De-aged Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
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Award-winning actor Harrison Ford got digitally de-aged in the new Indiana Jones movie.
The trailer shows a glimpse of the 80-year old as a younger version of himself during the opening.
De-aging tech was used to give viewers the feeling of a classic film, a producer told Empire.
For a split second, the trailer for the upcoming film “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” reveals a scene of 80-year old Harrison Ford looking visibly younger than usual, with dark hair and fewer wrinkles.
That’s because the actor who plays Indiana Jones got de-aged using CGI effects in the fifth installment of the popular saga, director James Mangold told Empire. The film comes 15 years after the previous Indiana Jones film, “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
Ford was de-aged during the opening sequence, in which a younger Jones fights a swarm of Nazis in a castle in 1944, the Hollywood Reporter reported. Once the sequence ends, the film jumps ahead to 1969 where Ford looks like his current self for the rest of the film, per the Hollywood Reporter.
Kathleen Kennedy, a producer for the film, told Empire that the goal of the tech is to transport viewers into the past as if they were watching a classic film.
“My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, ‘Oh my God, they just found footage,'” Kennedy said. “‘This was a thing they shot 40 years ago.'”
The de-aging tech was deployed using a software that sifted through archived images of a younger Ford which was later on matched to the new footage, Empire reported.
The actor even tried on the original jacket he wore in 1981 when he played Jones in Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” so the filmmakers could create an exact replica.
Ford told Empire that he was skeptical about whether the technology would work but was convinced when he finally saw the younger version of himself on-screen. “It’s a little spooky,” he said.
Fans who watched the trailer were quick to praise how real the young Ford looked. One person tweeted that the film did an “EXTREMELY good job” on de-aging Ford. Another user said that “My jaw is on the floor.”
Some even joked about how attractive Ford is. “I’m finding myself Catching feelings for a de-aged fella,” a user jokingly tweeted.
Filmmakers deploy de-aging tech at varying levels of success, ScreenRant reported. Movies like “Captain America: Civil War” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” have received praise for the technique, according to ScreenRant. But its use in films like “The Irishman” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” have received more criticism, per the Hollywood Reporter.
The new Indiana Jones movie comes out in theaters on June 30, 2023.