Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr. as Marty McFly and Doc Brown in ‘Back to the Future’ deepfake (via EZRyderX47/YouTube)
If Avengers: Endgame killed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s favorite surrogate father/son relationship, then YouTube EZRyderX47 resurrected it.
Using video manipulation technology, the deepfaker replaces original Back to the Future cast members Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd with their modern counterparts.
And damn, I’d watch that movie.
Tom Holland (aka Spider-Man) is an actual carbon copy of Fox, each of whom boasts a certain adorable gawkiness and boyish charm that’s hard to resist—in 1985 and 2020.
On the other hand, Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. is the handsomer, more soulful version of Lloyd’s Doc Brown (minus the wacky white hair).
I do not advocate for more Hollywood remakes. (And certainly not when it comes to one of the best films of the 20th century.) But as fancasting goes, EZRyderX47 got it pretty spot on.
What began with celebrity porn and Nicholas Cage face-swaps has grown into a wide-ranging—often dangerous—internet sensation.
Deepfakes, which replace an existing image or video with someone else’s likeness, have gained attention for fake news, financial fraud, and pure entertainment.
This isn’t RDJ’s first synthetic media rodeo.
In November, film site Collider released a celebrity roundtable featuring Downey Jr. Tom Cruise, Jeff Goldblum, George Lucas, and Ewan McGregor—none of whom were actually in the room.
And while the results were not perfect, they are compelling.
The same goes for EZRyderX47, who previously put Michael J. Fox into Spider-Man’s shoes in a deepfake clip of the superhero meeting Mysterio.
Video manipulation isn’t always amusing, though.
Last year, a clip of Speaker Nancy Pelosi was modified to make her appear drunk during a public appearance; a recent recording of former VP and presidential hopeful Joe Biden was heavily trimmed to make him sound racist.
In an attempt to curb such “misleading” content, Twitter and Facebook are cracking down on deepfakes, forbidding users from sharing “synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm.”