Franklin Richards, the superpowered baby of Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman, is played by a group of real-world babies in Fantastic Four: First Steps. However, in several scenes, the little guy is depicted through CGI. Given the kid’s cosmic powers and the larger-than-life scenes he takes part in, it makes sense that Marvel would need a baby they could both make do whatever they needed for a shot and blend in with other CG characters like the Thing and Galactus. However, there’s still something uncanny about seeing a little human made entirely out of CG in a live-action movie, and it’s only gotten marginally better in the past decade or so.
As someone who grew up reading the Twilight books and seeing the movies, seeing Franklin onscreen gave me a visceral flashback to how those movies handled Renesmee, a human/vampire baby who grows at an accelerated rate. When she’s first born in the fourth film, Breaking Dawn - Part 1, she’s portrayed through CGI. As she rapidly ages throughout Part 2, she’s played by a series of young actors, all of whom have the face of her eventual final actor in the film, Mackenzie Foy, digitally added to theirs. Franklin doesn’t rapidly age, so he remains a little baby for most of the film’s run until the mid-credits scene, but this computer-generated kid gets so much facetime that it breaks my brain when he looks slightly off and too aware, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way and immediately thought of Renesmee.
Thankfully, Franklin is four years old after Fantastic Four: First Steps jumps forward in its mid-credits scene, so the animators can put away the animated baby for Avengers: Doomsday. Still, it serves as a reminder that we’re still not quite at the point where CGI characters can seamlessly co-exist with live-action actors. There’s always a realism gap that even the best animation can’t quite bridge. Maybe give it another decade. Here in 2025, the ghost of Renesmee Cullen still lingers over CGI babies.