WEBVTT - From the Vault: Into the Uncanny Valley 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:07.920 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:10.600 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.960 time to enter the vault. Because it is Saturday, time 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.040 to go into the archives for an old episode of 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:18.239 Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This time we wanted to 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.599 revisit our original exploration of the Uncanny Valley. This was 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.080 a two part episode U Part one was originally published 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:30.479 April four. I think back on this episode a good bid. Actually, 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.960 I guess I encounter a lot of strange almost their 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.920 simulations of the human likeness. Yeah, yeah, this one, this 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:40.680 one is one that that I think back to a 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:44.120 lot as well, just because, yeah, you're always encountering some 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.600 imperfect digital recreations of a human likeness, and then we 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:51.760 have to sort out how we feel about it, but 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.200 also how we've perhaps been conditioned to feel about it 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.760 just by knowing about, uh, the idea of the Uncanny Valley. 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:01.200 So yeah, this is gonna first of two episodes of 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:05.160 this episode is Into the Uncanny Valley, originally published April four, 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.600 and then in the subsequent episode, we're going to go 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:16.679 Beyond the Uncanny Valley. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:25.560 Mind from how stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:27.600 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:30.600 and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want to take 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.240 you back to a conversation we had. I think it 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:36.000 was last December. It was right after I went to 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.759 see the new, the most recent Star Wars movie, Rogue one. 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:42.440 Oh yes, uh, And I am on the cusp, the 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.480 very cusp of seeing it myself and waiting for it 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.840 to become rent rental options. So oh it's not yet. 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:50.760 Still got still a week or two out. So has 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.600 everything been spoiled for you so far? No? People have 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.600 been a little um cooler on this one. Um. I 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.720 think some things are probably spoiled for me, but not 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.440 like that last one where every just really felt the 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:03.680 need to, you know, just lay it all out on 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:06.080 social media. Let me let me spoil one thing for 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.960 you here and they go to space and there's a 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.519 war there. Yeah, stars among the stars. But there is 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:14.640 one thing in the movie. Okay, so mild spoiler for 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.399 Rogue one coming out. It's something that probably everybody already knows. 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:19.520 It's also not really about the content of the movie, 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.960 but just about which characters you see. But if you 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.600 are ready, are you ready for the mild spoiler? Okay, 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:27.720 we get to see if you remember back to the 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.320 original Star Wars. Back go back to the seventies. Peter 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:34.240 Cushing as Grand mof Tarkin, the guy who was in 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:38.720 fact Darth Vader's boss on the Star Him. Yeah, he's 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.200 enough of this, Vada release him. And we love Peter 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.080 Cushing because he was in all these old monster movies. 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.800 He goes back to the Hammer movies. He was. He 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:50.760 was Dr Frankenstein, like the villainous Dr Frankenstein of the 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.320 Hammer films. And he I think was the hero of 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:56.360 the version of the Mummy that has Christopher Lee as 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:59.040 as the Mummy. Uh, the one. I've got the poster 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:01.440 for it in the House six up. It's the Belgian posters, 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:05.840 so it's La Malediction de Feron. But yeah, so Peter 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.799 Cushing was the original Grand mof Tarkan, this bad Empire 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.520 guy who was Darth Vader's boss. And the thing they 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:17.200 do in the New Rogue One is they bring him back. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.480 He's dead, he has passed away. This movie takes place 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.480 a little bit before the original Star Wars is supposed 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:27.240 to have taken place. But they bring this character back 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:29.760 and they have an actor stand in as him, but 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:32.639 it's not just a recast role. They try to make 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.760 it look as if this is Peter Cushing standing here 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.720 delivering the lines with c g I. And this is 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:41.960 an odd choice because all right, so you're gonna have 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.600 Darth Vader in there, that's easy to do. Darth Vader 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.440 is a dude in a suit, voiced by James Earl Jones. 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.280 James Earl Jones is still alive, so you can check 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.920 that one off the list. But Grandma Tarkin, like you said, uh, 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.320 the actor is dead. So it seems to me like 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.440 the first easiest thing to do is just don't have 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:00.560 those scenes. If you know it's going to be ablematic, 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:04.440 don't even mess with it. Or um, just use an 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:08.160 actual living actor such as Wayne Pigram who played him 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.280 in Revenge of the Sith. Or go with Ben Cross, 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:13.360 who's another actor that I've seen over the years brought 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:17.200 up as potential Tarkan casting, or head go with Ralph Finds, Like, 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.960 clearly you have the money to throw down the well 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.760 of expensive c g I equipment, Just go ahead and 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.520 hire Ralph Finds. I know he's pricey, but he's great 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.160 and it's consummate evil Brett. Yeah, he even kind of 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.760 looks like a younger Peter Cushing. He's got that same 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.760 kind of angular face, like the thin long face with 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:36.880 the jaw and the scowl. It's all there. And it's 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:41.320 not like fans of various franchise are not clearly cool 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:43.480 with recasting. It's not like we're gonna be thrown into, 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:46.719 you know, a traumatic spin, because you can look to 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:51.080 a Game of Thrones, James Bond, Twilight, Harry Potter, etcetera, 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.280 like we we get it. We can roll with a recast. Now. 