Random Bad CGI Body Modifications In Movies (13 items)

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  (#1) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2

  • Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning, Mackenzie Foy, Julia Jones, Booboo Stewart, Lee Pace, Christian Camargo, Mia Maestro, Casey LaBow, Maggie Grace, MyAnna Buring, Joe Anderson, Omar Metwally, Rami Malek, Guri Weinberg, Noel Fisher, Chaske Spencer, Jamie Campbell Bower, Christopher Heyerdahl

  Perhaps because casting a half-human/half-vampire hybrid infant is a challenge, the team behind Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 decided to install a CGI baby instead. As if the baby's name, Renesmee Cullen, wasn't bad enough, oversaturated CGI and makeup effects, specifically on the eyes and lips, were used to put the finishing touches on the offspring of Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart). 

  Sadly, this CGI baby was an improvement upon an even scarier incarnation, nicknamed "Chuckesmee," a doll that producer Wyck Godrey told CinemaBlend was "one of the most grotesque animatronic babies ever to not be seen on film." 

  In a behind-the-scenes featurette available on Twilight Forever, Godfrey explained why the production didn't want to use a puppet, and instead forged ahead with CGI. "We were trying to create something that was otherworldly with Renesmee in the movie," Godfrey said. "She has to be intelligent yet still look like a baby but actually look like a more mature baby than one would be at one day old. So we ended up shooting it, and the second you’re holding it up you realize this is never going to work. No fake thing is ever going to do the trick. If you’re Bella you’re looking at it going, 'I don’t want that thing. Put it back.'"
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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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  (#12) Terminator 2: Judgment Day

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Earl Boen, Joe Morton, S. Epatha Merkerson, Castulo Guerra, Danny Cooksey, Jenette Goldstein, Xander Berkeley

  Towards the beginning of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, when Robert Patrick's T-1000 arrives on Earth, he's completely unclothed and crouching over the body of a lifeless police officer.

  25 years after its original release in 1991, director James Cameron re-released the film in 2017 as a celebration, only this time in 3D. Oh, and Cameron decided to cover up Patrick Wilson's robot nethers with a piece of CGI concrete.
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  (#4) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

  • Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, Ryan Reynolds, Danny Huston, Scott Adkins, Tim Pocock, Tahyna MacManus, Julia Blake, Max Cullen, Troye Sivan

  How does a movie with a $150 million budget miss so severely when it comes to CGI claws? The answer is twofold. During the filming of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hugh Jackman and his stuntman would wear heavy, metal, "practical" claws between their fingers. They look great on film but, like a child wielding blades, are extremely dangerous. As Jackman told Vulture back in 2017, he has several scars on his thighs (some near his, er, sensitive parts), mainly from self-inflicted gashes. “I can’t tell you how many people I stabbed, how I stabbed myself. They were [dangerous] machines," Jackman said. After Jackman suffered through three X-Men movies in this way, a decision was made to increase the CG-to-practical ratio for Wolverine.

  Unfortunately, according to The Geek Twins, CGI and metal don't play nice together - it has to do with the weight and scale of 3D modeling. It's very difficult to capture a realistic sense of heft without props made of the right stuff. Luckily, a resumed emphasis on the use of practical claws and a slight improvement in CGI metal were at the disposal of both 2013's The Wolverine and 2017's Logan. Jackman, good mate that he is, went back to suffering for our entertainment.
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  (#6) Superman Returns

  • Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Frank Langella, Eva Marie Saint, Parker Posey, Kal Penn, Sam Huntington, Kevin Spacey, Tristan Lake Leabu, James Karen, David Fabrizio, Noel Neill, Marlon Brando, Peta Wilson, Stephan Bender, Jack Larson, Ian Roberts

  It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a sock? Nope, it's all man - or it was until CGI stepped in. As rumor has it, while filming the 2006 film Superman Returns, director Bryan Singer was so distracted by Brandon Routh's red-underwear-wearing bulge that he ordered the digital effects team to decrease the size of Superman's manhood. Although Singer denies the claim, costume designer Louise Mingenbach spoke with Newsweek about the ever-growing situation.

  "There was more discussion about Superman's 'package' than anything else on the suit," Mingenbach says, laughing. "Was it too big? Was it not big enough? Was it too pointy? Too round? It was somebody's job for about a month just working on codpiece shapes. It was crazy." And the final verdict? "Not big," she says, and laughs again. "Ten-year-olds will be seeing this movie."
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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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