequences feel natural.
All I can say is that I had to watch the action parts by looking aside and then glance up every few seconds since I became ill almost immediately. If you’re prone to motion sickness, be cautious. Also, blinding lights some explosions appear to be designed to sear the retinas in a manner akin to a real flaming inferno loud noises, and, well, whatever you’d expect to see at a theme park attraction.
Is Gemini Man the future of what movies will look like?
Actually, it’s the movie that has me concerned. There’s a way to read Gemini Man as a film about the bleak future of filmmaking, tied up in the things that will give rise to that future a stretch, to be sure, but one that the language supports.
Gemini Man’s insistence that its characters can’t figure out that Will Smith’s identical younger self is his clone is one of the least convincing aspects of the film. I’m not sure; I guess I just assume that super-charged fighters with ties to secret paramilitary organizations and/or elite defense agencies wouldn’t be surprised by cloning at this time.
Anyhow. Clay Verris created Junior, who is clearly Henry’s clone. The world, it appears, requires a “new breed of soldier,” since the trouble with guys like Henry is that when they’re young, they’ll do anything you tell them, but as they get older, they “get a conscience” and quit obeying orders. So Verris and his friends decide to clone Henry, but there’s a catch “Things like empathy and the ability to feel any grief are “edited out.” As a result, they’ll develop subhuman super-soldiers capable of carrying out all of the world’s warring without hurting genuine humans.
Ignore the fact that we’ve seen this concept in a million sci-fi and action films. What’s strange about Gemini Man is that it feels like a proof of concept for something that’s been proposed before (most famously in the crazy 2014 film The Congress): the inevitability that, when technology improves enough, actors’ likenesses would eventually replace the actors themselves. “Performances” in films will be provided by fully animated yet hyper-realistic computer-generated copies of well-known performers, with licensing fees paid to the actual human. With enough time, the phantom will triumph over reality, obviating the necessity for originals entirely.
This method of thinking has some logic to it. Actors, believe it or not, are also humans. They have peculiarities. They become ill, have their bodies pierced, or have tattoos. They can become difficult to handle, walk off set, or get too preoccupied with one project to shoot another. They don’t want to do naked scenes, and they want to be compensated more for working in hazardous settings; their stunt doubles are brilliant, but there are some things they can’t do. They also like to be compensated.
Imagine the possibilities if you could precisely replicate any actor and the cost savings (and revenue potential) for a studio that controls the rights to, say, a perfect replica of Keanu Reeves, Angelina Jolie, or Will Smith, while sharing licensing with the actor’s estate. You may disbelieve that it will ever be done; yet, unless the industry unions intervene, I believe it will happen within the next decade. It’s been done before, with performers like Peter Cushing being resurrected for Rogue One. And if you can recreate actors, you can also create them, eliminating the need to hire people to perform all of those roles where no one knows the actor’s name in the first place.
I have other issues with Gemini Man as well: it looks bad, like motion smoothing on a huge screen, and it’s difficult to identify what to look at with everything in focus in the frame. In some ways, it’s as if the artistry has been plucked out of cinema’s visual soul. If this high-frame-rate filming approach takes over blockbuster films, hopefully someone will figure out how to make it more appealing, or we’ll just get used to it like we have in the past; after all, movies have always been driven by technological advancements.
However, the idea of gradually eliminating the necessity for actors from the filmmaking process makes me concerned about what else we’ll try to eliminate. Composers? Cinematographers? Writers and directors, who are they? At the moment, technology is unable to replicate the human touch convincingly. But if we become accustomed to generic, shallow, insipid, derivative storytelling and flat-looking imagery, and merely go to the movies to be made to feel as if we’re in the center of an explosion, that’s exactly what we’ll get. (And, to be honest, Gemini Man’s lines may have been created by an AI capable of simulating the delivery but not the content of a joke.)
In Gemini Man, there’s a theory that these clone assassins have no souls, therefore it doesn’t matter if they die. They are amoral. And it’s hinted that generating subhuman clones of real humans is a step on the route to becoming less than human ourselves, which we’re supposed to find strange enough to celebrate when Verris dies.
In fact, the film appears to be self-aware of the fact that it is battling for the essence of humanity’s destiny. In the final scene of the film, Henry, Junior, and Danny are arguing about Junior’s college major. Engineering? What exactly is computer science? No, Danny replies, you should major in humanities! To succeed in the future, you must maintain a connection to the past. The scene feels tacked on, but it also serves as a mini-manifesto for the film as a whole.
