Director James Mangold calls his leading actor Harrison Ford “incredibly talented and agile” – but that alone wasn’t enough to make the 80-year-old credibly slip into the role of 35-year-old Indiana Jones. That was the task for shooting “Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny”. If you absolutely don’t want to know anything about the film before it hits German cinemas on June 29, 2023, you should skip the following paragraph, after which it will continue without spoilers.
The fifth, and according to everyone involved, definitely the last part of the film series begins with a 25-minute action sequence, which picks up the events of the first part “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. As well as from the first trailer comes out of the new film, Indiana Jones wants to correct some of his mistakes in chasing the Ark of the Covenant. The opening takes place in 1944, around eight years after the period covered by the first film. The rest of the new film is then set in 1969, which means that Ford has to visually represent the development of his film character over 25 years.
Disney engineering FRAN rejuvenates Ford
To show Indiana Jones across multiple decades, the team used a combination of real acting, motion capture and AI animation of Ford’s face. The said James Mangold Total Film magazine. When Ford acted out his scenes in the period of the first film, he had some of the signature motion capture markings on his face.
This made it easier for the “Face Re-Aging Network” (FRAN) the later rendering of the younger Indy. The technology comes from Disney Research. Since Lucasfilm was bought by Disney in 2012, the use of in-house technology probably made sense. In contrast to many other digital processes in filmmaking, FRAN can not only be used in post-production, but also during shooting. Mangold says he was able to check the edited versions two days after the shoot with Ford.
Trailer with young Indy
In the trailer for the film, the rejuvenated Ford is only ever shown for a few seconds, screenshots from it – like the title picture of this article – suffer from the typical motion blur and compression artifacts. A final judgment on how natural the digital Ford looks can hardly be made. However, the prerequisites are good: the AI was fed with old recordings, including unrelated material, from the earlier Indiana Jones films, in different angles and lighting. According to James Mangold, hundreds of hours of real-world Ford footage were available.
A few other Hollywood stars are currently going a step further than Ford, who still plays himself in the current film. They have a digital twin created of themselves, which can then be used as a virtual actor for a fee. One of the first known names is Bruce Williswho ended his acting career in 2022 after being diagnosed with untreatable dementia.
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