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Thanks to tech from Industrial Light & Magic, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens with a roughly 25-minute sequence set in 1944… with Harrison Ford playing a 35-year-old Indy. Ford was 79 at the time of shooting. The goal was to remind people why they love this character so much. If the de-aging feels seamless to audiences (along with some other high-profile projects using similar tech), older actors may find fresh opportunities to reprise roles that they always wanted to play again.
Dial back time
Harrison Ford got quite the makeover to step back into Indiana Jones’ shoes.
- To de-age Ford to the same age he was when they shot the original trilogy (the last of those, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade released in 1989), he acted with a “myriad dots on his face” to capture his performance.
- Other than that, Ford just acted as though he was 35 (is there anything Harrison Ford can’t do?).
- ILM then went to work using its AI tech, with the director, James Mangold, able to see the results two days later.
What made the de-aging possible amid an incredibly complicated sequence (Indy fights Nazis in a castle; we’re psyched) was that ILM had hundreds of hours of footage of him at that age in every angle and lighting scenario imaginable. That body of work was instrumental in developing the young Indy.
You can see the magic yourself on the big screen on June 28th.
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