If you want to make a cinephile cringe, “digital face replacement” is the phrase that pays. “Digital de-aging” and “deepfake” will do the trick, too. While theoretically just the latest addition to the filmmaker’s toolkit, it’s proven to enable some of Hollywood’s ugliest and most cowardly instincts. In an industry already averse to risk and change, digital de-aging and the more dehumanizing practice of outright replacing an unknown actor’s face with a familiar one allows media corporations to lean more than ever on the cheap high of nostalgia.

Of course, any illusion — cinematic or otherwise — is only as good as the magicians creating it. If their intent is merely to dazzle you for a hot second, then it’s just a magic trick. With loftier goals and an artistic hand, a visual effect can be profoundly moving.

Improbably, this year’s best argument for the value of digital face replacement in cinema came from a big-budget Star Trek fan film. 765874: Unification is a 10-minute short produced by effects studio OTOY and The Roddenberry Archive, an online museum founded by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s son Rod. It follows Captain James T. Kirk after his death in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, navigating an abstract afterlife and crossing barriers of time and reality to comfort his dying friend, an aged Spock in the image of the late Leonard Nimoy.

The role of James T. Kirk is portrayed by William Shatner — but also, it isn’t. It’s actually actor Sam Witwer, wearing a digital prosthetic of Shatner’s face circa 1994. This latest generation of digital mask renders in real time, allowing the actor to rehearse in front of a monitor and perfect his performance as he would with a physical makeup effect.

Witwer’s work absolutely pays off. On first viewing, practically any viewer would reasonably assume that the actor on screen is a de-aged William Shatner.

Without seeing it for yourself, you could be forgiven for dismissing Unification as easily as the late Harold Ramis’ cheap, ghostly cameo in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The difference, however, is in the execution of this story as well as in its purpose. The climax of Ghostbusters: Afterlife sees a digitally resurrected Ramis effectively passing the Proton Pack to a new generation, offering a tacit endorsement of a commercial product that the actor never saw. It’s a mechanically engineered tearjerking moment amid a hollow exercise in nostalgia, a sweaty effort to invest a new generation in Ghostbusters — not the raunchy snobs-versus-slobs comedy, mind you, but the toy line it inspired.

By contrast, Unification is a noncommercial work about putting the past to rest, and saying goodbye to two beloved figures: not Kirk and Spock, but Shatner and Nimoy.

Kirk and Spock, after all, live on, recast twice already on film and television. But this film wouldn’t work if the roles were played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, or Paul Wesley and Ethan Peck, because it’s not really about Kirk visiting Spock on his deathbed. It’s about the 93-year-old Shatner — who also produced the short along with Nimoy’s widow, Susan Bay Nimoy — facing his own death through the lens of his most famous character and finding comfort in the notion that he may be reuniting with the man he once called “brother.” It helps that this is a noncommercial work, but what really makes Unification outstanding is Sam Witwer’s performance. Director Carlos Baena composes something that is somehow both art film and tech demo, hiding the weaknesses of the VFX........

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