The veteran actor's new movie Here sees him and Robin Wright looking like teenagers again. It's the latest use of technology that could have far-reaching, and damaging, consequences.
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 , Beowulf , A Christmas Carol and the deeply weird Welcome to Marwen .
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 and Tron: Legacy . Then, in 2019, it was a key component of several major films.