Zemeckis has always been fascinated by how people and places change over the decades – just think of Forrest Gump itself, as well as his Back to the Future trilogy. He has also long been fascinated by digital innovation, which accounts for the creepy animated mannequins, created using real actors and motion capture technology, in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), A Christmas Carol (2009) and the deeply weird Welcome to Marwen (2018).
As for Hanks, he seems relaxed about being able to play youthful characters until he dies – and even beyond. On The Adam Buxton Podcast last year, he said that when he and Zemeckis made The Polar Express together, they realised that there was no end to what such computerised trickery could do. “Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age by way of AI or deep-fake technology. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on. Outside the understanding of AI and deep-fake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone.”
It’s unsettling to think that, in the long term, actual superstars might be replaced by their AI doppelgangers, and that, in the short term, de-ageing might allow veterans of Hanks’s generation to keep playing roles that should, by rights, be given to up-and-coming actors. But it could easily happen: de-ageing has gone from being a derided novelty to a useful film-making tool in fewer than 20 years.
In 2006, visual-effects artists de-aged Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen pixel by pixel in X-Men: The Last Stand, and the most widespread reaction was a smirk at how shiny and robotic they looked. The technology was employed sparingly for years in such science-fiction fantasies as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Tron: Legacy (2010). Then, in 2019, it was a key component of several major films.
The mixed results so far
Samuel L Jackson was de-aged throughout Captain Marvel to play the Nick Fury of the 1990s; numerous actors got the same treatment in Avengers: Endgame; Will Smith was an assassin battling his younger clone in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man; and, controversially, Martin Scorsese utilised what he called “youthification” on Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci in The Irishman. But the most famous de-ageing showcase thus far was last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, directed by James Mangold, which had an extended flashback to Indy tussling with the Nazis in 1944.
