Retroframing the Future: Digital De-aging Technologies in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

An emergent current of contemporary Hollywood cinema’s virtual population is the digitally age-regressed body, whereby computer animation “de-ages” star performers in feats of astonishing technological expressivity. This article examines the critical implications of virtual de-aging processes as both an institutional shift and a set of regularized formal practices. While the computerization of stardom by visual effects studios permits the aged star to transcend the limitations of their flesh-and-blood bodies, de-aging technologies intervene into critical discussions surrounding computer-mediated acting and digital performance; Hollywood’s increasingly “puzzling” narrative structures; gendered representations of aging in popular cinema; and the historical relationship between cinema, physiognomy, and memory.