Indiana Jones 5 Director Shares The Big Benefit That Came With De-Aging Harrison Ford For Dial Of Destiny's Opening Sequence

Although the majority of Indiana Jones 5 takes place in 1969 amidst the Space Race, the 2023 new movie release will open in a time period that hasn’t been explored in an Indiana Jones movie before: World War II. Lead actor Harrison Ford was digitally de-aged for an action sequence that will depict his first encounter with Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller, the movie’s main antagonist, in 1944, and we got our first taste of how it will look in the Dial of Destiny teaser trailer released last December. However, because the de-aging used on Ford differed compared to how these sequences are usually handled, director James Mangold shared that it came with a big benefit.

As far as shooting the sequence itself went, Mangold noted there wasn’t anything “particularly unusual” about it, as Ford wore dots on his face to capture his expressions and “pretended that he was 35.” That said, the technology used to make the actor look like Indy adventuring a little over half a decade after the events of The Last Crusade. However, the technology utilized for this production stands out because Lucasfilm had a lot of footage of Ford in his 30s and 40s to consult, and the wait time to see how the de-aged Ford looked wasn’t that long. As Mangold explained to Total Film:

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.

With four Indiana Jones movies (which can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription) and five Star Wars movies under Harrison Ford’s belt, as well as his appearance in American Graffiti, that’s a lot of Lucasfilm-related material that was available to help with de-aging him for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Naturally it was great that James Mangold was able to get an idea of how the younger-looking actor woulds appear just a few days Larter, and that ended up being a huge time save. The filmmaker continued:

It wasn’t a year of effort to get to a first pass. 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. Because then when the movie lands in 1969, they’re going to have to make an adjustment to what it is now, which is different from what it was.

Other characters who will appear in this significant portion of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny include Thomas Kretschmann as Colonel Weber, one of Jürgen Voller’s Nazi allies, and Toby Jones’ Basil Shaw, an ally of Indy and father to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena, who will accompany her godfather on his global romp in 1969. Other members of the Indiana Jones 5 cast include John Rhys-Davies (of course reprising Salad), Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook and Shaunette Renée Wilson. In addition to his directorial work, Mangold also co-wrote the script with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, and David Koepp.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in theaters on June 30. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more updates about the movie, and don’t forget to look through our ranking of the first four Indiana Jones movies.