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:57.880 I want to go into completely different directions thinking about 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:02.000 this c g I grandmof Tarken. One is that I 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.000 didn't like it in the movie. Okay, I saw it 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.599 and I was just like, I don't want this. It 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.240 pulled me out of the movie. It made me stop 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.240 being in the story and just thinking about how did 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.080 they do that? I don't On one hand, it looked 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.159 great like when you see the movie, I think he 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.760 will kind of have to agree. It's unless I'm missing something. 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.440 It's the best c g I simulation of a real 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.200 person that I've ever seen. Like it looks amazing, but 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.800 it still looks not quite good enough that I can 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.400 just accept it and go with it. I kept continually thinking, like, 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.960 what am I looking at? It's almost really him, but 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.360 it's not quite really him, and it made me feel icky. 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.839 So in this it made you to send into what 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:50.200 we've come to know as a as a as a 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.640 species as the Uncanny Valley. Right, So today is going 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:55.520 to be the first of two episodes we want to 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.760 do about the Uncanny Valley, and this first one we 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.160 wanted to descend into the Uncanny Valley, but not us 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.520 talk about it in terms of the standard pop culture phenomenon, 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:05.839 because this is one of those side tech concepts that 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:09.080 is totally filtered down into the mainstream. Everybody talks about 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:14.279 the Uncanny Valley. It's a totally normal, ground level pop 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.840 culture phenomenon now, especially with as much bad C. G 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.280 I as we encounter in the movies. But there it's 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.960 also a scientific field of study. It's something that people 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.760 are looking into with empirical research to try to figure 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:27.760 out does it really exist, If it does really exist, 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:30.480 what causes it, what can be done about it. So 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:32.080 we want to look at it from both of these 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:35.200 angles today, Right, so we should probably roll through some 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:37.839 just fun examples of this. We're gonna try and not 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.200 to go too long on this. If we do, we'll 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.320 cut it and save it for trailer talk. Either way, 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.560 we'll probably do a Facebook live trailer talk on an 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.120 upcoming Friday about some of these movies. Okay, so I 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.240 want to go back to a much earlier experience for me, Robert, 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.360 did you see The Mummy Returns in two thousand one? 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.200 Remember this one? I don't think I saw The Mummy Returns. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.680 I saw the Money and I remember digging it at 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.680 the time, but not not the old hammer one or 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:05.960 the universal one. You know, the Yeah, the the re 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.120 the reboot of the Money. Is his name, Brendan Fraser. Yeah, 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:13.120 and what Arnold Vosslo? Yeah he was he. I I 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.200 enjoyed him as they kind of brought in some of 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:19.680 these aspects of the tragic Mummy figure, which I liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.320 But in two thousand one we got the Scorpion King. 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:24.800 This is a character that appears in the Mummy Returns 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:26.480 and he's pretty much if you want to picture it 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:28.400 if you haven't seen the movie, actually you should look 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:30.480 up video of this. We're gonna tell you to go 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:32.600 look up images and video quite a few times in 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.880 these episodes because some visual aids will help. But if 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:38.840 you want to picture it, picture the concept of a centaur, 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.840 except replace the horse parts with scorpion parts and some 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:46.440 other random arthropod bits, and the man part on top 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.760 is Dwayne the Rock Johnson, except it's not Dwayne the 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:53.240 Rock Johnson. There's a there's a bit of a problem 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.360 with the rocks. So the corpion Scorpion, the Scorpion King, 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:01.200 scuttles into action in the film, and you can tell 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.360 immediately something is wrong because it's not just the rock. 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.920 It's this c g I upper body designed to look 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.480 like the rock. It's supposed to be him, but it 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.520 doesn't look right. It looks like somebody took the rock, 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.520 skinned him, and then took the skin suit and then 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.880 boiled it and then maybe ironed it and rubbed it 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.040 down with wax, and then stretched it over somebody else, 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:28.640 like a bald Crispin Glover wearing a waxed up the 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.360 rock suit. And and that would be fine if that's 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:34.679 what they were going for, But I guess the disconnect 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.319 here is that clearly they wanted this to be like 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.240 the Rock as a scorpion center and not this um 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.520 creepy in human above the nation that you've described, right, 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:46.840 And it's sort of I guess works because it's okay 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:49.120 if he's creepy, because he's a monster. But he was 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.800 creepy in a way that he clearly wasn't supposed to be. 