In an era when Hollywood is struggling to produce new movie stars and is instead relying on veteran leading actors to anchor films, the pull of de-aging technology has proven irresistible.
Martin Scorsese employed digital wizardry to take decades off Robert De Niro in the 2019 gangster epic The Irishman while computers helped Harrison Ford turn back the clock in last year’s Indiana Jones sequel.
Those films, and others using similar visual effects, have produced mixed results but now the latest project from one of the industry’s SFX pioneers could prove a watershed moment in Hollywood.
Robert Zemeckis, the inventive Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump, is de-aging Tom Hanks and Robin Wright for his highly awaited drama Here.
The movie, which uses generative artificial intelligence to create younger versions of its stars, has Hanks, 67, and Wright, 58, playing a couple from youth to old age.
A newly released trailer reveals Hanks looking not unlike his character in the 1988 comedy Big.
In another filmmaking flourish, Here takes place in the same location — the family’s home — and the camera never moves from a fixed position over the 104-minute runtime.
Previous forays into de-aging have struggled to escape the “uncanny valley,” the term used to describe viewing a likeness that is not quite human, but Zemeckis may be the director to succeed where Scorsese and others arguably failed.
“He is relentlessly thoughtful about these things,” Michael Niederman, professor emeritus of cinema and television arts at Columbia College Chicago, said. “Typically, all technologies are a double-edged sword. De-aging is now part of the palette that filmmakers draw from so I’m curious to see how effective it is.
“Maybe we’re becoming more tolerant of technology [in film]. We won’t stare at it to see what’s wrong with it, which was part of the problem of The Irishman.”
Here, which also stars Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee, is based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name.
Zemeckis, 72, was in London making the 2022 fantasy film Pinocchio with Hanks when they decided to adapt the work.
While other filmmakers may have been daunted by the prospect of de-aging and opted to use different actors for the various stages of the characters’ lives, Zemeckis has decades of experience to fall back on.
He was an early adopter of computer graphics in live-action movies for 1989’s Back to the Future Part II and inserted hand-drawn animation into Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
“I’ve always been, for some reason, labeled as this visual effects guy. But those were always there to serve as the character arc,” Zemeckis told Vanity Fair recently.
“There’s always been a restlessness in trying. I’ve always thought that our job as filmmakers is to show the audience things that they don’t see in real life.”
Here marks a reunion for the director and his stars as well as for screenwriter Eric Roth.
All four worked on Forrest Gump, the 1994 Oscar-winning drama that used 1990s technology to insert Hanks into various key moments in history.
The digital trickery used in Here in conjunction with traditional makeup effects will be far more sophisticated.
Having “tested every flavor of face replacement and de-aging technology available today”, Zemeckis turned to the London-based generative AI company Metaphysic Live, having been impressed by its viral Tom Cruise deepfake.
The technology works by using AI models for each of the actors at specific ages, built through decades of archive footage.
Speaking to the Fast Company Web site last year Tom Graham, the Metaphysic CEO, said that in the case of Hanks, “the AI model understands how a younger version of Tom Hanks looks and how he might act under certain circumstances”.
“I’ve always thought that our job as filmmakers is to show the audience things that they don’t see in real life.”
After Hanks finishes a scene, the AI creates the younger version and pastes it over the real-life actor.
“It knows how to stitch younger Tom Hanks on top of current-day Tom Hanks based on the expression he has in that particular shot,” Graham said.
“So it does that over and over and over again. The AI is so sophisticated that it builds this flawless, amazing image that’s like looking into a mirror through time.”
Zemeckis said he is delighted by the results, which arrive in real-time allowing actors to view the finished product between takes.
“We’re at the right place at the right time making this movie,” he said in a promotional trailer for Here.
“There’s a huge library of images of Tom Hanks and Robin Wright at different ages and we can process it and basically put it on like makeup.”
If Here is to be a success, Zemeckis will have to defy recent history.
Audiences were largely unimpressed by The Irishman’s de-aging while the younger Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also failed to inspire.
Will Smith faced a younger version of himself thanks to computer wizardry in 2019’s Gemini Man but the film was poorly reviewed and bombed at the box office.
George Miller was so underwhelmed by the technology that he abandoned plans to de-age Charlize Theron for his Mad Max prequel Furiosa and instead opted for a younger actress — Anya Taylor-Joy.
Yet Zemeckis may be about to buck the trend, if the response to test screenings is to be believed.
According to the World of Reel Web site, impressions from an audience last year were positive, with praise for the performances of Hanks and Wright as well as for the technology.
The de-aging effects were described as “surprisingly flawless for something still in production”.
However the technology works, fans of Zemeckis will at least be hoping for the sort of family-pleasing fare that has made him one of the most successful directors of his era.
“To be optimistic in your seventies is an achievement unto itself,” Niederman said of Zemeckis, a director whose movies, including Romancing the Stone and Cast Away, tend to avoid cynicism.
“You do not have to be cynical or caustic to be a great storyteller.”
Keiran Southern is the West Coast correspondent for The Times of London
