CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND: So we literally had stunts go and rig
up on our set with wires and actually had these characters
being slammed around and moved.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Beware my purr.
My tentacles bite.
I'm Lorraine.
I might have fallen from space.
I'm Langston.
Ooh, and this is Earth's Mightiest Show.
Where we talk about all of the most '90s stuff
in the Marvel universe.
Oh, and if we're going to talk '90s, let's talk about this.
Higher, further, faster, baby.
Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel is now available on digital HD.
And it's coming to Blu-ray and DVD on June 11.
I'm obsessed. - Oh, listen.
I can't wait for all the extras, the blooper reel,
deleted scenes, all the stuff.
I want more, please.
Oh my god.
I flerken love this movie, especially because
of all the '90s goodness.
I'm talking fashion, soundtracks.
So good.
Oh, the settings.
Come on, Blockbuster Video.
Gourmet choice.
Oh, a delight.
Bringing me back.
And we're going to be talking more about the '90s today.
But I think first, we should talk about the fact
that I got to chat with visual effects supervisor Christopher
Townsend all about creating Goose the Cat's
cool secret skills, the Kree-Skrull battle,
and Captain Marvel's big fall.
But spoiler warnings ahead if you have not seen this film.
But for those of you who have, you are in for a treat.
This is super cool.
Let's watch.
Oh.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I am here with visual effects supervisor
Christopher Townsend.
Hello. - Hi.
How are you doing?
I'm very well.
So everyone has seen the film by now.
If not, what have you been doing with your life?
Get it together, people.
I want to talk about some of the visual effects
that we can finally kind of discuss, because it's
coming home for home release.
So first of all, I know we were all very
excited to meet Goose the Cat.
There's a lot more to Goose the Cat than maybe meets the eye,
like a pocket universe full of tentacles
or something like that.
CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND: Something like that, yes.
As you're starting to create this alien creature,
where do you start?
I think with--
as with most of these things, with sort of these characters,
you go back to the comics.
And you look at the comics, and you look at poster art,
and you look at the art that's been done of,
what is the flerken?
So it's this big gooey, goopy, terrifically sized monster sort
of thing that bursts out of this cat,
and then goes back inside again.
And I think the fun part was trying
to have that juxtaposition between the two.
And when you're bringing that to life, obviously,
the flerken will interact with the actors.
How do you get him to interact with other characters
and pull it all together?
It's all very carefully, carefully orchestrated.
We have one particular scene where the elite fighting force,
the Kree guards are coming in and are being slammed around.
So we literally had stunts go and rig up on our set
with wires, and actually had these characters
being slammed around and moved, and flipped, and flopped,
and things.
All that stuff is very carefully planned
out in our pre-visualization moment in our previous time.
And we figure out exactly how--
what the moves need to be based on what
the tentacles are going to do.
So you sort of work backwards.
That's where visual effects sort of fits in the middle,
as it were.
So speaking of the Kree and the Skrulls,
there is this large fight between the two of them.
And there are a lot of characters there.
How many characters are being brought
in through visual effects?
And how many are actually there?
We actually shot out--
there's a scene called Torfa on the planet Torfa.
And we went out and we shot this at a quarry
for a couple of weeks.
Because of the complexity of you're shooting outside,
you're shooting at night, you're shooting in fog, which is never
the same, all these sort of things
made it incredibly difficult to actually do it, to pull it off.
But I think what you see at the end is this sort
of big wide scope of things.
There are maybe 40 or so real actors in full makeup
and prosthetic masks, and helmets, and costume,
and everything else running around
in that sandy sort of quarry.
And then we've added easily just as many characters
on top in digitally.
It's really a mix between the sort
of the traditional sort of stunt work and visual effects.
There is an epic scene at the end where
Captain Marvel is falling.
It is harrowing.
How do you place that?
Because obviously, we can't drop Brie Larson.
Yeah, so a lot of-- obviously, a lot of what we do is
you're trying to make the impossible possible,
and also making it, hopefully, look
real so that an audience is there and never questions it.
And there are many things we could have tried.
We could have tried skydiving.
We could have tried these sort of wind tunnels.
We could have tried her on wires.
We could've tried all sorts of different things.
One of the things we realized very quickly
was that for what we needed for her in this very specific
moment is to be able just to use a digital double of her,
and be able to just close in on her face
and be able to use her face and her expressions
where necessary.
And there's some other performance involved,
too, because there are some folks in green screen suits
as well.
There are.
There are people there that are moving her around
in the blue screen suits.
And they're using that to try and puppeteer her to make
it feel like she's floating.
Because one of the problems is-- obviously,
when you're literally on wires, you're
being supported in a cradle, or if you're
on a backboard where you're just being supported,
your legs tend to go down.
