Frames from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‘s young Indy sequence are re-edited to roast Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny‘s de-aging, and the results are terrifying. After first playing the character back in 1980’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford returned for one final outing as the intrepid archeologist in James Mangold’s new sequel. The film earned mixed reviews overall, and it’s opening sequence in which Ford is de-aged by 30 years also proved somewhat divisive.
Now, edited images shared by Motion Picture Potion Mixer on Twitter roast Indiana Jones 5‘s de-aging by joking that, if Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were made today, it wouldn’t have cast River Phoenix as a Young Indy and would have instead used poor CGI. Check out the images below:
In addition to being the perfect roast of the new film, the images are also pure nightmare fuel, with an older Ford’s face plastered onto Phoenix’s body.
Does Indiana Jones 5’s De-aging Work?
Conceptually and thematically, opening Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny with a bombastic sequence following a younger Indy is a great idea. It helps to highlight just how much Indy has changed when the movie jumps forward to 1969. In practice, however, the de-aging technology does hold the sequence back somewhat.
While there are moments during the sequence that really work, with Ford convincingly looking like his younger self, other moments do break the immersion. The movie actually has the same problem that The Irishman had in 2019, with Robert De Niro’s character also being de-aged to questionable effect. While the face often looks convincing, the older actors were the ones acting out the scenes, and neither Ford nor De Niro move like they did when they were in their 30s.
The result, then, is that the body and gait of Ford, who was in his late 70s during filming, doesn’t match up with his de-aged face. Although there is clearly value in having Ford be the one delivering the performance under the effect, the movie may have been better served by using the body of a younger actor. There are strong arguments both for and against de-aging actors, but, thankfully, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‘s flashback sequence will never look like it does in the images above.
