Sex and Skin: This isn’t the kind of action thriller with wild hot sensual scenes in between all the fighting, which is refreshing. A huge age difference between a graying leading man and a fresh young ingenue, for example. That is one advantage Gemini Man has.
Our Opinion: Oh, how I wished Gemini Man was a wonderful guy! What a bizarre, soulless film with so much promise squandered. The decision to shoot it at 120 frames per second (the average movie is 24!) results in an odd, hyperrealistic effect that makes you feel like you’re watching a computer game unfold. The set pieces in the film are surprisingly lackluster, and the performances are lifeless. It also makes the cloning technique look a little less credible. This isn’t my biggest criticism of Gemini Man, but it is a significant flaw that could have made it shine as a riveting thriller.
A gimmick isn’t enough to keep a film going. That is the reality. While seeing how far technology has progressed is thrilling and mind-boggling, Will Smith and his clone are unable to make Gemini Man work on their own. The narrative is clumsy and occasionally makes you roll your eyes; the scenes involving the clone’s discovery and origins are actually uncomfortable to see it feels like something out of a basic screenwriting class. We don’t want our food spoon-fed to us. We’ll be able to sort it out. It would have been a lot better film if Gemini Man had allowed us do a little more of the study ourselves. Instead, it opts for a brilliant light show that leaves you feeling quite empty by the end, providing an enjoyable but forgettable (and somewhat terrifying?) view into the future of cinema. But what about the story? There isn’t much of that around here. And there aren’t many excuses with a director and cast like this.
It’s not that Gemini Man is particularly rude or difficult to watch; it’s exactly the kind of movie you’d leave on the TV while doing other things, or choose if it’s available for free on an aircraft. It’ll suffice. It’s entertaining. It could have been a wonderful, thoughtless summer popcorn movie with a few changes. But, at an era when top-notch, emotionally gripping action films are released in droves, Gemini Man falls short. It simply lacks the necessary heart.
SKIP IT, is our recommendation. While the technology and graphics are unquestionably stunning, Gemini Man lacks a personality (or much of a script). It’s a shame, because the concept is genuinely quite intriguing at its core, but a gimmick can’t salvage a movie. While it may be suitable for airplane watching, only a few minutes of this film reveals why it was stuck in development purgatory for two decades.
In This Article...
Is Gemini an enjoyable film?
24th of July, 2020 | 3.5/5 | Full Review Gemini is as much a sensual experience as it is a story-driven one, but it all comes together wonderfully owing to Kirke’s outstanding performance.
Was Gemini Man well-received?
Despite its limitations, Gemini Man is an enjoyable crowd-pleaser. 26th of February, 2022 | 3/5 | Full Review Lee appears to have let the form to define the function of the plot at every point, which is counterintuitive.
What makes Gemini Man so unique?
Gemini is an outgoing sign. He’s constantly eager to try something new and adventurous. Because he requires constant stimulation, he is adaptable and capable of performing multiple tasks at once. He’s a competitive person who enjoys a good challenge.
Is Gemini Man unsuitable?
Parents should be aware that Gemini Man is a sci-fi/action film directed by Ang Lee and starring Will Smith as an assassin who meets a younger clone of himself. There are weapons and shootings, car chases and explosions, martial arts-style fights, a character being struck with a motorcycle, and secondary characters dying as a result of the violence. One character requests that another strip so that he can examine her for listening devices, although there is no graphic depiction of this. The use of “fk,” “st,” “hell,” and such words isn’t common, but it does occur. There’s a little bit of social drinking going on. Unfortunately, the film’s half-baked narrative and bland characters make it a tragic failure.
Is Gemini Man a remake of a previous film?
If one Will Smith isn’t enough for you, you’re in luck with Gemini Man because you get two Will Smiths for the price of one (s).
Will Smith plays an assassin who must face his deadliest opponent yet: his younger self in Ang Lee’s grandiose sci-fi. If you’re a fan of obscure, short-lived US TV shows from the 1970s, you could experience a little of dj vu with the title, just like the lead star is seeing double.
If that’s the case, you get bonus points for your expertise, but Gemini Man, the movie, isn’t a remake of Gemini Man, the TV show.
Is it true that Will Smith played both roles in Gemini Man?
Was Lee merely trying to be modest? Maybe. When we asked him about the production afterwards, he only had one question: “Did you believe in Junior?” His relief was evident when we said yes.
In “Gemini Man,” Will Smith plays two roles: a middle-aged government assassin named Henry Brogan and his younger clone, Junior, who is dispatched to assassinate his elder self. During several of the action sequences, stuntmen stood in for Junior, and Smith contributed to the character through performance capture, but Junior is ultimately a computer-generated construct from the effects firm Weta Digital.
Lee compared Weta’s approach to other films’ attempts to use visual effects to age actors, describing them as “simply brushing away actors’ wrinkles:” “You remove all the details when you do that… Aging is a difficult process; it’s a fact of life.”
Is Night Hunter a worthwhile film?
Night Hunter is a new thriller action film about a serial murderer. It’s been compared to Se7en, which I believe is going a little too far. I must say, though, that I was thoroughly entertained. It does, however, have a few blunders along the road that prevent it from achieving Se7en status.
The cast of Night Hunter (also known as Nomis) is really amazing, and all of the performers provide outstanding performances!
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.
Digital Eyes
Weta additionally improved on their already amazing and complicated digital eye pipeline. “Williams quipped, “We examined Will’s eyes to a pedantic level.” Weta took a lot of macro shots of people’s eyes for the film. “We had six people sit in a chair for a day, and we simply orbited around them, taking as many shots of their eyes as we could, pushing the lids around, and so on.” Williams wanted to make sure the digital eyes didn’t appear like Dolls’ eyes. “CG eyes have always reminded me of doll eyes. “I was curious as to why that was,” he says. The scientists determined that it had something to do with the way the eyelid and the eye reacted sympathetically with each other after doing considerable investigation. “There’s a blending of the two, and until you treat it properly and get the science correct – the eyes will always appear like they’re from a doll.”
Weta’s perceptions of an eyelid and how it’merges’ with the eye’s surface have shifted. According to Williams, the way the lid hits the eye’s surface enables it to operate almost like a single surface with the eyeball. “Although the two sides are obviously distinct, we discovered that the backside of the eyelid is actually quite soft. As a result, it fillets up on the eye. The eye squishes and pushes against the eyelid. As a result, the eyelid bulges out a little and you get this tiny little ‘fillet.’ That is extremely significant.”
The cornea and corneal bulge of the eye, as well as the scalera, were previously represented in Weta’s complicated existing technique “We matched the choroid, as well as the Iris, which is kind of evident,” Williams explained. The choroid, also known as the choroid coat, is the vascular layer of the eye that lies between the retina and the sclera and contains connective tissues. The human choroid is thickest at the far back of the eye (0.2 mm), and it narrows to 0.1 mm in the outlying portions. “The choroid is the layer of tissue that lines the inside of the eye,” Williams adds. “If you cut a person’s eye open, you’ll notice a black substance on the inside of the eyeball. It’s a thin, inky black film that lies within your eye to prevent your eye from seeing a lot of white reflections that would otherwise bounce about on the inside of your eye’s white surface.” The choroid coat is usually described as black in conventional medical texts, but Weta discovered something different. “The key is that the core roids aren’t black at all. It’s an extremely dark blue.” The reason for this is that as your Scalera (eye white) thins, the whites of your eyes become a little bluer.” Varied civilizations and races have different levels of melanin. Melanin is a dark brown to black pigment that can be found in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye.”
Who is the clone of Gemini Man?
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.