De-ageing? A static camera? Unfazed actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright open a new box in Here (2025)

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The movie came together because both of you and Zemeckis were talking about what was left to do in the world of film, and he showed you the graphic novel? How did you recalibrate your acting style for this? Did you get to approve how you looked as your younger selves? Were you concerned at all that these emotional moments might be overshadowed, for audiences, by the technical audacity, the de-ageing, all of that? Is Forrest Gump a project or an era of moviemaking – or moviegoing – that you feel sentimental about?

NEW YORK – It is not exactly a Forrest Gump sequel, but the movie Here does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the film-makers – director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth and composer Alan Silvestri – of that 1994 Oscar-winning favourite.

Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective. In this case, the viewpoint is the camera’s.

Here is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups, no montages or wide-angle transitions.

It is an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.

Though the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicised in that single setting.

The furniture and styles change, and with the help of AI, the stars were digitally de-aged.

The movie came together because both of you and Zemeckis were talking about what was left to do in the world of film, and he showed you the graphic novel?

Wright: I immediately saw it visually. Those panels, those cut-outs of another piece of furniture on that page, are going to lead me into what the next era is. I was like, “Go for it, Bob. If anybody can do it, you can do it.”

Hanks: We were talking about the theme of impermanence and presence, and how you could tell stories about people who live thousands or hundreds of years ago, or 80 years ago, and they did not realise they were living in the past.

I don’t know a lot of movies that are made about that topic. But Bob always has this other cinematic demand of himself, to do it in some form that no one has either bothered with or dreamed of or trusted enough. And that’s why I’ll follow Bob into hell if he’s got an idea, and see where it will lead us.

How did you recalibrate your acting style for this?

Hanks: We did a week’s worth of a workshop in a hotel ballroom in Los Angeles. We had approximations of the set. We had to just figure out the technical parts of walking into our own close-ups and being in our own two-shots. The studio executives were always saying, “You’re sure this is going to work? This has never been done before.” Well, who in the world do you think you’re talking to? Bob Zemeckis does nothing but make movies that have never been done.

Wright: (On set, they felt) I don’t know if it’s going to work. Let’s go for it. And every single scene, sometimes we would nail it in three to five takes and then others, we had to do it 45 times. We had to rehearse and rehearse so that we all got in sync: You walked into your own close-up, but we still see the other character in the background. It was just a dance.

De-ageing? A static camera? Unfazed actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright open a new box in Here (2)

Did you get to approve how you looked as your younger selves?

Wright: No – they nailed it. Because it’s data they derived from interviews Tom and I did when we were 18, 19, 21; still photographs; stuff that is online. They deposit it into this machine, and they made us up to look 17 — we wore the costumes, we had girdles when we had to be young. For the ageing part, that was a little bit of visual effect added to prosthetics.

Hanks: I will not watch playback on a standard movie because I am going to be the least objective about anything that I see.

But here, it was the most important tool we had to judge ourselves as 17- or 37-year-old versions of ourselves. I had no self-consciousness about looking at the playback except, are my shoulders in the right place? Do we have enough energy? Are our eyes actually, you know, focused the way they can be when you’re young – or burdened when you’re old?

Wright: Tom’s right that we had to be very discerning of ourselves. Like, okay, maybe I need to think of something that is more innocent, that will take away the years of life that are in here. We were acting physically, raising the octave in our voice, to be a 17-year-old. But AI gave us the innocence in the eyes and the youthful skin. And got rid of the saggy neck.

Were you concerned at all that these emotional moments might be overshadowed, for audiences, by the technical audacity, the de-ageing, all of that?

Wright: I didn’t think about any of that. I just wanted to be in sync with Bob’s vision and Eric Roth. You know, sitting around that table in LA, really talking about the full arc of these people and a life that they spent together. That’s the theme of this movie: What do you appreciate the most about these moments in your life, and why?

Hanks: The technical aspects, they have been in every movie I’ve made with Bob. In Forrest Gump, they said, isn’t it kind of creepy that you can be in the same room as John F. Kennedy now? Isn’t that diabolical in some ways? And I remember Bob saying, you mean we could lie on film? Well, guess what? You can.

With Castaway (2000), there was no musical score for a big chunk of the movie. And some people said, how do you get away with that?

There’re all kinds of stuff that they say, will movies ever be the same again because of this thing? And the answer is yes, of course, because in the sensibilities and, I guess in some ways, the morals of the film-maker, it’s plainly evident what the final product is.

Is Forrest Gump a project or an era of moviemaking – or moviegoing – that you feel sentimental about?

Wright: It is a movie that I will always feel sentimental about, not only because it’s a great movie. Sentimental working with these guys because it was such a great experience.

Hanks: It is this extraordinary amalgam that stands completely on its own and never has to be repeated. And thank God we never bothered trying to make another one. Why put a hat on a hat? NYTIMES

Here opens in Singapore cinemas on April 3.