De-aging AI didn’t replace Hanks and Wright’s faces, it enhanced their performances

“We saw what we needed to do,” Hanks explains. “We were able to correct our mistakes — ‘Oh, I need to put my shoulders back more in this shot, because I was walking more like a 27-year-old instead of a 17-year-old.’ You’ll perfect the little details until you get everything right, Wright adds: “It’s great; the fact that we can still play the characters instead of just being a digital avatar.”

Director Zemeckis says that physical prosthetics are also an advanced technology. “When they saw how they looked with youthful makeup, they immediately realized, ‘I need to perform physically, change my voice, move differently because I need to look 30 years younger, 80 or 90 years old.’ ‘ This is what makes the illusion work so perfectly.”

They had to play Richard and Margaret not only at different ages, but also at different times in America.

In 1988, Hanks played a child trapped in the body of a grown man. BigHere he found it more difficult to play a grown man. “I did Big He was in my 30s and it was a little easier to add that bounce (to make his character look childish). But in middle-aged segments HereIt was a lot harder when our characters were in their 30s and 40s.” In the 1970s, middle-aged people weren’t big on gyms. “We spent the last 20 years of our lives fighting gravity,” says Hanks. “I’m in better shape now than I was when I was 36. , so when I went back to that period of bulging midsection, inactivity and child-induced fatigue, I found that it was a no-man’s land for an actor.” However, he achieved this with the help of artificial intelligence.

Only adults can make this movie

“I couldn’t have made this movie as a novice director,” Zemeckis says. Along with his ever-increasing mastery of the latest technology, he also needed life experience. “The story of Tom and Robin’s characters is the story of my generation.” says Zemeckis. Here conveys the jolt of reminders of time. “When I took my pictures I asked, ‘What is my father doing here?’ I say. This is the underlying theme of the film: time passes us by.”

And the past influences the present: Hanks’s Richard, who gives up his youthful dreams of becoming an artist to take a job that will support his family, reflects the stubborn disappointment of his World War II veterinarian father and resists Margaret’s demand to adapt to social changes. 60s and 70s. Scenes of Richard’s father (Paul Bettany, 53, artificially aged to appear older) play alongside scenes of Richard’s rapidly receding present, dramatizing the old saying: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”