Between Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, just
about everyone on the planet has gotten a look at Josh Brolin as Thanos.
But how they'd pull the transformation off?
Let's take a deep dive into how the MCU turned Josh Brolin into the Mad Titan.
According to the visual effects supervisor Kelly Port, whose company Digital Domain worked
on creating Thanos for Infinity War, the number of people it takes to complete a major studio
movie's visual effects has exploded in recent decades.
Marvel's own Iron Man 3 has over 1,800 people credited in its visual effects department
alone — a dramatic step up from the special effects-heavy blockbusters of decades past.
Port said to The Verge,
"We were reflecting back on Titanic days, the late '90s, where a big effects film would
be considered around 300 shots.
Whereas [Infinity War], in contrast, has over 3,000 visual effects shots."
"And now, it's here.
Or should I say, 'I am.'"
Speaking in an interview with Art of VFX, Marvels Studios' overall VFX supervisor Dan
gave some insight into the amount of work that goes into a movie's visual effects before
anyone's even powered on their editing rig.
Speaking of Avengers: Infinity War, DeLeeuw said,
"This movie wasn't grounded like Winter Soldier or Civil War.
It involved eight to ten foot tall aliens and battles on other planets.
We knew the movie was going to be massive and had to plan accordingly."
The company's plan, according to DeLeeuw, involved
"[dividing up] the movie into individual sequences that would be awarded to separate VFX houses.
Each house would get a sequence that would tell a complete narrative.
This way each house could maintain the look and feel of the sequence while minimizing
the need for shared shots."
The responsibility of introducing Thanos to the world in Infinity War was shouldered by
Digital Domain, which took on a workload of 513 shots amounting to over 40 minutes of
screen time.
Their work involved bringing Thanos to life in every scene except the one on Titan, a
sequence which was instead handled by WETA Digital.
While you might not have heard of the studios by name before, you're certainly familiar
with their work.
WETA is the studio behind The Lord of the Rings' Gollum and the new Planet of the Apes
movies' Caesar, while Digital Domain been working in movies since James Cameron's True
Lies in 1994.
Founded by Cameron and acclaimed special effects artist Stan Winston, Digital Domain has been
working on large-scale superhero movies since X-Men in 2000, and have since had a hand in
making the first Thor, the third Iron Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Thor: Ragnarok
with Marvel Studios.
Even with the team's extensive experience, it took over 340 people from the company nearly
two years to bring just most of Thanos' parts to fruition, which really puts things into
perspective when it comes to how much pure labor it takes to make movies of this scale
work.
Directors Anthony and Joe Russo met with Brolin and the digital effects artists several months
before live shooting began, to both see what Marvel wanted to accomplish with the character,
and also to determine what the effects companies would be capable of turning in.
Digital Domain's Kelly Port said it was a proud moment to show off Digital Domain's
first Thanos test to Brolin and the directors on the actor's first day of shooting.
Port said,
"They were all very excited about it, and I think there was a collective sigh of relief
that we could pull this off."
The results of Digital Domain's first test were encouraging, showing that the company's
artists were capable of maintaining Brolin's humanity as they encased his performance in
a virtual skin.
"It's just the way it is.
I'm just a messenger."
According to Dan DeLeeuw,
"The early test [showed] how much we could do with the character.
It showed that would could take exactly what Brolin did on stage and reproduce it with
the CG character."
The test put Brolin at ease, letting the actor know he didn't need to oversell his performance
to make the character feel alive.
As Kelly Port put it,
"I think what was really great about his reaction was his sense that he did not, as an actor,
need to overplay the acting."
Seeing that the effects team would be able to effectively translate a lower-key Thanos
performance in all of its subtleties was a boon to the filmmakers — especially Brolin,
who was worried about how he would come off in a motion-capture performance.
No one was more nervous about bringing Thanos to life than Josh Brolin.
Playing the Mad Titan wasn't as physically demanding as his live-action performance as
Cable in Deadpool 2, but it was emotionally draining.
As Brolin described it,
"I was more nervous doing that than I've been for a long time."
While shooting the movie, Brolin at times found himself having a hard time striking
an imposing presence while wearing an unflattering motion capture suit.
Brolin said,
"You've got to walk around in a onesie and imagine yourself as an actor with some impact.
[...] I'm sitting there and I'm looking like I look, which is not 700 pounds, and purple,
and eight feet tall."
To record Brolin's performance, the production installed motion-capture cameras all around
the movies' sets, allowing other actors more space to interact with him.
The movements of his body were recorded by those cameras, while close-up shots were recorded
by HD cameras that were attached to a helmet and pointed back at his face.
All of the footage was then put into a massive database, with every tiny movement of Brolin's
face being used for reference when it came time to replace his features with the computer-generated
Thanos model.
The goal, according to Kelly Port, was to have the CG model match the emotions of the
real-life actor.
Port said,
"We look at the result; you look at Brolin side by side with Thanos.
Is he conveying the same emotional expression?
Is he conveying the same emotion with his face?
And we make a subjective call."
