Marvel’s Avengers deepfake video adds MCU actors into the game

A YouTuber has provided a look at what an MCU version of the forthcoming game might look like

Louis Chilton
Friday 28 August 2020 06:29 EDT
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A YouTuber has re-worked footage from the forthcoming Marvel‘s Avengers video game to include actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The game, published by Square Enix, features many of the heroes from the hit film franchise, including Thor, Captain America, Hulk and Black Widow, but they are portrayed by different (albeit similarly groomed) actors.

YouTube channel BabyZone has used deepfake technology – the CGI face-altering programme which has been widely condemned over its use by pornographers – to insert the MCU actor’s faces into the game.

Slightly uncanny likenesses of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo can be seen in the three-and-a-half-minute-long clip, providing some indication of what the game might look like with their involvement.

Avengers was at the centre of some controversy when it was revealed that Spider-Man would be added to the game at a later date – but only on PlayStation consoles.

Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr are inserted into footage from ‘Marvel’s Avengers’
Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr are inserted into footage from ‘Marvel’s Avengers’ (Square Enix/BabyZone)

This is because Sony, who own PlayStation, also hold the necessary rights to the webslinger’s image. Xbox players, it seems, will have to miss out.

Other playable characters will also be added to the game as downloadable updates after the games release, with Hawkeye (played in the films by Jeremy Renner) already confirmed.

Marvel’s Avengers is out on Friday, 4 September.

Recently, another YouTuber made waves with a deepfake video, in this case a re-working of the CGI de-aging effects from Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman.

Viewers praised the deepfake clips – which saw Robert De Niro de-aged by several decades – as “mind-blowingly better than the real thing”.

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