The newly released MCU film The Eternals has been something of a divisive hit since its release. While some of the complaints over the film were due to “bad CGI,” it turns out that most people didn’t notice other uses of CGI in the movie. In particular, it appears that two Eternals characters were actually completely CGI from the neck down.
This was revealed by Weta Digital’s visual effects supervisor Matt Aitken while in a new interview with ComicBook.
Here’s what Aitken had to say:
“Thena, when she’s in her superhero suit, it’s always entirely CG. She’s CG from the neck down, because the suit design changed in post-production. Getting her body performance so that it had that iconic aspect to it, they’ve cast Angelina Jolie for a reason. And part of that is that she has a way of moving that’s almost like a dancer.”
He further explained how they tried to keep the digital elements authentic:
“Making sure that we honored that with the digital component of the performance, but the capturing of her face particularly is what I’m getting around to here, getting that authenticity so that we can do a mid-shot as a digi-double and it’s not going to be jarring for anybody. It’s not going to pop them out of it. They’re just going to think, ‘Oh, this is another Thena fight beat.”
It appears that Harry Styles’ Eros from the mid-credits scene was also the result of heavy CGI work.
“Obviously we had digi-doubles of them all, but the only other one that changed completely was, you mentioned the post-credits or the mid-credits scene with Starfox. … Eros’ costume was another redesign.”
This is quite surprising, especially for Eternals viewers that didn’t notice there was CGI involved with these characters to that extent. But it just goes to show how mainstream cinema’s visual effects are continuing to evolve, even if some are still receiving criticism.
The massive superhero film was directed by Chloé Zhao from a screenplay written by Matthew and Ryan Firpo.
The incredibly talented and diverse cast included Gemma Chan as Sersi, Richard Madden as Ikaris, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Salma Hayek as Ajak, Lia McHugh as Sprite, Don Lee as Gilgamesh, Angelina Jolie as Thena, Barry Keoghan as Druig and Kit Harington as Dane Whitman/Black Knight.
Eternals is currently still playing in theaters.