The_Hollywood_Reporter__February_07_2018

HOW THE GUARDIANS TEAM
MADE KURT RUSSELL BLEED BLUE
The visual effects in the final battle of this summer’s hit Marvel
sequel were a complex undertaking involving mathematics: ‘We had
to destroy a human body then rebuild it’ By Carolyn Giardina
When it comes to superhero
movies, visual effects
don’t always get a lot of respect.
The last time one of these films
won a VFX Oscar was in 2004, for
Spider-Man 2. And this year,
only one superhero movie,
Marvel’s Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 2, fielded a VFX
team that earned a ticket to
the Dolby Theatre. They’re
hoping to beat the odds thanks to
the film’s complex effects created
by a dozen vendors.
The degree of difficulty they
embraced is evident in the movie’s
final battle, which pits the
Guardians against Ego, a “Living
Planet” that also takes the human
Townsend
form of actor Kurt Russell. The
sequence’s visuals, with Weta
serving as lead VFX house, were
inspired by the comics, and the
unique visual style was created
with fractals — mathematically
generated patterns
— influenced by the work of
fractal artist Hal Tenny,
who served as a consultant.
“To get the computer-created
and mathematically derived
aesthetic, we used the algorithms
and had to translate them
into a VFX pipeline,” explains
effects supervisor Christopher
Townsend. “The final model build
for planet Ego was about half a
trillion polygons.”
← As Ego takes human form, the VFX team
used a model of Russell, added layers of bone
and muscle, and blue lightning in lieu of blood.
Within this CG world —
Townsend says it’s the most
complex he has ever created — the
team staged an epic battle that
included live-action characters
such as Chris Pratt’s Peter
Quill and fully CG creations like
Rocket and Baby Groot.
In order for Ego to morph into
different forms, delicate digital
double work was required. “Weta
created a digital version of Kurt,
down to matching individual
pores and hairs,” says Townsend.
“When Ego creates his human
form around his celestial framework
over a sequence of shots,
Weta mocked up Ego’s physiology
with multiple passes — his
skeleton, organs, muscles, skin
and finally clothes and hair. We
experimented with the timing
and nature of the reveal of each of
these building blocks, often overlapping
them and playing them
to the framing of each shot. As
Ego was speaking throughout the
reveal, we played with the delivery
of dialogue via a skull only or
by half skin/half muscle.”
When Quill finally blasts Ego
apart, only to see him regenerate,
Townsend says, “We had to
figure out how to destroy a human
body, then rebuild it, inside of a
PG-13 rating. We landed on a true
representation of all the organs,
bones, muscles, veins and nerves.
But as the cells were getting
destroyed by the energy blast,
they would mutate back using the
same 3D fractals that were seen
elsewhere in Ego the planet; this
added an alien element, an almost
mathematically derived aspect
to what could have been very gory.
Instead of blood, the celestial
framework’s blue energy was flung
from the destruction points.”
Fractals, mathematically constructed geometric forms (inset),
were used to construct the “living planet” known as Ego.
GUARDIANS: WETA/MARVEL (6). TOWNSEND: FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES FOR BRITISH CONSULATE GENERAL LOS ANGELES.
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