Harrison Ford has aged for Indiana Jones 5, swears it’s not badass | Rare Techy

Digitally aging actors must be a tempting proposition for a movie studio. Not only can you take advantage of generations of nostalgia, but you can also skip the backlash that comes with recasting a beloved character. All the better if, like in the new Indiana Jones movie, it’s only for one scene. That way, you can create the connective tissue necessary to legitimize a new sequel—especially one made 41 years after the original.

This latest detail about the long-in-progress movie came Monday as part of a story in Empire magazine that revealed some facts about the new film’s opening, including that it will shrink star Harrison Ford from his age. the original trilogy.

According to director James Mangold (Logan), the film opens in 1944 in a castle full of Nazis, where Indy goes on all sorts of adventures to get free. And he’s said to be doing it all with his old look Raiders of the Lost Ark itself, although that remains to be seen.

After all, Disney, who is producing this film under 20th Century Pictures, has a complicated history with anti-aging and is responsible for some of the strangest and most startling uses to date. The company famously cast Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia, with strange and somewhat horrifying results. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The series also had mixed results with a digitally aged Luke Skywalker The Mandalorianwhich pulls the actor’s voice back through the decades to 1983.

But perhaps the most infamous aging reduction belongs to Netflix, not Disney. This studio is solely responsible for Martin Scorsese Irish, which reinstated Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino over a few decades of in-film storylines with decidedly mixed results.

To avoid these problems, Mangold worked with visual effects studio Industrial Light and Magic to work on new software that gathers archival footage of Ford’s younger self and matches it with freshly filmed footage, merging the two into something the team hopes will be the same. to look seamless.

Indiana Jones 5 producer Kathleen Kennedy, who also produced all of the Star Wars properties mentioned above, takes a look at the new techniques that have been introduced since digital de-aging first hit movies.

“I hope that even though it’s talked about in terms of technology, you just look at it and say, ‘Oh my God, they just found the footage.’ It was something they shot 40 years ago,” Kennedy told Empire.

The notoriously clumsy Ford also shared some of Kennedy’s optimism. “It’s the first time I’ve seen it where I believe it,” the actor told Empire. And while he certainly has a duty to say nice things about the film, it’s worth remembering that of all the franchises he’s worked on, Ford has never been shy about calling Indy a favorite or wanting to return to it. And that much love for the franchise has to be worth something, so maybe Ford wouldn’t have gone along with the aging reduction if he didn’t really think it would work.

Whatever the final outcome, we’ll have to wait until the first footage of the film premieres to see for ourselves, or until its final release on June 30.