Vox explains 'How de-aging in movies got so good'

Yesterday, I asked "What can I write about awards season that is worth sharing next month?" My answer was revisiting 'Conclave' beat 'Anora' for Best Screenplay, Motion Picture at the Golden Globes for the winners of the Critics Choice and WGA Awards as well as predictions for the Academy Awards, but I decided that was more work than I wanted to put in today. Instead, I'm looking at technology in movies for the Sunday entertainment feature. Watch Vox explain How de-aging in movies got so good.

This tool might just change movies forever.
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In 2025, Tom Hanks is 67 years old. Yet, in his latest film Here (directed by Robert Zemeckis), he's convincingly transformed to appear as young as 18, and aged even beyond his current years. And the effect actually looks …. good!

But de-aging effects haven’t always looked this good. Attempts at de-aging can be seen as early as 2006 — and since then filmmakers have experimented with tools and had … varying degrees of success. While 2D blurring and enhancement was the first iteration, realistic de-aging in motion required 3D methods — but no matter which way you sliced it, the process remained labor-intensive and results were often somewhere between okay and the uncanny valley.

Here’s VFX supervisor Kevin Baille told me that the current versions of these tools weren’t going to work on Here. There were too many shots, and the results were too inconsistent for the quality level they were striving toward. So the filmmaking team looked elsewhere, to the bleeding edge of AI tools, to see what was possible. By feeding it a wealth of images featuring Tom Hanks and co-stars Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, they found they could create images that were remarkably realistic, streamlining the once arduous process.

But the true game changer was optimizing the speed of this tool to enable a real-time feed on set. This empowered actors, costume designers, makeup artists, hairstylists, and other crew members to ensure that every version of the characters, at any age, felt authentic and believable.

I wrote "Vox is also uploading videos about A.I. That's even more of a science fiction is now idea, so I might return to it" two years ago. The closest I got to the topic was mentioning A.I. as an issue in Vox explains 'How streaming caused the TV writers strike'. It took me only two years to get to it. Here's to hoping that the special effects people, most of whom were not unionized when SAG-AFTRA and the WGA went on strike, but many of whom are now, are able to keep A.I. as a tool and not have it take over their work.

That's a wrap for today's entertainment feature. I'll definitely post an entry about the Oscars before the ceremony on March 2, 2025. Stay tuned.