Just like Merlin the wizard, who “youthened” rather than get older, Brad Pitt plans to age backwards.

As Benjamin Button, in David Fincher’s upcoming movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pitt portrays someone suffering a rare reverse-aging condition – which costar Tilda Swinton says is amazing to behold.

“The programs they developed for that are just going to blow everything out of the water,” the Michael Clayton Oscar-winner, 47, gushed to MTV News about the technology employed to speed up – and turn back – the clock on Pitt. “I think it’s going to be extraordinary.”

Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, Pitt plays Button through nearly 80 years of his life. “There are about eight sections, and I’m one of them. I’m his first love in the ’30s in Russia,” Swinton said. “What’s fascinating is we were all in these little films and they’ll all be put together [like an anthology].”

Cate Blanchett also stars in the flick, due in December.