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George Lucas is continually lauded with his incredible visuals of the future, in a galaxy far, far away. His work on the Star Wars films remains a benchmark on imagination that few today even match with some calling him a genius.

But shortly before Christmas, a story broke that Lucas was quietly buying up the rights to dead movie stars so that he could use CGI (aka computer trickery) to insert dead Hollywood icons into modern films.

For instance, he could have James Dean acting alongside Luke Perry, or… err, that’s a bad example but I think you get the gist.

This technology could revolutionize the way movies are written and made. The possibilities are endless.

Just think how exciting it would be to see Marlon Brando playing the disapproving dad of son-in-law-to-be Skeet Ulrich in a hilarious send up of weddings! Or how about Marilyn Monroe playing the voice of an uppity Bichon Frisee and Groucho Marx voicing an insufferable cat in a remake of The Incredible Journey? You could even have Keanu Reeves reprising his role as Johnny Utah in a sequel to Point Break! OK, I’m aware that he’s technically not dead, but come on, the last time I saw such a wooden performance I was watching Hayden Christensen in Attack of the Clones.

I can’t decided whether this is a good idea or not. From a marketing standpoint there’s good and bad.

Good in that it would be incredible to have a name from the past like Margaret Dumont attached to your film. And for those young filmmakers out there it might cost less to have dead “name talent” like Humphrey Bogart digitally added to your film then it is to hire someone like Don Johnson.

That being said, it would still be nice to see some actor’s that died before their time. The ones that I would, in all sincerity, like to see back on the silver screen include Phil Hartman, John Candy, Heath Ledger and Grace Kelly.

However, the cons against this method are pretty big. Depending on the advancement of the technology you might be limited in the vocabulary of these stars from the dead. This makes more difficult for the writer and the actors. The writer has only a certain amount of phrases they can use which could greatly affect the dialogue. And if Orson Welles was cast in one of Christopher Guest’s ensemble comedies, I think that the ability to improvise would be greatly diminished and therefore the movie would suffer.

And forget about the dead star going out and advertising the film. There’d be no way to get Robert Urich being interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos or Mary Hart or even Merv Griffin.

And what if the movie sucks (it probably will, BTW)? Who do you blame? Can you blame the dead actor Jim Varney for not bringing life to the character of Ernest like he always did? Can you blame him? And almost nobody wants to insult the dead, although I have no problem criticizing Larry King.

Now there’s no arguing that Lucas is on the forefront of the digital revolution as his Star Wars movies have continually pushed the boundaries of what is possible, and for that he must be commended. (If he could only digitally replace Hayden Christensen with River Phoenix then I would truly think of him as a genius, but somehow I don’t see that happening.)

While the possibilities are intriguing, I say why stop at the actors? Let’s go deeper and farther than even Walt Disney could even imagineer if he was alive (or digitally recreated).

I say we try to bring back directors that have died and have them helm these new movies!

What if Alfred Hitchcock was reanimated to direct the recent thriller Disturbia? You’d have Rear Window which is marathons better than Disturbia if only because Shia Labeouf wouldn’t be in it. Let’s get John Hughes back making smart teen comedies and let’s bring Ed Wood back to life to improve on the Twilight Saga.

But if the future of cinema is all about resurrecting the past, lets just hope and pray that no one resurrects Jar Jar Binks.

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