Can a mustache kill a movie? You betcha: just ask Henry Cavill and Joss Whedon.
This is the story of Superman's brush with infamy — and the fallout that followed.
Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton, famously gains his powers from exposure to Earth's
sun. Aside from a slew of abilities that includes flight, super speed,
and x-ray vision, one thing that puts the Man in Tights in a league of his own is his
invulnerability. After all, he's not called the Man of Steel for nothing. Naturally,
then, a standard razor should stand no chance of clipping Clark Kent's facial
hair to the baby-faced cleanliness that has become standard for the fictional character.
The uncertainty around Kal-El's shaving technique became the theme of an ad campaign from Gillette
in 2013. Corresponding with the release of Henry Cavill's premiere outing as Superman,
Man of Steel, the company went all out in an attempt to answer this comic book riddle. The
company assembled a Justice League-level group of nerds to present differing theories, from director
Kevin Smith to Bill Nye, and fans were asked to make a vote for their favorite theory online.
"Other people have suggested a Kryptonite razor,
as if that's simple. Would you shave with death, ladies and gentlemen? Of course not."
However, Gilette must have missed the episode of Superman:
The Animated Series in which Clark Kent gets that perfect smooth trim using a mirror and
his powerful heat vision — two products that the company sadly doesn't sell.
Since the first comic book appearance of Superman in 1938's Action Comics #1,
the clean chin and upper lip have been a staple for the character's
visage. Although he has disguised himself many times over the years,
the clean cut look is as much a part of Supes' costume as the "S" on his chest.
Clark Kent does have the ability to grow facial hair,
though. Superman #139 features an entire storyline around the effects
of Red Kryptonite weakening Kal-El's powerful vision, resulting in his hair and fingernails
growing far more than is appropriate for Kent's day job at the Daily Planet.
So it's not that Superman can't grow a sweet 'stache, but rather that audiences
change their opinion regarding the true-blue hero when he sports facial hair. Generally,
Superman donning a beard insinuates that the bald-faced crimefighter has been absent for
a period or aged considerably. As seen in Superman III, something as insignificant
as five o'clock shadow can even make Superman look like an evil version of himself. Meanwhile,
the clean cut helps to fortify Clark Kent as the responsible Boy Scout he traditionally represents.
While Henry Cavill has been limited to filming less than a minute of screen time as Superman
in the last five years, the actor's early days in the blue tights were highly productive. Making his
debut in 2013's Man of Steel solo flick, Cavill continued his time in the spotlight with Batman
v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016. Powering through that movie's poor critical reception,
production for Cavill's next adventure as Supes began less than a month later. Unfortunately,
unbeknownst to everyone involved during those first days of filming,
Justice League was about to unravel the entire DCEU.
"Boo yah."
At the conclusion of Batman v Superman, Supes is defeated by the monstrous Doomsday, and the first
half of Justice League is built around the rest of the team bringing him back to life. As such,
the Man of Steel's screen time is limited compared to his superpowered colleagues. Notably, though,
even after being raised from the dead, Superman maintains his babyface trim. Presumably,
every scene that Cavill shot for Justice League during principal photography,
which wrapped in October 2016, featured a clean-cut Clark Kent.
The process of bringing Justice League to life was tumultuous to say the least. Originally,
Warner Bros. had struggled to get the movie going after first announcing a
pre-DCEU version in 2007. As production finally loomed in 2016, Zack Snyder's
original proposal of a two-part film was nixed by the studio. Even during filming,
the backlash to the critically panned Batman v Superman resulted in substantial rewrites and
changes in producers. Still, the most significant hit to the film occurred in post-production,
when Zack Snyder left the project due to the sudden death of his daughter.
After attempting to return to work, Snyder opted to completely step away
from Justice League. In his announcement, he said:
"In my mind, I thought it was a cathartic thing to go back to work, to just bury
myself and see if that was the way through it. The demands of this job are pretty intense. It
is all-consuming. And in the last two months, I've come to the realization; I've decided to
take a step back from the movie to be with my family, be with my kids, who really need me."
As principal photography on Justice League seemed to come to an end,
the cast dispersed into other projects. Henry Cavill moved into production on the
action thriller Night Hunter, which failed to garner much positive attention. However,
it is notable for one particular reason: Cavill had grown a scruffy beard for the project. So,
when the actor shifted to his next film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the choice was made to give
his character a mustache. Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie later told the AV Club:
"Henry just finished [Night Hunter] and had a big beard and the mustache and long hair.
When he came to work, he had cut his hair but still had that mustache and he asked, 'What do
you think?' I thought about it for a second and said, 'You know what, let's go for it.'"
Unfortunately, this off-hand decision would later lead to significant problems when
Cavill received a call to return for reshoots on Justice League,
three months into filming on Mission: Impossible — Fallout.
In the wake of Zack Snyder's departure from Justice League, Warner Bros. and DC enlisted Joss
Whedon to take over, who had previously helmed Marvel's The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron.
