Of Course That Indiana Jones 5 Footage Is The Talk Of The Internet, Starting With De-Aged Harrison Ford

After many long years and a host of delays, the fifth (and almost certainly final) Indiana Jones movie is almost here. Yesterday we saw proof that the movie is actually happening in the form of the first trailer. It revealed the title, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and reminded us all why we love the iconic movies. Everybody is talking about the trailer, but most of those people are talking about the de-aged Harrison Ford and the fact that he looks, somehow, good.

Using CGI to make one actor look like another, or to make an actor look like a younger version of themselves, has been around for years, but it’s always been missing something. It falls into the uncanny valley often as it’s usually quite impressive for what it is, but usually comes up short of perfection, and that missing piece just throws the whole thing off. But fans on Twitter are mostly praising the younger Indy we see in Dial of Destiny.

It was reported recently that the de-aging technology would be used to make Harrison Ford look like the Indiana Jones that we remember from the first three films. While most of the plot of the new film is still a mystery we know Indy will be dealing with the remnants of a Nazi threat, and thus we’ll see where the story really started decades earlier.

This made some fans nervous, because the whole de-aging thing tends to look wrong, but with a likely combination of technology advancement and practice, it looks like de-aging is turning out a lot better. These brief sequences from the Dial of Destiny trailer actually look quite good.  

The fact that these shots are in the trailer at all means that Lucasfilm didn’t expect to get a lot of negative response to it. They could have kept these shots out of the trailer if there was fear they weren’t up to snuff. These days, due to the extremely long period of time that creating CGI effects can take, the shots we get in trailers can often be unfinished, and thus not look great. But it sounds like everybody is impressed here. One fan's mom was apparently quite taken with CGI Indy.

And by and large it looks like everybody is happy with how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is looking so far. Harrison Ford is 80-years-old but you wouldn’t know it from watching the trailer. The whole thing still looks and feels like an Indiana Jones movie and fans are excited to see what is going to happen in this new adventure. 

Harrison Ford has reiterated that this will, in fact, be his last go round as Indiana Jones. Considering the amount of time that it has taken to get the fourth and fifth movies out, that’s not much of a surprise. But knowing this will be the end, the question of how it will end is one that has to be on the minds of many.  

We still have seven full months before Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hits theaters. We know there will be at least one more trailer that will likely give us a bit more insight into what the plot actually is, and how characters like Indy’s goddaughter, played by Phoebe Waller Bridge, actually fit into the story. 

For the fans that have been following Indiana Jones from the beginning this will be a bittersweet movie, as we’ll finally say goodbye to Indy, but if it’s an adventure worthy of the character, it will be worth it.