(Updated 10/02/2024)
Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis has combined cutting-edge technology with crowd-pleasing storytelling for decades. From BACK TO THE FUTURE to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? to FORREST GUMP and THE POLAR EXPRESS, Zemeckis has made movies that audiences revisit time and again, often pushing the craft of moviemaking forward at the same time.
His next movie is HERE. On the surface, it seems pretty simple. HERE is a family drama that focuses primarily on a couple played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, making the movie a FORREST GUMP reunion. But here has an unusual perspective. The camera never moves, so we see decades in the lives of the characters as life goes on around the camera.
And the timeline isn't limited to just these people. The movie goes all the way back to the days of the dinosaurs to show how one small part of Earth plays home to near-infinite events throughout millennia. Here's everything we know about HERE.
What's the Here Release Date?
Sony Pictures and TriStar Pictures will release HERE in movie theaters on November 1, 2024.
Watch the Epic First Trailer for Here
HERE could be a pretty straightforward drama, even given the unusual approach of a camera which does not move from one fixed position. While the camera does not move, the movie does roam up and down the timeline of natural history.
As the trailer reveals, HERE goes millions of years back in time, when the same spot where the family lives is also coincidentally close to the asteroid impact which destroyed life for the dinosaurs. That might give this movie a different sense of scale than you'd expect to see given the general story outline.
How Much Time Really Passes in Here?
While, yes, the movie shows events that took place millions of years ago, the primary focus of HERE is on one family. The movie covers about a hundred years of life in America, though probably not in one linear story. Throughout, a combination of expert make-up and digital effects allows the stars to play their characters at a variety of different points in their life.
"I’ve always been, for some reason, labeled as this visual effects guy," director Zemeckis told Vanity Fair. "But those were always there to serve as the character arc." In HERE, he says, "It only works because the performances are so good. Both Tom and Robin understood instantly that, ‘Okay, we have to go back and channel what we were like 50 years ago or 40 years ago, and we have to bring that energy, that kind of posture, and even raise our voices higher."
Does the Camera Really Never Move in Here?
The camera does not ever move during the course of the movie, as the trailer above demonstrates. "The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does," Zemeckis said. "It’s actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented. But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture."
Here Is Based on a Groundbreaking Comic Book Story
Just as HERE represents something we've never really seen in movies, the story is rooted in a comic book experiment. The original version of the story was published as a six-page comic called "Here," written and drawn by Richard McGuire. It was found in "Raw" in 1989 — that's the experimental comics anthology edited by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. (If you read the issue of "Raw" that featured this story you would also have seen an installment of Spiegelman's crowning achievement, "Maus," which was serialized in "Raw" before being collected as a graphic novel.)
In 2014, McGuire expanded "Here" into a 300-page graphic novel that certainly gave more space to the story, and which is a more direct basis for this movie. But even the original six-page version featured the eon-spanning narrative. There are only 36 main illustration panels in that original version, but many feature subdivisions with people, animals, and events happening in different decades. It's an amazing piece of work. You can read it here.
Who Is in the Cast of Here?
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright star as Richard and Margaret Young. Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly play Richard's parents. Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee play another couple. Ophelia Lovibond and David Fynn play additional characters.
And with the time-spanning scope of the story, we see some people outside the story's primary family. There's an indigenous family played by actors that include Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum.
And we see William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, played by Daniel Betts. Leslie Zemeckis plays his wife, Elizabeth, with Lauren McQueen and Beau Gadsdon playing her in different eras.
HERE opens on November 1.
All images courtesy of Miramax.