James Marsden is not real

 I'm not crazy!

I know what you're thinking. Probably something along the lines of: James Marsden is most assuredly real you absolute windbag!- but just hold onto that thought and ask yourself... what if he isn't? The 49 year old actor still very much holding onto his baby face, what you think that's natural, you think a man can just do that? Hell, he looks about my age and he's nearly twice as old as me! And that is because... well, I could probably get a bit more sun, to be honest. And maybe do a bit more moisturising around the eyes. And get some more sleep... But it's also because James is in reality the single most advanced CGI computer rendering of a man that we've ever seen. I'm talking a rendering so good it defies that natural effect of the eye to spot the fallacies in even the most detailed picture. That would explain so very much not just about the man and how he looks that way, but also why his career trajectory has gone the way it has of late and why that fits in perfectly with selling the illusion of just another youthful faced Hollywood heartthrob. (Aside: Is James Marsden enough to be considered a 'Heartthrob'? It's not really my scene so I couldn't really say personally, I might be talking a bit out my ass with that one.)

Firstly; X-Men Franchise. Great movies, Bryan Singer did a good job. Maybe the first time superheros were treated somewhat seriously by a movie going public, largely on account of the amazing cast of actors including Patrick Stewart, Ian Mckellan and... James Marsden. Well what do you know? Playing the leader of the X-men, Scott Summers AKA Cyclops; you'd expect him to be the main character. But oh no, instead he plays second fiddle to the audience's viewpoint 'Wolverine' played by some Huge Jackedman from Australia. Now on the surface this is because just like every kid who grew up reading X-Men, Bryan and his writers became giant Wolverine stans on account of his no-nonsense 'stab 'em all and let god sort it out' attitude so they decided to front him as the lead of their entire X-Men series. (Arguably to the detriment of narrative cohesion come the third movie.) 

But let me tell you the real reason that the team lead of the X-Men isn't the lead of the actual movie. Because that cast, all famous and verifiably real actors, would all be acting around each other all day. If the lead that they were supporting never once showed up on set because he was entirely added in post, don't you think that would cause a bit of confusion among the set? Maybe ruffle a few feathers and cause the dire secret of his clandestine technological conception out before it's time? So no, instead he's just another supporting character, largely sidelined by the loner of the gang, until the third movie grew to be so ambitious that they had to unceremoniously kill off Cyclops in the first act in order to save on budget. Think about it- this makes sense, doesn't it?

Now let me fast forward to the first movie that really set this off for me: Hop. One of those 'animated character comes to the real world' stories staring James Marsden and... Russell Brand as the rabbit? No, I've got to be misreading that... Nope, there it is. Russell Brand is the... Easter bunny. Right... So the movie is trash and no one cares what it's about but the crux is that James is the real man acting alongside the CGI rabbit as he's attempting to become the new Easter bunny or something, I can't remember. He's definitely the lead for this movie, but think about his supporting cast- the family members he barely interacts with and another character who exists purely in post-processing! Just tell the real actors that he's sick on the days when he's supposed to show up and the lie gets perpetuated. All so that you can have a CGI bunny interact convincingly with a more dense and realistic cluster of 1s and 0s, selling the illusion of an otherwise somewhat complex marrying of the two genres in order to create a profitable kids movie. Bring in the kids to see the animated bunny monster, bring in the human to keep the parents from blinding themselves with boredom. And maybe there's a little bit of fund smuggling going on behind the scenes too, with producers pocketing the 'supposed' Marsden's acting pay check or something. (I haven't ironed out all the details of this conspiracy just yet.) 

Which brings us to the big and iconic one; Sonic The Hedgehog. Now let me ask you, why in the hell would Sonic, an established pop-culture icon with a proven strong enough personality to carry movies and TV shows as the sole lead, need to play second fiddle as the side kick to a human? Well for the formula, is the only possible excuse. Kids movies need the animated character to come to the human world and attach himself to a standard generic human in an unhealthily close relationship that serves as a blatant analogy for some real life conundrum he's going through. It's the bare basic make-up of the check-list plot synopsis that any aspiring Children's director is required to write down before a Disney executive will even consider reading their pitch. But then actually look past that and watch the movie, then ask yourself; how important is James Marsden to that plot? 

