that she hoped fans would see the movie and think someone had found footage from 40 years ago. This will probably not be the case—and not just because director James Mangold shot the film in 4K. Ford looks too perfect, his surroundings too clean. It looks like trickery, but of course you are looking for trickery.around AI and Hollywood would have you believe that a Disney executive fed Ford’s face into a copier and pressed a big “De-Age” button.
To ensure Ford looked like his younger self, the ILM team used artificial intelligence to root through years of footage of the actor that Lucasfilm had in its archives. The team also worked with VFX tools from Disney Research and a “smattering” of other sources to fine-tune the de-aged shots. “Each of these things is a pencil; now we have another pencil,” says Whitehurst. “So it’s just enabling us to make better choices.
Most of the de-aged scenes take place on a train hurtling through the Bavarian countryside. Keeping the suitable “physical configuration of the face,” as ILM VFX supervisor Robert Weaver puts it, is a fiendish process involving a blue screen and hundreds of artists. Because the sequence begins at night and ends at dawn, Indy’s smirk might require a dash less shadow from one moment to the next, but that tweak could introduce a sheen that highlights new creases and makes the smirk read as a frown.