There’s just over three weeks to go until Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny debuts on the second day of the Cannes Film Festival, and speaking with Total Film, director James Mangold touched upon the opening scenes of the movie where we’re introduced to a younger Henry Jones Jr. somewhere between the events of The Last Crusade and Crystal Skull (age 45, so 1944 or thereabouts) and the technology required to bring it from the page to reality.
https://youtu.be/UVoBl7SGwQw
“I just shot him, and he just pretended that he was 35. 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.”
“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.“

