A psychological trap called the uncanny valley is challenging film and theater as AI-generated and robotic actors become more common on screen and stage.
The term describes the revulsion viewers feel when a humanoid figure looks nearly human but fails to convince. The closer the imitation, the worse the reaction.
A Princess Too Real
The problem surfaced prominently at the Cannes premiere of Shrek, twenty-five years ago. Princess Fiona was drawn so realistically that children cried in fear, and the filmmakers retreated to a less literal style.
The rule holds broadly: a cartoon kitten delights, but photorealistic CGI cats performing feel hollow, and a humanoid robot betrays itself through an empty stare or a subtly wrong gesture.
Stage and Screen Experiments
Japanese director Oriza Hirata cast a silicone-skinned humanoid robot as one of the sisters in a futuristic staging of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In the story, a robotics-expert father had built the character to replace a real daughter who had withdrawn from the world. The robot walked like a zombie in early run-throughs, and Hirata eventually kept it seated.
In 2001, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within became the first American feature to generate its cast entirely by computer. The detail in skin and hair was impressive, but stiff expressions and lifeless eyes disturbed audiences and the film flopped. Director Robert Zemeckis tried a related technique, performance capture with Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey, in The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, with uneven results.
When Paul Walker died during Furious 7, a digital double finished his scenes, with the director avoiding close-ups. A commercial later used a digitally restored Audrey Hepburn, who died in 1993, and drew the same criticism for its hollow gaze. Russia’s AI-generated feature Genghis Khan has been described as looking like a world made of plastic.
Turning the Valley Into an Asset
Filmmakers who have succeeded tend to lean into artificiality. For A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg cast Jude Law as a robot companion for wealthy clients. Law worked with choreographers to move with exaggerated smoothness, trained himself not to blink, and had his hair lacquered rigid so it never shifted. When not addressed by a scene partner, he let his face go blank, snapping back the moment someone spoke. Spielberg turned the valley into a dramatic tool.
New York’s Algorithmic Theatre presents two chatbots, displayed as desktop computers, holding a live philosophical debate about what makes humans human, with fresh dialogue generated every night. Critics called the 45-minute show unsettling but brilliant.
Theater carries its own dangers. At one showing of Hirata’s Three Sisters, the robot sister began shaking her head violently with her mouth open; the human performers improvised, treating the malfunction as a character’s seizure.
Film sets are not immune. In Rocky IV, a robot played the butler. When Sylvester Stallone struck it during a take, the machine apparently reacted by chasing him around the studio, repeatedly shouting lines about needing to clean the room.
The next test may arrive soon. A digital actress named Tilly Norwood has been cast in the lead role of a new film in which her character falls for a robot from the dark web.
