Chris Evans, Elijah Wood, and others react to James Dean casting news

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Yesterday, Joblo reported the bizarre news that actor James Dean had been cast in an upcoming Vietnam War film, despite being dead for almost six and a half decades. The film will bring James Dean to life through a combination of CGI, motion capture, and archival footage. Another actor will provide the voice of James Dean. As you might expect this news provoked quite the response, with several actors, Chris Evans and Elijah Wood among them, taking to Twitter to voice their opinions. Their responses were less than positive:

I’m sure he’d be thrilled ????

This is awful.

Maybe we can get a computer to paint us a new Picasso. Or write a couple new John Lennon tunes.

The complete lack of understanding here is shameful. https://t.co/hkwXyTR4pu

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) November 6, 2019

NOPE. this shouldn’t be a thing. https://t.co/RH7jWY5cAG

— Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) November 6, 2019

Yeah, that's not James Dean.
It's his face on a motion capture performance and an "anonymous" actor providing voice pattern and choices.

I'd like to know how it will be credited.
How the real actors will be paid.
And how little this team understands the acting craft https://t.co/MkIQHrB5Y0

— Julie Ann Emery (@julieannemery) November 6, 2019

Yeesh.

Listen, I don't think it's surprising that this news provoked such a reaction or that more than a few people would be upset. Evans clearly thinks the move is tone deaf and Emery points out, rightly, that it's not REALLY going to be James Dean. This isn't a Carrie Fisher situation like with RISE OF SKYWALKER. In that instance J.J. Abrams chose to use actual scenes from previous films that never made it to the screen. In this situation we're talking about a completely different actor doing the performance capture and voicing the part. There's also a consent issue here as James Dean is not alive to weigh in. Even though his estate supports the move, there's no way to know how Dean would have reacted unequivocally.

Whether or not this decision by directors Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh is ethical or responsible is not any easy question to answer. It's been twenty-four hours and I'm still wrestling with the idea. I keep coming back to the fact that there are plenty of living actors who could inhabit this role. Why choose a dead one? Just for the novelty? To generate morbid curiosity? I don't know. It also begs the question, as Evans suggests, as to where does it end? What great artist from X medium will be subject to this next?

FINDING JACK and the ghost of James Dean will release Veterans Day next year, while you can next see Chris Evans in Rian Johnson's KNIVES OUT November 27.