“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” director James Mangold confirmed in a new interview with Total Film magazine that Harrison Ford spends approximately 25 minutes of the sequel de-aged to appear around the age he was in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The “Dial of Destiny” team previously disclosed that new VFX technology was created for the film in order to de-age Ford, but now fans know it was for an extended act of the movie and not just a simple flashback scene.
Mangold called Ford “incredibly gifted and agile,” which made it easy for the actor to “pretend that he was 35” when filming the scenes.
“But the technology involved is a whole other thing,” Mangold said. “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,” Mangold continued. “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.”
Ford revealed earlier this year that artificial intelligence was used to comb through his entire filmography so that his de-aged face was his actual face ripped from archival footage.
“They have this artificial intelligence program that can go through every foot of film that Lucasfilm owns,” Ford said. “Because I did a bunch of movies for them, they have all this footage, including film that wasn’t printed. So they can mine it from where the light is coming from, from the expression. I don’t know how they do it. But that’s my actual face. Then I put little dots on my face and I say the words and they make [it]. It’s fantastic.”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” takes place in 1969 and is set against the space run as Indiana Jones works to prevent the re-emergence of Nazism. The opening sequence takes place in 1944, hence the need to de-age Ford.
“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,’” producerand Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedypreviously told Empire magazineabout de-aging Ford. “We’re dropping you into an adventure, something Indy is looking for, and instantly you have that feeling, ‘I’m in an Indiana Jones movie.’”
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 evenwantto 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.”
Disney will release “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” in theaters nationwide on June 30 following a world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month.