Junior says at the end of the film that he’ll make his own decisions, so I think that’s what Hollywood will do as well. But seeing the method and the critique of the approach in the same film makes you wonder if it has any idea what it’s doing. After all, seeing your exact counterpart, or doppelgnger, is considered a sign of impending death. So, if Gemini Man is the future of big-budget filmmaking, I’m hoping Hollywood is concerned.
In Gemini Man, who plays Will Smith’s stunt double?
The clone battle scenes in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man may appear seamless, but they were the result of Will Smith’s two stunt doubles working diligently on set.
And what about the man himself? He’s as approachable as they come, striking up conversations with everyone on site, from producers to extras.
We speak with Travis Parker, who is best known for doubling Will in Gemini Man and Bad Boys For Life, as part of our Seeing Double series, which looks into the incredible lives of some of film and television’s most brave actors stunt doubles.
Travis discussed everything from stunt disasters to duetting Aladdin songs with Will, as well as how even legendary director Ang gets ‘lost in the sauce’ on production.
How did they manage to turn Victor Hugo into Will Smith?
Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Clive Owen, and Benedict Wong feature in the action thriller Gemini Man, directed by Ang Lee. The story follows a hitman who is hunted down by a younger clone of himself. Thanks to the talents of Weta Digital’s artists, both characters in the film are played by Will Smith.
While the film featured a variety of visual effects (as well as other firms who contributed to those VFX scenes), Weta was responsible for the amazing advancement in facial work shown in Gemini Man.
To create the 23-year-old version of 51-year-old Will Smith, the production team decided not to use compositing to age Smith, as several Marvel films have done so successfully. Rather, the team chose to create a younger Will Smith who is entirely digital. The end product is some of the most innovative digital human work ever created. The realism, rendering intricacy, and behavior of the computer character sets a new standard for digital humans.
The Weta team began with a scan of Will Smith on the USC ICT Light stage, as well as a number of photo shoots and turntables. Weta was not attempting to re-create Will Smith, but rather a younger version of him, who is referred to in the film as Junior. Weta built a precise likeness of 51-year-old Smith as a stepping stone to the 23-year-old version of the actor in order to accomplish this. Weta even photographed the “backside of his teeth” during their photoshoots, according to visual effects supervisor Guy Williams of Weta. Williams collaborated alongside Bill Westenhofer, the production VFX supervisor, and Sheldon Stopsack, the co-visual effects supervisor.
Over the course of the film, Weta photographed Will Smith on three times. Weta did a shot three times: once during early prep, once during the shoot, and once at the conclusion. At the start of the production, the crew undertook a FACS session, scanning not only actor Will Smith but also Chase Anthony, a young African American actor, at USC ICT. He was scanned for a reference of juvenile skin texture. “Chase Anthony, a 23-year-old male, has skin that resembles Will Smith’s when he was younger, but not in terms of face shape. We performed two photo shoots with Victor Hugo and one with him.” Hugo acted as Junior’s on-set reference for Will Smith, as Williams noted.
The production took a “AB” style to shooting. This referred to Will Smith portraying Henry Brogan in real time on camera, with Victor Kigo, his acting partner, portraying Junior. The roles would later be reversed. Will Smith had someone to react to, someone to act with, an eye line, and someone who could provide him more than simply someone reading lines back to him using this method. “Victor Hugo is an actor, and he was attempting to provide enough of a performance to support Will’s. As a result, you have this lovely synergistic performance from them both.”
Weta later assisted in the setup of a mo-cap stage in Budapest at the end of the shoot. The crew re-captured all of the AB performances. “We switched the equation such that Will Smith was now Junior and Victor was the 51-year-old Will,” says the producer. Other actors, such as Benedict Wong or anyone else who was crucial in the action, returned to the mocap stage to reprise their roles. Providing the ideal acting atmosphere for Will Smith was one of the driving forces behind this production. “One of the things I told Ang from the beginning was that Weta’s digital performance would only ever be as good as Will can offer you,” Williams stated. Weta advised the cast and crew to view the Mocap as just another day of performances rather than a technical exercise. “We put a lot of effort into making the Mocap work as well for Will and the other performers as possible.” The crew decided against having Will shoot one role in the morning and then switch to the other in the afternoon. It would have been difficult for the actor to keep such a schedule, and “it would have burnt an hour and a half in the middle of our filming days, with makeup and outfit changes – which you can’t afford to lose,” Williams argues.