So you need to make it feel like someone
is moving around in a more naturalistic way as you would
when falling.
We used a lot of that, not only--
some of it is actually literally in the film.
Also, a lot of it was just used as reference
so that we can see how Brie's body moves in a particular way
and how the costume moves in a particular way
when she's doing a particular thing with her arms or legs.
We also shot elements just of her face.
And so you can imagine we were sitting in a studio
with her sitting in a chair, and she's got the helmet on.
And we'd say, OK, look scared!
OK, look over to your left!
Look over to your right!
Oh, now this is happening!
And she was a real trooper and amazing
to watch, a true professional as an actor
being able to react to that, and pretend
that they're falling and panicking, and looking.
LORRAINE CINK: But it's just right here.
CHRISTOPHER TOWNSEND: And it's just here.
And all we're capturing is just her face and expressions.
And we take all of that information
and then we would map that.
We would project that onto a CG version of her.
So what you see in the final film is generally
a digital version of her falling,
but with her performance mapped on her face,
put onto the digital version of her.
So you also got to create a very
interesting realm that we've never
seen in the Marvel universe.
And it's hard to say.
It's more of a consciousness, we'll
say, the Supreme Intelligence.
How did you build that interaction world brain space?
What do you call it?
We call it the Supreme Intelligent Chamber--
Intelligence Chamber.
And I think it was a fascinating sort of bit of storytelling
that we were trying to do in there.
There's a lot of exposition that happens in that room.
There's a lot of sort of definition of the characters
that happen.
But the idea was that the room exists in a reality.
It's a virtual reality, but it should never
look like virtual reality.
It should always feel like a very real space.
But we wanted to keep it a little bit surreal.
And we went through many iterations
from massive green hexagonal blocks to liquid worlds
to almost Salvador Dali sort of art.
We went through all sorts of things,
but eventually ended up back at this very
minimalist, sort of almost a white room and a clean room.
And the idea being that you can almost--
whatever you want to conjure in that room, you can make happen.
There's obviously-- there's a point in the movie
where we twist, and things get a bit
more violent and aggressive.
And then the room itself begins to collapse.
And it was a really interesting challenge
to try and figure out how to create something which
would sort of satisfy both the serene and the violent
all at once.
Well, it is beautiful and very serene.
And I would very much like to have that in my home.
Not the latter half--
Yes.
But the first part, very nice.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
You're very welcome.
Oh, my pleasure.
You guys, be sure to watch Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel.
It's available for digital download now.
So many visual effects.
The brains behind these things are bigger than me.
It's mind-blowing.
It really is mind-blowing.
But you know what else is mind-blowing?
I've got one bit of itty bitty kitty trivia for you guys.
I was waiting for the rest of that.
I think this is so cool.
You know, ginger cats, IRL, In Real Life,
tend to be genetically male.
So our first hint that Goose is a little bit different
is that she is female.
All the clues. All the clues.
Yeah. Isn't that good?
You fine out all the knowledge.
I like that. Yeah.
Yeah.
Listen, there are so many more fun details
from the comic books about flerkens.
- Sure. - Let's talk about those, right?
Yeah.
Why don't we give these guys four flerken
facts from the comic books.
OK.
Number one, how the tentacles work.
So in the comics, flerkens contain
these pocket dimensions that don't just help
hold those pink tentacles, no.
They can also carry anything up to the size
of a whole dang universe.
Simply put, flerkens are bigger on the inside.
Well, you know, in the comics, these pocket dimensions
are actually very handy for teleportation and time travel
if you don't mind getting covered in a bunch of pink goo.
It's damp.
It's a damp way to travel, but it's convenient.
But also, that makes sense of how a flerken
could just end up on Earth.
Yeah.
Also, hey, check this out.
Flerkens are oviparous.
It's a word for you, which means like birds and reptiles,
they lay eggs, like lots of eggs,
like a crazy amount of eggs.
LORRAINE CINK: Yeah, it's a lot of eggs.
But don't say anything mean about these cute little fluff
fluffs, because they actually have human level intelligence.
So brains, and beauty, and tentacles.
LANGSTON BELTON: And tentacles.
Watch out for the tentacles.
See, you learn something new every day.
I love that. Well, hey.
Let's keep the fun rolling with more '90s goodness, because it
is Marvel's 80th anniversary.
And this month, we are celebrating-- you guessed it--
the '90s as we take a walk down memory
lane with our friendly neighborhood
toy hunter Jordan Hembrough.
Oh, toy-riffic.
Let's check it out.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Earth's Mightiest Show fans, what is up?
I'm hanging out again with my good buddy,
pop culture expert, Marvel toy hunter extraordinaire
Jordan Hembrough.
Jordan, welcome back, my friend.
Thank you so much.
I am happy to be here.
