Harrison Ford Says The De-Aging In Indiana Jones 5 Is 'Very Different'
James Mangold's adventure film "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is due in theaters on June 30, 2023, and will continue the adventures of the stalwart title hero played by Harrison Ford. When the character was first introduced in Steven Spielberg's 1981 film "Raiders of the Lost Ark," Indiana Jones was constructed as a throwback, a modern version of square-jawed, globe-trotting adventure heroes typically seen in matinee adventure serials from the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, "Raiders" was set in 1936, and Indiana Jones had to race vicious Nazis to a magical artifact. The artifact, incidentally, was the Ark of the Covenant, a powerful cask important in Jewish lore.
Ford was already 40 during the filming of "Raiders," and the film's multiple sequels saw Indy aging with the times. The 2008 film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" saw the adventuring hero in the 1950s, now 68, after the fall of the Nazi party. He would have to face off against rising Soviets instead, now racing them to a magical artifact. As Ford aged, so too did the setting and, by necessity, the material. The reality of creating an ageless hero with an actor who ages like an actual human is that eventually the character, too, will grow older.
But not for lack of trying. Thanks to cutting-edge special effect technology, actors can be digitally de-aged to appear as young as the filmmakers might want. "Dial of Destiny" will take place in 1969, so Ford, 80, will be able to play his own age, but a flashback set in 1944 will require a younger version of Ford. And according to the actor, this will be different than de-aging we've seen on screen before.
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It seems that the effects technicians on "Dial of Destiny" weren't content to erase Ford's facial features and replace them with digital approximations of what he looked like 30 years previous. Because Ford has had such a long and prolific acting career, there are plenty of photos and films that the FX houses could use as reference. As such, Ford filmed his scenes live, and then archivists would comb through Ford's other movies, looking for shots where he was positioned similarly. At first, Ford was wary of being digitally de-aged, but when he was given the lowdown on the FX he became more receptive. Ford said in a new The Hollywood Reporter interview:
"I never loved the idea until I saw how it was accomplished in this case — which is very different than the way it's been done in other films I've seen. They've got every frame of film, either printed or unprinted, of me during 40 years of working with Lucasfilm on various stuff. I can act the scene and they sort through with AI every f***ing foot of film to find me in that same angle and light. It's bizarre and it works and it is my face."
Ford wasn't being fully animated like, say, the late Peter Cushing in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," nor was his face being digitally "painted over" like the actors in "The Irishman." He was essentially being given a "deepfake" facial-replacement treatment with the previous Indiana Jones movies. It's an 80-year-old Ford giving a genuine performance, enhanced by details from his 45-year-old face.
The context of the 1944 flashbacks will be revealed on June 30, 2023, when "Destiny" is released.