Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr. are Marty McFly and Emmett “Doc” Brown in a new Back to The Future deepfake video. In recent years, these kinds of deepfake videos have gotten to be rather popular online. Utilizing modern computer technology, YouTube video editors have been digitally removing the faces of actors and replacing them with someone else, showing how certain characters might look with another actor in the role.
Jim Carrey as Jack Torrance in The Shining and Sylvester Stallone replacing Macaulay Culkin in a Home Alone spoof are just a couple of the many memorable deepfake videos we’ve seen thus far.
The new Back to the Future deepfake video specifically alters the scene in high school where Marty and Doc discuss ideas on how to reunite the McFly parents. After inadvertently causing a younger version of his own mother to fall in love with him, Marty expresses worry over potentially erasing himself from history; meanwhile, Doc tries to make sense of the ’80s slang term, “heavy.” It’s a memorable scene, and it’s really weird to see it play out with two of the hottest actors from today. You can watch the video in full for yourself below.
One of the strangest aspects of this particular deepfake video is that it proves just how similar Holland and Fox are physically. At many points in the video, Holland looks just like the “real” Marty McFly, and you’d almost forget for just a moment that you were watching a deepfake parody. Meanwhile, Doc Brown is looking a lot different with Downey’s face as opposed to Lloyd’s, but it’s still oddly interesting to see the Iron Man star in the role. Of course, both Fox and Lloyd have very distinct and recognizable voices, so it’s a little bizarre hearing them from the mouths of Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr.
Tom Holland is of course best known for his role as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming and its sequel Far from Home, also appearing as Spidey in multiple other MCU movies. In a way, this new deepfake video brings things full circle for Holland, as the young actor has credited Marty McFly as a major source of inspiration for how to portray his role as Peter. “My goal was to try and kind of be our generation’s Marty McFly. That was what my all-time goal was, and I was actually lucky enough that a journalist said, ‘Oh, you’re kind of like Marty McFly in this movie,'” Holland said of his Spider-Man portrayal.
Despite Lloyd’s long-held desire to one day see it happen, director Robert Zemeckis has emphatically stated that there will never be a Back to the Future 4. With a third sequel not in the cards, there’s always the possibility that Hollywood will attempt rebooting the movie, perhaps with Holland and Downey or a couple of other big names. Because the originals are timeless classics which are impossible to top, however, it’s probably for the best to simply leave it be. The deepfake video shown above comes to us from EZRyderX47 on YouTube.