I am happy that you are here, because as you can see,
in front of you are some toys from a wonderful decade that
we are celebrating here for Marvel's 80th anniversary,
the '90s.
A decade that I grew up in.
I was born in 1985.
Oh, you're in for a treat.
Well, I cannot wait.
You're in for a treat.
These are Sneaker Snappers from the 1990s.
This is what I love about these.
Let me-- no, no, hear me out.
They snapped on the front of your sneakers.
And it was like really a wearable kind of cool piece
of fashion that you would wear to tell everyone,
I'm a Marvel fan.
I will tell you right now.
I owned these Sneaker Snappers.
Oh, there you go.
Really?
Because my shoes would always come undone.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: In the industry,
what we essentially call something
like this is it branches from the toy category into something
we call lifestyle.
And that means that basically you can use it every day.
I'm speechless because I owned these.
These-- what?
These are yours.
What?
We talk about the 1990s and toys.
You cannot not talk about the X-Men.
Whoa!
What?
I definitely own this Wolverine.
Definitely had Wolverine.
Definitely had this one.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: These are classic X-Men from Toy Biz.
During the 1990s, these toys ruled the toy stores.
I've got to take a second and talk about Rogue.
LANGSTON BELTON: Yeah.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: And you know what?
They didn't realize how many females were
actually playing with the toys.
So what happened was Rogue and Storm were shortpacked.
And what that meant is there was only one or two of them
in every case of 12.
Toy Biz started realizing, look, we've
got to start making more Rogue.
We have to start making more Storm.
We have to start bringing these strong female superheroes
to life into the toy industry.
And they started making more and more of them.
Jordan, I almost don't want to move on.
Yeah.
This is my childhood sitting right in front of me.
- I've got more. - Yes, I know.
So let's do some more.
Yeah, I've got more.
All right.
LANGSTON BELTON: Get in.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: Oh
Are you serious?
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: It's the Spider-Man Animated Series
Daily Bugle Playset.
This was on a Christmas list.
Anyone who grew up in the '90s loved
the Spider-Man Animated Series.
Animated Series.
It was a great piece.
It was expensive.
Yeah.
That's why I remember the big thing.
My mom was like, no.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: It was packed full of as many factors
as they can get in one playset. - Look at this.
If you look at all the stuff that's on the back,
you see all the characters.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: The idea behind the playset
was to actually sell more action figures,
because you created a play environment,
and you created a big play environment.
Well, guess what.
Now you've got to fill it. - Yeah, right.
What are you going to fill it with?
More toys.
Exactly.
I'd never, ever thought I would ever
be this close to one of these.
My heart is always full when you come back,
and I'm taken back into my childhood.
This is so great.
All right.
LANGSTON BELTON: The Rage Cage.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: This is one of my favorite toys
from the 1990s.
And essentially what it is, is you
put Hulk inside this giant cage.
And he rages out and bursts through the cage.
And it's pandemonium, and fun ensues.
I love when a toy says, hey, we're going to give you
this cage with the Hulk in it.
Yeah.
I actually want to bring it out.
LANGSTON BELTON: Try to rage him.
JORDAN HEMBROUGH: I want to have you rage out with it.
LANGSTON BELTON: Let's try it. JORDAN HEMBROUGH: OK.
So we're going to rage out with it.
Rage!
[GROWLING]
It's amazing!
Hours of fun!
That is-- it's worth it.
It's so worth it.
Oh, the rage.
Jordan, thank you so, so much.
Ah, my pleasure.
If I'm-- if any of the fans out there are like me,
they're going to want to know more
about where to find out more about
you and all these great toys. Tell us more.
Absolutely. OK.
Well, if you're interested in toys,
you can find me on Twitter, @JordanHembrough.
Instagram, @JordanHembrough.
Or if you feel so inclined, check me
out at www.hollywoodheroes.com.
Check it out, because I'm just going to stay in here
and stare at these, and weep into my hands
for a couple of minutes, because this is so great.
Oh, that was such a delight.
I feel like I was transported to my childhood.
I was for sure.
And hey, shoutout to Jordan Hembrough who let
me keep those Sneaker Stoppers.
Oh, really?
Does this mean you're never going
to learn to tie your shoes?
Not for lack of trying, no.
Oh.
But hey, also, that Spider-Man Daily Bugle Playset--
Also tried to steal it.
I-- it's too big.
It wouldn't fit anywhere.
I couldn't hide that.
You need a better coat.
I need a flerken.
Full circle.
You guys, you know what?
You tell us what you would do if you
could spend a day with Goose the Cat, a.k.a. a flerken.
And use the hashtag #earthsmightiestshow.
We'll see you next time.
I'm Lorraine.
And I'm Langston.
And this is Marvel.
Your universe.
Meow.
[MUSIC PLAYING]