At 47, Orlando Bloom has a few more wrinkles on his face today than in the Lord of the Rings films. Image source: Warner Bros. / New Line Cinema
In the Shire, where gossip is still valued, the printing press in Waterville is running at full speed: Legolas Greenleaf may have had a successful career as a Lembas baker after the films, but is now apparently toying with the idea of a comeback to the big stage!
Actor Orlando Bloom opens up in a new interview with the magazine Variety in any case, he didn’t even bother to deny his desire to take part in the new movie The Hunt for Gollum.
Even elves are now relying on AI
The No. 1 topic of conversation in the interview was Orlando Bloom’s new boxing drama The Cutfor which the actor proudly lost 23 kilograms and thus weighed just 60 kilograms.
Of course, Bloom’s interviewee could not resist asking the important question for Tolkien fans: Would the 47-year-old play Legolas again in The Hunt for Gollumwhen producer Peter Jackson and director Andy Serkis ask him?
His answer reveals that Apparently initial discussions have already taken place hat:
Oh man, these [Filme] are incredible. Yes. I don’t know how they would do it. I think with AI anything is possible these days. But if Pete [Peter Jackson] says, “Jump!”, I just ask, “How high?” I mean, I owe my whole career to him.
[…] I spoke with Andy [Serkis] and he said that they are thinking about how they want to do it. I asked: “How is that even going to work?” And he said: “Well, with AI!” […] [Der Filmdreh der Trilogie] was a pretty magical time in my life, and it’s one of those experiences where there’s no downside.
What Orlando Bloom is referring to: De-Agingthat is, the digital rejuvenation of faces using CGI to make a fictional character look as old as the story requires over the course of many real years.
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CGI fountain of youth with mixed results
There are several prominent examples of this technique in the dream factory of Hollywood. However, the result was not always pleasing to the eye, quite the opposite: some de-aging attempts threw the audience out of immersion, but this was also due to the technology being less sophisticated at the time compared to today.
In X-Men: The Last Stand from 2006, for example, Patrick Stewart (Professor X) and Ian McKellen (Magneto) were deprived of many wrinkles, but this simply did not look realistic, especially in terms of facial expressions:
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When it comes to de-aging, many Star Wars fans probably think of Princess Leia, who suddenly became very young again at the end of Rogue One (2016). The actress Carrie Fisher, who has since sadly passed away, was already in her late 50s at the time of filming. Without the use of CGI, such a result would never have been possible:
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The process worked much better in 2020’s The Irishman. In the Netflix epic, we see Robert De Niro regularly becoming decades younger. However, his movements were always those of a man in his late 70s, which shows the limitations of conventional CGI technology.
The Hunt for Gollum may rely on much more advanced techniques. By adding AI, the actors could not only be visually brought back to the state they appeared in the Lord of the Rings films of the early 2000s without anyone noticing.
Even entire movements or other details could be digitally created or changed afterwards. A fact that would benefit Ian McKellen when he returns as Gandalf. At the proud age of 85, the acting legend is unlikely to be as agile as he was over two decades ago.
By the way, de-aging would be nothing new for Orlando Bloom: Already in his first Legolas comeback in the Hobbit films, the actor was rejuvenated in post-production, as the elf from Mirkwood had lived even less years at that time than he had at the time of The Lord of the Rings. Let someone say again that elves don’t have a problem with wrinkles!
