Near the end of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Nazis effort to propulsion disconnected 1 of the oldest tropes successful entertainment: utilizing the movie’s titular dial, the Antikythera, to question backmost to 1939 and assassinate Adolf Hitler. As their Luftwaffe craft bears down connected a clip warp, the idiosyncratic Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who hopes to instal himself arsenic the führer and triumph the war, turns to Indiana Jones and demands helium witnesser “history’s top moment—its end.”

To participate the past, then, is to extremity history. It’s Voller’s motto, but besides the movie’s—a motion to the de-aging exertion that has made it possible. Thanks to respective tools—AI, CGI, different acronyms—80-year-old Harrison Ford spends astir 25 minutes of the movie looking similar the Indiana Jones of the aboriginal 1980s. He personifies the extremity of past brought astir by technology’s endeavor to propulsion radical retired of time, to instrumentality Ford oregon Bruce Willis oregon Robert De Niro to their younger selves. Ford’s is besides a look many fear: a ocular practice of a aboriginal for Hollywood successful which aging oregon deceased actors tin beryllium resuscitated via artificial intelligence. That’s the promise. But the connection that comes done successful Dial of Destiny, a movie that seems intensely preoccupied with however it was made, is that determination is thing hauntingly bittersweet astir this vision.

The AI-reincarnated Indy of the 1980s makes a poignant opposition to the Indy we spot for astir of the film: a retired academic, stuck successful a crusty flat and estranged from Marion Ravenwood. Dial’s story, similar the Jones movies earlier it, focuses connected an past MacGuffin (the Antikythera) sought by some Indy and Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). She seeks to merchantability it for a beauteous penny connected the achromatic market; he, of course, thinks it belongs successful an American museum. Naturally, they signifier an uneasy confederation to halt Voller.

So however does de-aged Ford look? An unusual premix of awesome and unreal, his look unhumanly creaseless arsenic if slathered with magic grease, glowing from within similar a Stable Diffusion representation that moves. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who worked with Steven Spielberg connected each of his Indy movies successful the ’80s, precocious told Empire that she hoped fans would spot the movie and deliberation idiosyncratic had recovered footage from 40 years ago. This volition astir apt not beryllium the case—and not conscionable due to the fact that manager James Mangold changeable the movie successful 4K. Ford looks excessively perfect, his surroundings excessively clean. It looks similar trickery, but of people you are looking for trickery.

The existent discourse astir AI and Hollywood would person you judge that a Disney enforcement fed Ford’s look into a copier and pressed a large “De-Age” button. New tech ever provokes this reaction, explains Andrew Whitehurst, 1 of the VFX supervisors astatine Industrial Light & Magic who worked connected Dial’s de-aging. “People assumed that we each sat down successful beforehand of a Silicon Graphics workstation successful 1993, pressed D for ‘dinosaur,’ and Jurassic Park fell retired of the backmost of the computer,” helium says.

Instead, ILM did what it calls a “face swap.” Like the the purpose-built tech ILM developed to fto Martin Scorsese de-age actors for The Irishman, Dial of Destiny utilized a proprietary strategy called Flux that utilized 2 infrared cameras perched connected either broadside of the 1 filming Ford to stitchery accusation from his performance. Unlike The Irishman, it besides progressive what the histrion called “dots connected my face” that captured adjacent much data. All of that info was past combined to make a “CG mask” that could beryllium placed connected Indy successful each frame. 

To guarantee Ford looked similar his younger self, the ILM squad utilized artificial quality to basal done years of footage of the histrion that Lucasfilm had successful its archives. The squad besides worked with VFX tools from Disney Research and a “smattering” of different sources to fine-tune the de-aged shots. “Each of these things is simply a pencil; present we person different pencil,” says Whitehurst. “So it’s conscionable enabling america to marque amended choices.”

Most of the de-aged scenes instrumentality spot connected a bid hurtling done the Bavarian countryside. Keeping the suitable “physical configuration of the face,” arsenic ILM VFX supervisor Robert Weaver puts it, is simply a fiendish process involving a bluish surface and hundreds of artists. Because the series begins astatine nighttime and ends astatine dawn, Indy’s smirk mightiness necessitate a dash little shadiness from 1 infinitesimal to the next, but that tweak could present a sheen that highlights caller creases and makes the smirk work arsenic a frown.