\n<\/p>\n
Although Here\u2019s<\/em> focal point doesn\u2019t change, the actors do. Hanks plays a baby boomer named Richard, who at certain times in the story is approximately his own age of 67 but also traverses the decades thanks to traditional makeup effects, as well as digital de-aging effects. Hanks ages into his late 80s and also goes backward to when Richard was a very young man in the 1960s\u2014looking just like two-time Oscar winner did on his TV show debut as the baby-faced star<\/a> of 1980\u2019s Bosom Buddies<\/em>. Wright joins the story during Richard\u2019s late teenage years as his girlfriend and later wife, Margaret, as the couple raise their own children in the house he grew up in, and also goes from looking decades younger to old age as her lively, more adventurous character pulls her husband through the changing times. \u201cEric and I wrote our generation,\u201d says Zemeckis, who is now 72.<\/p>\n These transformations can be tricky, even with state-of-the-art tools, as Zemeckis knows well. His holiday film The Polar Express<\/em> pioneered digital performers 20 years ago, which he continued to refine in 2007\u2019s Beowulf<\/em> and 2009\u2019s A Christmas Carol.<\/em> Even for the most adept filmmakers, being on the cutting edge also means sometimes tipping into the \u201cuncanny valley,\u201d the term for an audience\u2019s perception of something being unsettlingly unreal. Many films have fallen into it as they experimented. Martin Scorsese\u2019s<\/strong> The Irishman,<\/em> for instance, used de-aging techniques to shave decades off of Robert De Niro<\/strong> and Joe Pesci,<\/strong> but some critics noted that they still felt like old-timers with young faces.<\/p>\n A lot has changed in the five years since, and Zemeckis has continued to build upon and improve those techniques with Here<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019ve always been, for some reason, labeled as this visual effects guy. But those were always there to serve as the character arc,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s always been a restlessness in trying. I\u2019ve always thought that our job as filmmakers is to show the audience things that they don\u2019t see in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n One thing Zemeckis says he has learned is that successfully cracking the transformation is as much about the voices as the visuals. \u201cIt only works because the performances are so good,\u201d he says. \u201cBoth Tom and Robin understood instantly that, \u2018Okay, we have to go back and channel what we were like 50 years ago or 40 years ago, and we have to bring that energy, that kind of posture, and even raise our voices higher. That kind of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n