Random Bad CGI Body Modifications In Movies (13 items)

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  (#7) Captain America: The First Avenger

  • Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Richard Armitage, Stanley Tucci, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, Kenneth Choi, JJ Feild, Bruno Ricci, Lex Shrapnel, Michael Brandon, Martin Sherman, Natalie Dormer

  When Chris Evans showed up to play the role of Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, he had gained 15 pounds of muscle to portray the First Avenger. However, that left director Joe Johnston with the difficult decision of how to best make Evans appear as the 5-foot-4, 140-pound kid he first appears as prior to being injected with super serum.

  British actor Leander Deeney was brought in to portray Rogers's emaciated frame and mimic Evans's movements to the best of his ability. The production team then decided to use Lola FX, the same firm that cloned Armie Hammer for the Winklevoss twins (AKA the Winklevi) in The Social Network. 

  A three-step process, Lola begins by taking original images of the actor - in this case, over 300 images of Evans were filmed, some with Evans acting inside a scaled-down set, and some in an extra-large costume. All of this was done before visual effects supervisor Edson Williams used Evans's face as a projection. Deeney's body was then implemented as a wireframe, and the 2D images of Evans were digitally shrunk down.

  Naturally, there are challenges when digitally scaling down a human being, some of which are still apparent in the final cut of Captain America: The First Avenger. Getting a consistently "Skinny Steve" was an issue, considering that Evans's head needed to be proportionally shrunk to fit a much smaller frame without the use of a green screen. With that, avoiding a gaunt or feminine appearance became a must, but created other issues with the background color, according to Williams.

  “It was more of a grain problem than anything else,” says Williams. “The scaled down sections of his body would become sharper and have very little grain. We would shrink him in some parts by as much as 30 percent. We took a lot of mass off. This meant we would get the skin looking sharper and as if it had no grain so we had to do a de-grain and then an overall re-grain to get the skin to match the rest of his body.”
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  (#3) Blade: Trinity

  • Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Parker Posey, Dominic Purcell, John Michael Higgins, James Remar, Eric Bogosian, Patton Oswalt, Callum Keith Rennie, Natasha Lyonne, Mark Berry, Steve Braun, Triple H

  According to actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, working on Blade: Trinity was “f*cking crazy in a hilarious way.” In an interview with HuffPost, Oswalt recounted all the ways Wesley Snipes made filming the 2004 movie insanely difficult - like only coming out of his trailer for close-ups (a stand-in was used for wide frames), communicating with director David Goyer via Post-it notes and, most weirdly, refusing to open his eyes during the morgue scene. 

  Years later, HuffPost spoke with visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer, who had a hard time remembering if it was even Snipes on the morgue table because a double was used so often. However, Bauer confirmed that CGI eyes were utilized because of Snipes's reluctance to play ball. “Getting [Blade] to open his eyes [in the morgue scene] was really tricky because no two people’s eyes are the same,” Bauer said. “Messing with the human face is the very hardest thing that anyone can do in visual effects... I won’t name, but you can name the number of attempts that have failed more than succeeded, I think.”
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  (#11) Machete

  • Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Shea Whigham, Lindsay Lohan, Tom Savini, Daryl Sabara, Gilbert Trejo, Billy Blair

  A shower scene in 2010's Machete, which appears to show actress Jessica Alba unclothed, was in fact filmed with the actress wearing tight white underwear, and then digitally altered. Therefore, the body shown in the film's final product is entirely CGI.

  Alba, who's been against appearing unclothed in any film during her career, worked with director Robert Rodriguez to come up with a solution both would be comfortable with. As she told Scarlet in 2010, "I come from a very Catholic family, so it wasn't seen as a good thing to flaunt yourself like that. I can handle being sexy with clothes on but not with them off."
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  (#13) Black Swan

  • Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied, Ksenia Solo, Kristina Anapau

  Natalie Portman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for 2010's Black Swan. However, according to her stunt double Sarah Lane, it wasn't because of her dancing. Lane, an American Ballet Theatre soloist, told The Hollywood Reporter, “Of the full body shots, I would say 5 percent are Natalie.”

  Lane also told Entertainment Weekly that Portman's face was digitally grafted onto her body. The dancer was allegedly told by Black Swan producer Ari Handel not to talk to the press about her work on the film. “It is demeaning to the profession and not just to me," Lane said. "I’ve been doing this for 22 years... Can you become a concert pianist in a year and a half, even if you’re a movie star?” 

  Credited only as a "Hand Model," "Stunt Double," and "Lady in the Lane," Lane is adamant that she is not jealous - even giving Portman credit for "getting into a dancer's head." Instead, Lane insists that the viewing audience needs to understand the difference between a trained dancer and an actress trying to dance. “I mean, from a professional dancer’s standpoint, she doesn’t look like a professional ballet dancer at all, and she can’t dance in pointe shoes," Lane said. "And she can’t move her body; she’s very stiff."
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  (#2) Justice League

  • Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Joe Morton, Amber Heard, Michael McElhatton, Lisa Loven Kongsli

  Superman with a mustache? Say it ain't so! Well, as the story goes, Henry Cavill, who plays the Man of Steel, had already wrapped principal photography on DC's Justice League - and had moved onto his next role in Mission: Impossible - Fallout. For the role of August Hunter in the Tom Crusie franchise, Cavill was contractually obligated to grow and keep a neatly trimmed mustache for the duration of filming.

  Unfortunately, DC needed to re-film some key scenes with Cavill, but due to the ever-growing mustache situation, Cavill stood in the famous red cape, mustache firmly planted above his upper lip. Although Fallout director Chris McQuarrie suggested a compromise to Warner Bros. - that he would shut down production on his film long enough for Cavill to shave his face, wrap up filming, and jet back to the Paramount Studios project, Paramount balked at stunting production, despite McQuarrie and DC agreeing to a $3 million subsidy to supplement their visual effects budget.

  Therefore, DC was forced to use CGI to digitally erase Cavill's mustache, which left the actor with this awkward sunken-in, semi-stubbly upper lip that still draws criticism and laughs. 
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  (#9) Waterworld

  • Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Michael Jeter, Gerard Murphy, R.D. Call, Kim Coates, John Fleck, Robert Joy, Jack Black, John Toles-Bey, Zitto Kazann, Zakes Mokae, Sab Shimono

  Back in 1995, Waterworld was made for a then-record-setting $175 million. While that is a ton of dough considering that the film was mostly panned by critics, building an entire post-apocalyptic world from scratch is expensive. Yet for all the money Universal Pictures spent on the Kevin Costner vehicle, no one realized until filming was complete that its star was losing his hair. 

  As the rumor goes, once Costner watched some of the footage, he demanded reshoots and CGI fixes to parts of Waterworld he didn't care for, including his receding hairline. A back-and-forth took place with director Kevin Reynolds, inevitably leading to Reynolds's firing. Although this version of events is disputed by Costner, back in 1995, Newsweek wrote that extra money was eventually found in the budget and, miraculously, Costner's hair looked much fuller when the film premiered. 

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