Sonic is always spending the majority of purposeful scenes playing games with Carrey's Eggman completely solo, often going off on his own entirely to have fun scenes totally free of his human handler's influence, Marsden's interactions are more tedious hinderances to the progression of the story. The man is of no consequence to the entire plot! Take him out and the movie wouldn't change! You think a real leading man would accept a role like that, where he plays second fiddle to his own side kick? How about where, in the sequel, he's phased out of the movie entirely after the opening set piece? Of course not, that would be degrading and humiliating for a nearly 50 year old man to commit to. But what if that wasn't a man acting there, but an algorithm designed to cater to a specific role so that this movie can be greenlit as something more market friendly before the actual content of the movie itself veers off dramatically in a direction more cinematically appealing? Food for thought.

Now what about the Smurfs? "Wait, isn't the movie starring Neil Patrick Harris?" Yes! Or is it? Because you see whilst that computer rendering of a marketing executive, sharing scenes with singularly distinct blue wizard snacks, might look a hell of a lot like famed actor and comedian Neil Patrick Harris, I have serious reason to doubt that. For one, Neil Patrick Harris is an actor, Wikipedia and Google say so, even though throughout the entirety of the Smurfs his performance can best be described as 'windows screenshot of Neil Patrick Harris with mp3 audio played on top of it'. He never emotes, never acts out meaningful physical cues, never performs any of the little intricacies that make an actor's work professional. And yet he is an accomplished actor? No way; he's a James Marsden. Let me explain. Computer generated James Marsden compiles it's image as an age defying actor when it needs to fill a role without requirements, but when they need that role to be of an established actor for better marketability; all it needs to do is swap out the model. What looked likes James Marsden now looks like Neil Patrick Harris; but it's just a mask, a façade- underneath it's still a cold and emotionless AI, thus it cannot match the performance value that a real actor would bring.

And now that's been established, why stop there? Why stop when we can then point our gaze at another 'animated character meets real person' movie; 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' and it's many, obnoxious sqeek-uels. What can be said about Jason Lee's 'Dave' that already hasn't been said? Jason's performance is soundly outdone by a CGI Chipmunk on a sped-up voice machine. He sounds like he's paid a flat rate for everytime he screams "Alvin", but due to diminishing returns his payout, and thus his motivation, shrinks with every utterance. You'd be forgiven for believing that he died the moment the first movie began, and each time he shouted 'Alvin' you can mark the last vestige of the spirit of Jason leaving his body as they become weaker and weaker until it's so infinitesimal that he doesn't even appear on screen anymore by the last couple of movies. Why even hire him at all? Why indeed, when you can program an AI to give out that performance, wearing that face, and not fork over a single dime? The conspiracy runs on!

And finally let's come back around to another supposed Marsden performance. How about a performance in one of the most coldly cynical and creatively bankrupt children's franchises of the past decade? A movie franchise which is, surprisingly, not a CGI-real hybrid! (I know, I didn't know James bothered acting in those sorts of movies either!) What if I told you that James Marsden is the protagonist of the Boss Baby? Well, you would call me a liar and say that Toby Maguire plays Tim Templeton. Which would be right, except that for the older iteration of Tim they decided to cast James to replace him. (I guess the studio just didn't believe that 47 year old Toby Maguire could sound like a grown-up.) Now we have Jimmy boy stepping into another franchise where he doesn't have to act around others, doesn't need to put in much of a performance at all, (because his character is literally supposed to be soulless and drained in comparison to his younger self) and the role doesn't need to have a 'celebrity' casting at all. And it doesn't have a celebrity casting, because that would be waste of money, and why would they need to waste money when they can program an AI for free?

Together we have uncovered a perfidious and far stretching conspiracy that Hollywood has been trying to keep a lid on since the early 2000's now. Why? To get cheap labour without involving the unions and strike action that would be mandated if it ever came out they were employing CGI as actors. And all fronted by the vultures over at Fox, the X-Men creators! Oh, and Sega with Paramount for Sonic. And Illumination with Universal who made Hop... and Disney through their revamped '20th Century Studios' for Boss Baby... and Sony pictures for Smurfs and... Fox again for Alvin... Okay, either this is the point where the conspiracy gets too many cooks in the kitchen for it be possibly plausible that this would conducted without anyone hearing about it from the masses of leaks that happen everyday, or we just start believing that everyone in Hollywood is joined up in a secretive mega-cabal that preserves this one secret until death. The tipping point for any conspiracy to slip into becoming a cult! Well, I'm partial to not spending the next 5 years becoming terminally online until the point where an even bigger internet nutjob cult assimilates my own beliefs into their collective and me along with it, so I'm just going to call the whole thing off and decide that James Marsden is probably real. Which means I should probably start apologizing for calling his performances in these movies tantamount to being an AI... but I won't. He'll never read: thus I can say anything!