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.640 It wasn't just that, oh he's a monster. He looks weird. 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:57.240 Something looked wrong with him. And this was at a 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:01.000 time when computer generated animations were hot, right two thousand one. 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.679 They seem to be getting better all the time, and 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.920 yet they were terrible producing these characters that were not 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:11.440 only not convincingly human, they were literally physically unpleasant to 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:14.120 look at. They were repulsive. Yeah, it was a period 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.200 when everyone was just foolishly optimistic about what we could 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:19.560 achieve with c g I, and you know, into in 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.319 in a sense, maybe that hasn't gone away. We're still 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.080 very the Rogue one example, Like, clearly everyone was very 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.439 optimistic about how great this looked, and even though to 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.920 your point, it does look great, but within the context 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.280 of the film, something doesn't quite work. Yeah, I would say, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.280 now for some people we can get into this more. 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.040 I think, especially in the next episode when we then 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:42.800 the next one, we want to try to go beyond 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.160 the valley, the Uncanny Valley. But I will say at 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.400 this point, for some people, Tarkan was not over the 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:52.920 line or under the line. I don't know where you 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:55.800 put the line. But for for some people it worked, 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:58.199 and I do think that's an interesting thing to acknowledge 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:01.679 that while for me I I experience this, uh, not 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:03.959 to the same extent as the Scorpion King, but a 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.240 kind of Scorpion King revulsion, not everybody did. Now, one 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.360 thing about Tarkan is that the Tarkan c Jack character 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:12.880 is correct me if I'm wrong, because I have not 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:16.920 seen it myself yet. But he is interacting with human 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.600 actors in this in his scenes, Yeah, I think, so okay, 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.560 or at least he's in a film with other human actors, 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:25.400 even if he's not sharing the exact same scene with them. 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:28.160 So you might think, well, if you just had a 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.960 movie just full of brilliant looking Tarkins, maybe it would 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.760 be okay. And maybe it would But some of the 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:38.440 classic examples of Uncanny Valley happened to be films that 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:40.840 are filled with nothing but c g I characters. Yeah, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:43.280 how about one from the same year as The mom 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.280 of Your Turns two thousand one, if you go back 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:50.880 to Oh yes, Final Fantasy, The Spirits Within, I remember 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:53.760 kind of liking it. I do too. It was a 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.880 film that I think I kind of half watched, half 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.599 worked on, like some just college course workers something. It 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:02.680 was just on in the background and and maybe that 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:04.480 was the right level of immersion in it. But I 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:07.040 remember digging it. But at the same time, there are 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.280 a lot of dead puppet eyes in this movie. Oh yeah, 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:12.640 and it's so I saw it at the time. I 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:16.000 remember having mixed feelings about the animation, like in some senses, 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.319 I remember thinking, Wow, that looks so cool. That again 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:21.360 may have been a product of its time. We can 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.760 talk about that more, how our expectations changes things go on. 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:29.080 But also I don't know. There were multiple things wrong 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.240 with that movie, one of which being that the last 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.120 line of spoken dialogue in the movie, as a friend 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:39.480 of mine pointed out at the time, was oh it's warm. 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:42.520 Well I can I don't remember the line, so I 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.200 can't speak to it how well it landed, But I 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:48.720 can see that being a problem. Role credits Now. Another 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.560 big one, this came out just three years later, is 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.679 of course, The Polar Express. Now, when people talk about 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:56.920 the Uncanny Valley these days, i'd say this is a 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:59.480 top three mentioned. Yeah, this is one of the defining 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.960 nightmare of our time now based on a wonderful children's 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:05.679 book about the magic of Christmas time. Yeah, the book 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.400 is wonderful, but it's certainly one of these examples. If 0:12:08.400 --> 0:12:10.680 you take a very brief children's book and you try 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:14.520 and adapt it into a feature length motion picture, that's 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:17.840 very difficult to do. In fact, I'm really grasping for 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:20.760 an example where anybody actually pulled it off. Like, the 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.920 best adaptations of children's books that come to mind are 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:28.760 all very short, very short films. Generally, I'm thinking of 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:33.720 Dr Seus's adaptations from the seventies and eighties, not The 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.840 Polar Express, which is just an exercise in psychic trauma 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:43.320 brought on by just seemingly intentionally weaponized Uncanny Valley. Um, 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:47.000 you know, the soulless puppet people. I've never seen this movie, 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:48.920 but I looked up clips to see what people were 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:53.200 talking about, and oh man, they they are not kidding it. 