One of the more interesting hurdles to overcome in bringing Thanos to life wasn't making sure
that he looked like Josh Brolin, but rather making sure that he looked like… well, himself.
Fans of the MCU have been anticipating Thanos' arrival ever since the end of The Avengers
in 2012, when the big purple space monster first turned to the camera with a sinister
grin.
This was years before Brolin was ever cast or considered for the part in Infinity War,
so how did the pre-existing Thanos from prior movies fit into the character's final form?
According to Port, the Digital Domain team started their Thanos' modeling with the old
look, and slowly incorporated Brolin's features.
There was no magic to the process — just a long back and forth between their teams
and the people at Marvel.
Port said.
"We tried to find that balance, but we did introduce more of Brolin I think than in previous
Thanoses in the films."
The effects teams' efforts weren't immediately met with enthusiasm.
Upon the release of the first footage of Brolin as Thanos, many fans criticized the new look,
finding that too much had changed between the initial and final versions.
The most difficult aspect of bringing Thanos to life had to do with his quiet, reflective
moments.
While an effects-heavy battle scene has lots of moving parts from a VFX perspective, it's
also easier to cut corners when the screen is so busy with meteors, explosions, and Spider-Man
antics.
In other words, it's not that hard to make the purple space man fight the big green guy.
It's much harder to make you believe the purple space man can cry.
Speaking with Art of VFX, Kelly Port said the most complicated Thanos scene is his sacrifice
of Gamora on Vormir.
Port said,
"Many of the shots of Thanos in this sequence are very close and very emotional, so it was
extremely important that Brolin's performance come through for this scene."
The importance of nailing Thanos' ability to physically convey emotion can't be overstated.
One false move, and the filmmakers fall directly into the uncanny valley.
Once you remember you're looking at something made in a computer, it's easy to be taken
out of the story.
You'd basically be watching Jar-Jar Binks cry — and there's nothing engrossing about
that.
"How rude."
While the idea of getting into such a pivotal mo-cap role was daunting, Brolin has since
gone on to call Thanos, quote, "one of the most favorite jobs I've ever had."
Part of getting into the character involved immersing himself in nearly 50 years' worth
of Marvel Comics history.
Of course, Marvel Studios didn't just send Brolin to the local comic book shop with a
gift card.
According to Brolin,
"They sent me over this bible, just all this information.
It was a massive thing, and yet even that was maybe a sixteenth of what there was to
learn."
As anyone who's ever read comic books is well aware, the internal consistency of the characters
and their stories can sometimes be a nightmare, especially as characters mutate across decades
under different writers.
"The comic book and Marvel world is not only extremely emotional to people, but so in-depth.
There's no way to learn it all.
But you try to do what you can [...] I started reading and I was in awe."
The cliche goes that eyes are windows to the soul, which is really just a way of saying
they convey subtlety.
They squint or widen to show fear, shock, or focus, conveying emotion through tiny microexpressions
— and when it comes to a monstrously evil figure like Thanos, seeing those emotions
can make all the difference.
According to Anthony Russo, who co-directed Infinity War and Endgame,
"Even though he's despicable on so many levels, there's a part of Thanos that is very empathetic.
He has a very complex inner life, and he's not all bad."
The filmmaker also called Josh Brolin,
"...a performer who's capable of delivering that kind of complexity, where you have that
level of violence in him, but at the same time you have that level of sensitivity."
All of Brolin's acting work would be for nothing if Digital Domain proved incapable of mapping
Brolin's face onto a monster — but fortunately, the studio was up to the task.
According to Port,
"What we really focus on is the eyes at Digital Domain, and there's a ton of work, and a huge
amount of detail around that."
The company doesn't treat the eye as one object, but rather as layers of intersecting objects,
making the final product feel more complex and alive.
All of this goes a long way toward making Thanos feel like a real person — and that
realism, in turn, makes him so much scarier.
Another one of the tricky parts of animating a CGI character has to do with making the
audience believe the character actually exists on the same plane as real actors.
The most important element to focus on in this aspect is lighting.
According to Port,
"If the lighting is not good, it won't look photoreal."
A CGI character starts off being lit by nothing.
When the character is placed into real-world footage that is saturated with a certain kind
of lighting, a lack of similar lighting on the CGI model will look disastrous.
Speaking to Art of VFX, Port said,
"As we began to experiment with lighting ideas, we soon discovered that Thanos looked his
best with slightly more complex lighting with various colors rather than monochromatic light."
Many of the scenes Digital Domain was tasked with took place in darker settings, on spaceships
or stormy planets, giving the team some flexibility when it came to lighting Thanos' skin.
For the scene when Thanos arrives on Earth in broad daylight, they had to contend with
making him look like he was being lit by the same sunshine as the performers.
Port said,
"[We] found that having Thanos walk through the dappled light of the trees was very effective
for integrating him into the shot and giving him depth."
The years of work paid off with Infinity War's debut.
During an interview conducted after the movie's release, Port said,
"The excitement of the audience's reaction seeing the film for the first time was really,
really cool for me.
We do it for the love of the craft, but we also do it for the love of entertaining.
The reception from the audience is so rewarding.
It means a lot."
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