See Robert De Niro’s ‘Irishman’ CGI Transformation From Young to Old
Besides the fact that The Irishman is the first movie to reunite director Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro in decades, cinephiles are most excited (or maybe most terrified) about the film’s use of digital effects. De Niro plays his character, Frank Sheeran, over the course of half a century. In the film, he’s plays Frank in his mid-20s, and then throughout his life right up to the age of 80. De Niro is 76 in real life, so turning him back into his younger self was achieved using digital de-aging effects.
Exactly how CGe Niro is going to look has been an endless source of curiosity around The Irishman, and even through the first photos and teases for the film, we really haven’t gotten a good sense of how Scorsese pulled it off. (Possibly because the special effects weren’t finished yet.) Now the movie is finally approaching its premiere — at the New York Film Festival this weekend — and we’re getting to see more photos of the de-aged De Niro. This tweet from the film’s official account showcases De Niro’s Frank at four different points, from his youngest to his oldest:
The only one that gives me pause is the first one, but I’m not sure if that’s just because I remember what young De Niro looked like in movies like Mean Streets and ... he didn‘t really look like that. But this is just one still; what matters is how it looks in motion up on the big screen.
Here’s the film’s synopsis from the New York Film Festival:
The Irishman is a richly textured epic of American crime, a dense, complex story told with astonishing fluidity. Based on Charles Brandt’s nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses, it is a film about friendship and loyalty between men who commit unspeakable acts and turn on a dime against each other, and the possibility of redemption in a world where it seems as distant as the moon. The roster of talent behind and in front of the camera is astonishing, and at the core of The Irishman are four great artists collectively hitting a new peak: Joe Pesci as Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino, Al Pacino as Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, and Robert De Niro as their right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, each working in the closest harmony imaginable with the film’s incomparable creator, Martin Scorsese.
The Irishman open in theaters on November 1, and then debut on Netflix on November 27. The trailer for the film will premiere tonight during The Tonight Show.
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