'forrest gump' stars tom hanks and robin wright reunite in the time-trippy 'here' | members only

DE-AGING AI DIDN’T REPLACE HANKS AND WRIGHT’S FACES, IT IMPROVED THEIR PERFORMANCE  “We just saw what we needed to do," Hanks explains. “We were able to correct our mistakes — ‘Oh, I

need to put my shoulders back more on this take, because I was walking more like a 27-year-old instead of a 17-year-old.’ You would just perfect the minutiae until we got everything right.”

Adds Wright, “This is amazing — that we can still play the characters, and not just be a digital avatar.” The physical prosthetics are an advanced technology, too, says director Zemeckis.

“When they saw how they looked with the youthful makeup on, they realized right away, ‘I've got to perform physically, change my voice, move differently, because I've got to look

30 years younger, or 80 or 90.’ That’s what makes the illusion work so flawlessly.” THEY DIDN’T JUST HAVE TO PLAY RICHARD AND MARGARET AT DIFFERENT AGES, BUT IN DIFFERENT AMERICAN TIMES

Hanks, who played a child trapped inside a grown man’s body in 1988’s _Big_, found it trickier to play a grown man in Here. “I did _Big_ in my 30s, and that was a little easier, to add that

bounce [to make his character seem childlike]. But in the middle-aged sections of _Here_, when our characters are in our 30s and 40s, that was much more difficult.” In the 1970s, middle-aged

people weren’t so into gyms. “We've spent the last 20 years of our lives combating gravity,” says Hanks. “I'm in better shape now than I was at 36, so to be back in that era of

midriff bulge and inactivity and exhaustion from the kids, I found that to be a no man's land for an actor.” He pulled it off, however — with help from AI. ONLY GROWNUPS COULD MAKE THIS

MOVIE “I couldn't have made this movie as a novice director," says Zemeckis. Besides his ever-increasing mastery of cutting-edge tech, he needed life experience. “Tom’s and

Robin’s characters’ story is the story of my generation," says Zemeckis. _Here_ conveys the jolt of time’s reminders. “When I have photographs taken of me, I go, ‘What the hell is my

father doing here?’ That is the underlying theme of the movie: time is moving past us.”  And the past influences our present: Hanks’ Richard, who gives up youthful dreams of being an artist

to take a job that supports his family, echoes the stubborn disillusionment of his WWII vet father, and resists Margaret’s demand to get with the social changes of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Scenes

of Richard’s father (Paul Bettany, 53, AI-aged to look older) play alongside scenes of Richard’s fast-receding present, dramatizing the old saying, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it

does rhyme.”