"Avengers…"
With yet another creative mind now embedded in the Justice League scuffles,
the studio agreed to two months and $25 million worth of reshoots — a significant
cost compared to the standard reshoot budget of $6 million to $10 million and a couple of weeks.
Aside from scheduling conflicts with the movie's stars, the studio had its own demands for the
reshoots that would add to this growing monster of a film. First, the theatrical version was limited
to a two-hour runtime, a demand made by Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara. More challenging,
the release date of the movie was kept in its tight November 2017 spot,
despite these multiple obstacles. Warner Bros. executives refused to consider any
delays out of a fear of losing potential financial bonuses ahead of an upcoming merger with AT&T.
The problem of Henry Cavill's mustache served to distract from all the other drama surrounding the
Justice League reshoots. The price tag Warner Bros. faced for Justice League was approaching
$300 million with the added reshoot fund; meanwhile, Paramount's Mission: Impossible
– Fallout came in at an equally impressive $250 million. Obviously, neither studio wanted to face
the risk of a continuity error, deal with the CGI removal of Cavill's facial hair, or worst of all,
have the actor wear a fake mustache. As Christopher McQuarrie told the AV Club:
"I've worked with fake mustaches before. You can get away with it for a shot or two,
but it doesn't work over the course of a movie."
Surprisingly, though, the director was open to compromise. The Fallout crew tallied the number
of shots in which Cavill featured, and worked out how much those shots would cost to reshoot:
$3 million. McQuarrie then suggested that he shut down production on the movie while Cavill grew his
mustache back, while Warner Bros. simply would pay Paramount for the loss. Paramount, however,
refused to let McQuarrie do this. Because he was under contract, Cavill was forced to keep his
thick mustache during the Justice League reshoots. In an unpleasant twist of fate, Fallout ended up
having to shut down production anyways after lead actor Tom Cruise broke his ankle on set.
As the dust settled on the studio war, the task of disguising Cavill's mustache
landed in the laps of visual effects artists — and it didn't turn out well.
"You won't let me live. You won't let me die."
The first leaked images of the cropped mustache quickly took over the internet
to heavy mockery. In the aftermath, an anonymous visual effects artist for
DC opened up in a Reddit AMA that has since been archived. Notably,
the unnamed VFX crewmate passed the blame for at least one particularly terrible shot. They said:
"I'm not sure which other studio did that opening shot on the cell phone but it's dreadful. It
shouldn't have been approved internally let alone gone all the way to make it into the film."
Perhaps inevitably, Henry Cavill's botched lip job
became one of the hottest topics on social media. Cavill himself,
however, enjoyed the process of becoming the internet's favorite joke. He told Yahoo.com:
"I sure wasn't expecting that to happen. I love
that it has. It's cool. I can show my grandkids one day."
It didn't take long for Cavill to stoke the flames of the meme sensation,
either. The actor took to his own social media, sharing a picture of
a strange-looking contraption from the set of Mission: Impossible — Fallout. The caption read:
"Pictured above [...] is in fact the latest in a series of weapons being designed by Warner
Bros and Paramount Studios to combat the entity known as "Henry Cavill's Moustache." [...] It
is not a question of IF I should shave — it is a question of how can we possibly
be victorious against such a beast without bringing our own doom raining down upon us."
Sadly, Cavill later bade farewell to his furry friend in a heartfelt Instagram post
that featured a long mustache montage backed by Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You."
"I can tell you this though, I will remember him. Always."
The drama behind Justice League caught up with the film upon its release. The
movie officially premiered in November 2017, pulling in $96 million from the domestic box
office on opening weekend — short of the $110 million the studio had projected.
The lowest opening of any DCEU project at that point, part of the failure was down
to theatrical competition from Thor: Ragnarok and Coco. It certainly didn't help, though,
that the backstage confusion behind Justice League translated so obviously onto the big screen.
Meanwhile, fans were anything but impressed that Superman was absent from the majority of Justice
League's theatrical cut, an issue made worse by the movie's strange pacing. Worse still,
Cavill's uncanny CG face had apparently gone unfixed for the cinematic debut, leading to
even more insults regarding sloppy VFX. Fans weren't sure what to expect from Justice League
after the disappointment of Batman v Superman and the surprise success of Wonder Woman. Sadly,
with this movie, all of the DCEU's myriad of problems seemed to come together at once.
In an unprecedented maneuver from Warner Bros., the studio gave Zack Snyder another chance to
finish his vision of Justice League. Folding to a massive social media campaign calling on DC
to "Release the Snyder Cut," WarnerMedia subsidiary, HBO Max, handed the director
$70 million to rebuild the film utilizing the photography that he had already completed. With
a unique post-production process taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic, the restructured
4-hour Zack Snyder's Justice League was released exclusively on the streaming platform in 2021.
Snyder pulled no punches discussing the theatrical release of the film,
which he claims he has never watched. At a Comic-Con event, he said:
"I would destroy the movie,
I would set it on fire before I would use a single frame that I did not photograph."
And as for the infamous Superman 'stache?
"It's sad to think that that would have been the
last view that people had of Superman was just that."