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.160 I don't know how children made it through this movie. 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.800 It has these it has these creepy elves, It's got 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:04.200 a creepy Tom Hanks as a train conductor. Nothing seems right, 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.160 Everything seems like it's just about to everybody's about to 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:11.120 start melting and screaming. Yeah. I think this is one 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.319 where it was a poor idea in my opinion, and 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.920 uh in the technology was not there to to rescue 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.640 the idea. Now the next one we're going to discuss though. 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.840 I think it was a great idea on paper, but 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:27.160 it just didn't work out on the screen. And that's 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.160 of course. Two thousand seven's Bayowolf. Now as this Robert 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.360 Zemeckis who did this, Yeah, Robert Zemeckis helmed it. And 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.600 then the writing it was Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.760 So some you know, some some some big names just 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:43.000 attached and to the the ideas behind this. Uh this movie, 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.080 and of course based on the story of Grindel and Beowulf, 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.400 which is a classic you would think, you know, hard 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:53.439 to miss action narrative. I think The Bao Wolf could 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.000 make a really great movie if somebody did it right. Yeah, 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.800 I think so too. I have yet to see that movie. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:03.520 But but but certainly has all the potential in the world. 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.280 And they had a pretty cool vocal cast as well, 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.360 I think, and Angelina Jolie is in it as the 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.440 monster's mother. They have ray Winstone as Bowel. Yeah, he 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.400 does the voice of of Beowulf, and uh and who 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.800 was it that plays the monster? We were just Crispin 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.360 Now I've seen it all back home. Not one of 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:24.440 my favorite monster depictions of Grenville, by the way, but 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:27.240 he's a monster. We can get past that. But everybody 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.320 else in the film really has the uncanny valleys that 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:32.480 going on to to a high degree. I think I 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.080 read a quote somewhere where film critic was talking about 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:39.160 how the monsters in the movie were only slightly less 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:43.160 frightening than the humans. Yeah, yeah, the humans. It just 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.880 it just didn't land. Now at this point you're probably thinking, well, 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.560 how about video games, because they're certainly when you're thinking 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.400 about computer animated human beings interacting with each other, staring 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.840 right into the camera, you think of video games. Yeah, 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:01.600 and and I think, you know, here's here's the thing here. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:03.640 I have to say that I haven't noticed it as 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.840 often these days. I think a lot of game animators 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.080 have found ways to get around the Uncanny Valley. I 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:11.680 don't want to get to ahead of our flow here, 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:14.760 but I think one thing that I've noticed they sometimes 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:18.640 do is that they don't actually go for photo realism, 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:20.960 and they go for a kind of more real than 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:25.760 real combination of like a comic book style type character illustration, 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:30.200 and then these other realistic aspects that when you when 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:32.400 you look at a video game character, you would never 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.600 mistake it for a photograph of a person, even even 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:39.280 one that's got really good graphics. But much like the 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:42.120 way dialogue is written in films, you know, you don't 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.880 want to make dialogue sound like real people talk, because 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:48.200 that would be horrible to listen to, but you do 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:52.000 want to make it sound quote realistic. You don't want 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.320 to make your characters look too realistic in animation, but 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.000 you do want to make them look quote realistic. In 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:01.640 other words, they feel real. Yeah, this reminds me of 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:03.560 a game franchise that I haven't I don't think I've 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.880 ever played more than a demo of this, but the 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.800 Gears of War series. So all the people in this 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.160 kind of look like like, if you're gonna be critical 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:12.640 of it, you might say, well, everyone looks kind of 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:14.960 like they're weird guerilla people. Like. It was a like 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:19.240 we're in an alternate world where unrealistically huge upper bodies. Yeah, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.840 is if evolution took a slightly different turn into an 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:27.720 intelligent primates. Uh. And yet they look real. They don't 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.600 look like they don't get an uncanny effect rolling off them, 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.280 Like you know, you look at them, you can see pores, 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.360 you can see hair follicills. They look real, but they 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:41.480 are but they are certainly not going for authentic human 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:43.880 being there all right, Now, I want to put out 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.040 one more example here before we move on, and it's 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:50.760 a rare example of uncanny valley avoidance, a very specific 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.720 type of uncanny valley avoidance, and that is from a 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:58.000 fantastic stop motion