'Forrest Gump' Couple Tom Hanks and Robin Wright Tell the AARP Generations' Story in the Time-Trippy Film 'Here'

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.”

Here conveys the way family love mitigates memory issues

In a film all about memory, some characters develop dementia. “It's not the tragedy that ends up defining everything,” says Hanks. He refers to a deeply moving scene where one character reminds another of an important moment in their past. “One remembers, one cannot, and that’s OK, provided you make the effort to stay connected, to say, ‘It’s so wonderful to see you today, right here.’ I mean, look at the healing power of just staying connected. Anybody can do it.”

Wright and Hanks the last time they played a married couple, in Forrest Gump (1994).

Ronald Grant/Everett

The real star of the movie is time itself

“In a number of movies we’ve done with Bob, it’s like, what happens with the passage of time?” says Hanks. “It is recognizable, I think, for people of a certain age — ‘Oh, that was America, the nation we all grew up in, the culture that was constantly shifting.’” Hanks says that even in Here’s flashbacks to the long-ago residents of Richard and Margaret’s house in 1908 (scenes starring Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery), “They did not know they were living in the past. We now know that, but they were just living right then and there, dealing with everything God threw at them. And I think, when we all realize it, that all we can do is try to be present right now.”

Hanks is stumped about what Forrest Gump would think of Richard and Margaret's story, but Wright thinks she knows

In Forrest Gump, Hanks’ character says, “My mama always said ‘You’ve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.’” What would Forrest say if he saw Here? “Man, give me a second,” says Hanks. “You said it perfectly a minute ago!” says Wright. “We don't live in the past, right?"

"Right," Hanks replies, smiling.

"Memories are showing us, reminding us of the past," says Wright. "But everything in life passes. Everything passes.”