Dial of Destiny Team Spent Three Years on What Fans Now Call the ‘AI Sequence at the Beginning of Indiana Jones’

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold has revealed the team worked on the movie’s opening sequence for three years, but some are now referring to it as the “AI sequence”.

Long before the movie hit theaters, we knew Dial of Destiny’s opening sequence would feature a de-aged Harrison Ford as the movie kicks off in 1944, when Indiana Jones and Mads Mikkelsen’s Nazi astrophysicist Jürgen Voller encounter Archimedes’ Dial.

Mangold was keen to give moviegoers an adrenaline rush at seeing a young Indiana Jones swing back into action in the opening minutes before transitioning into the main adventure, but that the sequence took a long time to complete, he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I never presented it as time travel. I never really thought of it as time travel,” Mangold said of the movie’s prologue. “There’s this way the press can frame a story that can then help drive the story. We worked for three years on the opening sequence, but only in the last 30 days have people started calling it the ‘AI sequence at the beginning of Indiana Jones’.”

The VFX team reportedly used several different techniques to pull the scene together, including a new ILM software that scanned through archived footage of Ford in his earlier years before matching it to the footage shot for Dial of Destiny in the opening sequence.

Twitter user @IndianaJones_ch also recently shared photos of the masks the movie’s stunt performers wore to look more like Ford before the post-production team worked their magic on the faces, offering fans a closer look at the mask used for young Indy in the flashback scenes.

Stunt Mask used in DoD pic.twitter.com/ZgHOqk1nop

— IJ Adventure Outpost (@IndianaJones_ch) July 2, 2023

It is not the first time we have seen the masks as photos leaked from the set during production featured a stuntman wearing one of the hyperrealistic disguises to resemble a younger Ford, which was an early indicator the movie would explore Indiana Jones’ past.

“This is the first time I’ve seen it where I believe it,” Ford previously said of the de-aging technology used in the movie. “It’s a little spooky. I don’t think I even want to know how it works, but it works. Doesn’t make me want to be young, though. I’m glad to have earned my age.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hit theaters on June 30, and won the global weekend box office with ticket sales reaching $130 million. Plenty of movie-goers have been enjoying this final adventure, however, IGN’s review of the film gave it a 4/10, noting it “fails to recapture Spielberg’s magic”.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.