short that was produced by the National 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.400 Film Board of Canada. And you can find the online 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:02.000 if you just do us a search for it. It's 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:06.080 Madam Tutley Putly and it's a wonderful little little film, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:11.160 very very French feel to it. Characters on a train, weirds, 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.639 frightening things occurring. Uh, definitely check it out. But the 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:18.359 trick to it there, these are stop motion animated characters 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:21.880 and their eyes just feel so alive. They stare right 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:24.480 into you, and you don't you don't question for a 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.600 second that these are that these are people. And the 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.440 trick that they employed is that they used real human eyes, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.160 not in a you know, depraved, evil puppet master kind 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:36.840 of a way, either. They videotaped the eyes of human 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:39.640 actors and then blended the footage with that of the puppets. 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.320 That sounds like an incredible gambit, because that sounds like 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.200 that could have produced some of the worst Uncanny Valley 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.840 feelings ever if it went wrong. Yeah, and and I 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:50.560 don't know, there may be some people who watch this 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.800 short and and have the opposite effect and think that 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.400 it's super creepy. I found it to be like this, 0:17:56.400 --> 0:18:00.800 this interesting example of circumventing the Uncanny Alley. But I'll 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:02.560 leave it for you guys to decide. I'll include a 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:04.200 link to this one as well as some of the 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:06.320 other sources we're talking about on the landing page for 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:08.800 this episode. It's stuff to blow your mind dot com. 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:10.640 All right, well, we are going to take a quick 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:12.680 break and when we come back, we will get into 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.720 the origin of the scientific idea of the Uncanny Valley 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:23.119 and its history. And research. All right, we're back. So 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:25.639 the uncanny Valley. Where does this even come from? Right? 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.280 So we've already been talking about it because most people 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:31.000 have heard of this, they're somewhat familiar with it. I 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:34.280 was talking to Rachel about it though. She was saying, 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:38.119 you know, at least to her, it had this connotation 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:43.160 of just generally synthetically generated images being creepy in one 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:45.480 way or another. So maybe we should get into the 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:48.439 specifics of the origin of the idea. So let's go 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:54.119 back to the year nineteen seventy. Everything's great, Wait is it? 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:57.520 I don't know, but but everybody, everybody's looking forward to 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:01.000 the future in terms of creating humanoid robots. What are 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:03.240 we going to be able to do well? The Japanese 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:08.760 roboticist massa Hiro Mori of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:11.600 He wrote a paper that was published in this Japanese 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:16.680 journal Energy that coined the term uncanny Valley to describe 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:20.840 a problem that he was predicting with increasingly humanoid robots. 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.359 And this was based on just some observations he'd had 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:28.560 of of different events. So you might say incidents in 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.359 the progress of designing humanoid robots such as consumer electronics 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.560 shows in Japan and stuff like that. So what he 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:39.240 predicted was that as you had a humanoid robot, robot 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:41.960 that looks like a human and it's likeness to a 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:47.320 human increased, our attitude toward them would improve. Our affinity 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:51.280 would go up as they became more human, until they 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:55.200 reached a certain tipping point of similarity to humans, where 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:59.800 suddenly our affinity, our friendly attitude, almost immediately shifts and 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:05.960 plunges down into strong revulsion. Being human is likable, being 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.639 sort of human is likable, but being almost human is 0:20:09.840 --> 0:20:13.480 horrible and repulsive. And then of course at the final end, 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.439 uh you you would have a real human. So you 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:18.679 can think of the uncanny valley as a phase in 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.199 a graph, an X Y graph, and along the horizontal 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.080 axis on the bottom, you've got the degree of similarity 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.920 to a human, and then on the vertical axis you've 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:31.040 got the degree of our affinity for the object. And 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.080 more hypothesized, this graph would have these two peaks. You'd 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.879 start with zero on both axes, because a thing that 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.639 has no human like traits basically gets no human affinity 0:20:40.680 --> 0:20:42.879 response one way or another. And we just don't you know, 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.240 how much do you really like an industrial conveyor belt 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.760 that you're just sort of neutral on it. But as 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.840 you increase the humanity, you give a robot arms or 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:57.560 something that looks like a face, eyes, limbs, you climb 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:02.560 this gentle, gradual slope to the fur peak and affinity. Um, 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.439 you know, and he didn't name the peak, but I 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:07.200 think we should name the peak. I think this first 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.160 peak should be called something like the cuteness peak. That's 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:13.520 not exactly right because it's not exactly cuteness, but it's 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.760 recognizing something kind of human about what you're looking at. Yeah, Like, 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:20.760 I mean, we don't have to describe cute to everyone here, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.800