Young Harrison Ford replaces Alden Ehrenreich in Solo: A Star Wars Story in an impressive new deepfake video. Thanks to Ford’s portrayal in Star Wars the original trilogy, roguish smuggler and eventual rebel hero Solo became one of the most iconic characters in movie history.
Ford would of course return to play Solo again in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (the movie that finally let Ford play out his dream of killing off the character), but when it came time to explore the origins of Solo in a standalone film, a new and much younger actor was needed. Enter Ehrenreich, a relative unknown who found himself being plunged headlong into the Star Wars universe as a Solo fans had never seen before: cocky and confident but not yet able to back it up. Though many praised Ehrenreich’s performance in Solo, the movie was a notorious flop at the box office after a tortured production process that included the firing of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller and the re-shooting of most of the film with Ron Howard at the helm.
Now, fans who didn’t care much for Ehrenreich’s interpretation of Han Solo in the largely maligned standalone film may receive a measure of solace thanks to a new deepfake video from YouTube user Shamook that replaces the young actor’s face with that of Ford. See the results of Shamook’s work in the space below:
In order to display their deepfake wizardry, Shamook inserts Ford into a few dialog-heavy scenes from Solo, including one with Lando Calrissian where Donald Glover is replaced with Billy Dee Williams. Watching Ford perform alongside Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton is indeed amusing, and gives a tantalizing taste of what might actually have happened had Ford somehow been able to play Solo again as a much younger man.
Like with most well done deepfakes that replace actors in movies, there is a certain eerie perfection to how seamlessly Ford’s face blends in with the footage, facial expressions and all. However, the issue with Shamook’s deepfake becomes immediately clear the second Han Solo opens his mouth and begins to speak, and it’s not Ford’s voice but Ehrenreich’s. Ford’s physical performance as Solo was of course important, but the character just isn’t the same without that iconic voice. Any Solo: A Star Wars Story full-length deepfake that seeked to truly insert Ford in place of Ehrenreich would need to employ a great Ford vocal impersonator to complete the illusion, and even then, it would still be an impersonation more than a performance. At any rate, Ehrenreich did a good enough job playing young Solo that swapping him out for Ford entirely would be a disservice, and frankly disrespectful to the actor (something Ford no doubt would agree with).
Source: Shamook/YouTube