It’s been a pretty good week for those who love big-budget adaptations of iconic fantasy novels. HBO Max released the first trailer for its long-awaited Harry Potter series, which reboots the franchise for the small screen. Meanwhile, there was also the announcement that Stephen Colbert is helping to craft a new The Lord of the Rings movie called Shadow of the Past, one that looks to be both a sequel and companion to the original trilogy.
It’s interesting to see Warner Bros.’ differing approaches to these two popular franchises. One project is a complete reboot aimed at telling a familiar story in greater depth than before; the other is a direct continuation that will (presumably) bring back a great many familiar faces from the original movies. But we have to wonder if Warners is actually taking the right approach to keeping The Lord of the Rings alive. Do fans actually want more movies with the original cast, or does the series need a Harry Potter-style reboot of its own? Let’s discuss why the latter might actually be the better choice at this point.
The Problem With CGI De-Aging
WB currently has two The Lord of the Rings movies in active development. Alongside Shadow of the Past, there’s also the previously announced The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which will see Andy Serkis play dual roles both in front of and behind the camera. The two projects seem to be almost a duology of sorts, as they both focus heavily on the same time period (the early portion of The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf and Frodo are first coming to terms with the true nature of the cursed ring Bilbo left behind).
Given the period in which they’re set, there’s a lot of potential for actors from the original Rings trilogy to return. We know The Hunt for Gollum will star Serkis’ Gollum and Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, and Shadow of the Past will almost certainly bring back Sean Astin’s Sam, Billy Boyd’s Pippin, and Dominic Monaghan’s Merry. There’s also plenty of room for Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas, and John Rhys-Davies’ Gimli to return in either project. Basically, any Rings veteran is fair game, except for the ones like Hugo Weaving who have expressly ruled out any desire to return.
There’s just one problem here. It’s been a long time since The Return of the King dropped in theaters, and these actors are all visibly older than they were in 2003. Both The Hunt for Gollum and Shadow of the Past are probably going to have to rely heavily on CGI de-aging technology to make the characters look as they did all those years ago. It’s going to be a real test for that technology in a way we haven’t seen since 2019’s The Irishman.
Frankly, we don’t know that any Hollywood VFX firms are up to that challenge. As much as big blockbusters have come to rely on de-aging tech to transform actors into younger simulacra of themselves, how often are the results actually that convincing? Films like 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand and 2010’s Tron Legacy served as early but flawed showcases of that technology, and things haven’t necessarily improved all that much in the decades since and with the endless barrage of MCU and Star Wars flashback scenes as testing grounds. Even a director as legendary as Martin Scorsese struggled with the aforementioned The Irishman, which utterly failed to transform an aging, lumbering Robert De Niro into his spry, 1970s-era self.
As films like The Irishman and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny show, de-aging presents a far greater challenge than just smoothing out wrinkles and adding color back to an actor’s hair. Actors move and carry themselves far differently when they age. They gain weight and slow down. Dial of Destiny’s opening sequence looks alright in still form, but one need only watch Harrison Ford’s de-aged Indy move and fight to know that we’re actually looking at a senior citizen wearing a mountain of digital camouflage.
Is there any reason to assume this tech has suddenly improved by leaps and bounds in the past couple of years? Maybe the advent of AI will bring with it new techniques and tools for de-aging. Maybe AI will make de-aging cheaper and easier than it’s been in the past, making these tie-in movies that much more feasible. But again, everything we’ve seen of this technology suggests that it’s inherently limited. There’s only so much you can do to hide an actor’s true age.
