‘Indy 5’ director James Mangold has confirmed, via a new interview with Total Film, that Harrison Ford spends the opening 25 minutes of the sequel de-aged to appear the same age he was in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
New VFX technology was created for the film in order to de-age Ford.
The technology involved is a whole other thing. We had hundreds of hours of footage of him in close-ups, in mediums, in wides, in every kind of lighting, night and day. I could shoot Harrison on a Monday as, you know, a 79-year-old playing a 35-year-old, and I could see dailies by Wednesday with his head already replaced.
It wasn’t a year of effort to get to a first pass. It was an incredible technology, and, in many ways, I just didn’t think about it. I just focused on shooting what’s [approximately] a 25-minute opening extravaganza that was my chance to just let it rip. The goal was to give the audience a full-bodied taste of what they missed so much. Because then when the movie lands in 1969, they’re going to have to make an adjustment to what it is now, which is different from what it was.
I would imagine the technology being applied here has improved over what Scorsese used on “The Irishman” four years ago. The above picture is a tiny glimpse of what to expect. It looks impressive when that brief moment plays in the trailer.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” takes place in 1969. The opening sequence takes place in 1944, hence the need to de-age Ford.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was so convinced by the de-aging process in ‘Indy 5’ that she thinks some audiences might believe the scenes of young Ford are for real [via Empire]:
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. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago.
Ford told Empire that seeing himself de-aged was “a little spooky,” but he added, “This is the first time I’ve seen it where I believe it… I don’t think I even want to know how it works, but it works. It doesn’t make me want to be young, though. I’m glad to have earned my age.”
It’s a real shame that the de-aging scenes in “The Irishman” will probably not age well over time. It just seems as though the VFX technology is getting better by the year and soon we won’t even be able to differentiate what’s real and what isn’t on-screen.
Disney will premiere “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” at the Cannes Film Festival next month. It is set to be released in theaters on June 30th.
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