Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where professor Jeff Goldblum is like "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should?" Well, sometimes people elect not to take that advice and instead follow in the immortal words of Portal 2's Cave Johnson: "Science isn't about why. It's about why not." This is one of those moments.
An absolutely mad and possibly evil genius has elected to digitally insert the rubber-faced man himself, Jim Carrey, into scenes from Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond. It's uncanny, it's a little creepy, and it's quite possibly the most subdued performance anyone will ever see from Carrey. But that shouldn't distract from the almost morbidly fascinating spectacle on display here.
While not perfect (even the best deepfakes still stumble into the uncanny valley from time to time), it's an impressive achievement, particularly when it comes to the quality of Carrey's face throughout the video. Some videos, like this bizarre deepfake of Danny Trejo as Wonder Woman, will sacrifice image quality for better angles, or simply because the goal is humor. But Carrey's face almost looks 3D with how well it fits into any given scene.
Naturally, there are a few slip-ups, like almost any time James Bond speaks. It falls into that same pesky issue that most deepfakes experience, where the lips of the replaced face are just a bit too stiff to perfectly recreate the mouth movements of the original footage. As a result, the viewer might be shaken from their immersion just a tad (like seeing The Avengers in The Wizard of Oz), but the effect as a whole is still most impressive.
Frankly, this just allows the mind to race through various fantasies involving a take on James Bond that's decidedly less stoic. The idea of Carrey actually taking on such a role is almost so outlandish that it circles right back around to intriguing, just like pineapple on pizza or any movie they watch in the hopefully continuing Mystery Science Theater 3000. Maybe a take on Bond that's less Daniel Craig and more The Mask could be in line someday. Hey, if the 1967 fever dream known as Casino Royale can exist, so can this.
But for the time being, it's just a deepfake. It's tragic, really, to see so many fascinating ideas restricted to computers with learning algorithms. Interested viewers get this idea in their heads only to realize it will probably never happen for real. Perhaps the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all wasn't exactly meant to apply to deepfakes.
Source: Jarkan|YouTube