The Uncanny Valley and Other Delights

Have you ever watched a movie, say, like, A.I. or The Polar Express and wondered what it is about CG characters in those films that make them so disturbing? What is it about Aki Ross's character in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that makes it hard to relate to her? I have this problem from time to time and according to the critics, I'm not alone. I can't say that I don't like any of the aforementioned movies. In fact, I really liked watching The Polar Express. I must admit that I have not seen most of A.I. and if you know me, you'll know that's quite uncharacteristic, seeing as it was directed by Steven Spielberg.

Well, I was doing a bit of research today and discovered the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley, which tries to explain why it is that we have a hard time dealing with photorealistic CG characters. The uncanny valley is an emotional graph that shows our emotional attachment to various types of humanoid characters. The graph starts elevating on the left with highly un-human characters, such as industrial robots and elevates to things like stuffed animals and rag dolls. However, it is at this point that the emotions take a severe negative turn dropping into the valley. Things like corpses and zombies rank at the lowest points on the graph because they are almost human but not quite. This is sort of where those photorealistic CG characters come into play. They're almost human, but not quite. They suffer from some very disturbing "flaws." For instance, subtle eye movements that we consider so natural are often not well duplicated with CG characters. This produces a zombie-like stare. Also, in the case of the Final Fantasy characters, little skin nuances like deformation due to speach and a lack of visible perspiration are to blame for their fall into the uncanny valley. They have a sort of "painted statue" look to them. This is one argument as to why the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did so poorly at the box office.

Sometimes, the uncanny valley can be used as a tool to create emotional attachment/detachment to a character. This is the case with A.I. where many of the characters are deliberately almost human. The same goes for the film I, Robot, where the new generation of robots come with faces that can move. You see, the further to the right we progress on the uncanny valley chart, the more emotional attachment we have for the character. Also, as we progress to the right, the more human the character is.

There, that concludes my discussion of the uncanny valley. I thought it was a particularly fascinating thing to study this morning. Now, go out and watch a good movie.