Deepfake replaces new Star Trek actors with original ones

Today in deepfakes, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy switch places with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. Also, what would the MCU be like if John Krasinski played Captain America?

We haven’t had a new Star Trek movie in a while, but the most recent three still loom large in memory, the ones starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as his first officer Spock aboard the starship Enterprise.

Will we ever get another movie with that cast? The jury’s out. But in the meantime, YouTube channel Futuring Machine is keeping us entertained with a “trailer” for a movie called Star Trek: The First Generation. It combines footage from lots of Trek movies, from 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (where William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy played Kirk and Spock respectively) right through Star Trek Into Darkness, which featured Pine and Quinto. The trick is that the older actor’s faces are deep-faked onto the newer ones, so it tells a whole new story. Take a look:

Funnily enough, Shatner’s face maps almost perfectly onto Pine’s, to the point where I can barely tell there’s a difference. Nimoy’s distinctive features do stand out when mapped onto Quinto’s body, though.

And just in case you’re watching that and wishing the crew from The Next Generation was involved instead, consider this reworking of the show so it’s like a ’90s-style sitcom:

If you’re somehow starved for Star Trek content despite the pile of shows currently on the air, hopefully this helped tide you over.

Back to deep fakes for a minute, did you see the one where John Krasinski’s face was edited onto Chris Evans’ body in The Avengers?

Eep.

Krasinski actually auditioned for the role of Captain America back in the day, if you’re wondering about the inspiration behind this video. He didn’t get it, obviously, but he may become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet.

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