While the Harry Potter franchise and its cast have become well-known across the world, a new deepfake explores alternate casting for the film that ruins the franchise in unimaginable ways.
The video uses deepfake technology to change the faces of the iconic characters into some familiar American actors while also adding pieces of dialogue from their former roles, requiring some creative mashups. While the edits are nowhere close to seamless, it still provides a fun insight into what could have been if the casting had been left in the wrong hands.
The deepfake only provides changes to the adults cast in the film, but in every case, they had been swapped out with an American alternative. Both director Chris Columbus and J. K. Rowling were adamant against casting an American actor to play any of the roles. More specifically, Rowling was particularly set on British actors and would not compromise on that. At one point, Steven Spielberg was in talks to direct an adaptation of the books, but he wanted an animated film with an American actor, such as Haley Joe Osment, to provide the voice for Harry Potter.
The video's casting blends a mix of actors with the right looks, and others who are often typecast in similar roles. Morgan Freeman's past roles often echo a similar sense of sage wisdom as Albus Dumbledore. By contrast, using Adam Driver as Severus Snape works due to an uncannily similar appearance, but his lines are delivered with more youthful anger than Alan Rickman's slow and methodical way of speaking.
While the Harry Potter franchise leaned heavily on British culture for its identity, the video's incorporation of an Americanized version of the main theme music washes away any semblance of British identity the film had left. Where the video transcends bad casting and simply enters the realm of bad edits comes with characters such as Dobby and Voldemort. While Nicholas Cage's manic acting energy is not a terrible fit for the villain, it's strange to see his smooth head replaced with a still balding one, demonstrating the limitations of the current deepfake technology.
Source: YouTube
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