‘Indiana Jones 5’ De-Ages Harrison Ford for a 25-Minute Scene, Director Says Ford Was ‘Agile’ Enough to ‘Pretend That He Was 35’ on Set
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director “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.
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