The crew would set up Will Smith with exact tracking markers on his face on days when they were just filming Junior, and then he would wear the infrared head-mounted camera rig (HMC), which was powered by a battery setup carefully attached to the small of the actor’s back, beneath his clothes. Because the HMC employed infrared light, no visible light was cast on other performers, props, or Junior’s costume. Through Will’s outfit, the infrared lights/dots on his vest could be seen. “They show up as discrete dots through the garment, which helped us track his torso,” Williams explained.
Weta maintained that the show must come first, “and to that end, the body is a part of the show.” That’s why we said we couldn’t put a Will (Junior) head on another actor since the body wouldn’t match Will’s performance.” However, Williams goes on to say that if the scenario consisted just of Will performing as Junior in solitude, that was no longer the case. “Suddenly, the performance is linked to the body.” So now we only have the option of replacing the head.” The team was capturing the head and body in situ at the same time. “We’d do a flawless track of the head back onto the shoulders by mocaping the shoulders.” That’s what we’d term a ‘b-side only’ shot.”
Face CGI
To create a digital version of Will Smith, who is 23 years old. The researchers initially created a digital clone of 51-year-old Will Smith, and then retargeted his performance to the young digital persona once that was correct.
During a FACS session, a variety of expressions and motions are used. Will Smith got white face paint and dots on his face for the FACS emotions; the white splatter paint was only to give the photogrammetry something to ‘grip’ onto. The FACS session generates a set of animated meshes of Will Smith, who is 51 years old. While Weta has a method for temporal capture that is theoretically comparable to Disney Research Studio’s Medusa rig, Williams claims that “you’d be shocked, – we do less of the motion stuff than you would imagine.” He remarks, “At the end of the day, it’s not really that beneficial.” “We’re more concerned in where elements of the face go – from point A to point B than with how they get there.” Because our system is thoughtful and intelligent, we ‘get there’ right.”
A photo from the FACS session appears on the left. The Weta team had to create a fully animated face for Junior with the necessary skin texture in order to remap the expressions to a youthful Will Smith.
While there existed scanned skin reference, the team devised a novel method for creating plausible skin texture at the pore level, which they used once the animation was approved.
“One of our shader writers came up with the notion of enlarging the pores of Junior’s skin while we were sampling skin textures. Williams explains, “He basically came up with this extremely sophisticated rule system for generating pores on a face.” “We created a flow field that described the flow of the young actor’s skin,” he continued. It then establishes links between the poor locations. As a result, you end up with small elliptical football-shaped pores.”
This was significant because it removed the assumption of a flat 2D UV space produced from a rubber mask scanned from an actor’s skin. It expands the pores in three dimensions rather than two. “This gave us the most beautiful facial skin we’ve ever seen,” Williams says.
The pore sites are shown with dots (above) and the lines between the bad sites generate the wrinkles that are the pores in these Junior photos (see below). “You’ll observe that the heavier lines are biased in the flow direction,” Williams says. “In the wrinkling pass, you can actually discern the flow direction.” Because the heavier lines are deeper, the football shapes originate from them.” “Because your face can fold in many directions,” he says, the minor lines are still crucial.
“Having this million+ polygon mesh of all the pores on a person’s face at high resolution is fantastic,” Williams adds, “but then we felt we could go even farther.” “We can do a tetrahedral simulation on that.” Because the face has a ‘grain,’ the pores buckle along the proper flow lines when the face moves, contracts, compresses, and stretches. This signifies that all of Junior’s micro wrinkles are being done appropriately when his pores begin to collapse.”
While this sequence depicts the development of the face, the animation is transmitted first, followed by the pores once the animation has been approved. The FACS session is used to define the face’s facial movement, which is then sent into Weta’s sophisticated facial solver. Although the Weta face solver is rarely described in detail, it is thought to use Machine Learning. The facial puppet is then driven by this. “The FACS session not only informs you how every muscle on your face moves, but it also shows you how the skin, with its various densities of fascia, reflects that movement,” Williams explains.
