"Deadpool & Wolverine" includes some of the finest, most complex CGI work in the franchise so far. To give you an idea of just how much work went into it, here are a few glimpses at what "Deadpool & Wolverine" looks like without special effects.
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00:00Deadpool and Wolverine includes some of the finest, most complex CGI work in the franchise
00:05so far.
00:06To give you an idea of just how much work went into it, here are a few glimpses at what
00:10Deadpool and Wolverine looks like without special effects.
00:14In the scene that sees Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin, summon an army of Deadpool
00:18variants to fight Deadpool and Wolverine, you might have assumed, given the sheer number
00:22of Deadpools on screen, that at least some of them were created via CGI.
00:27But as it turns out, the crowd was almost entirely real.
00:30As revealed in a behind-the-scenes VFX demo reel released by Framestore, there really
00:37were dozens of performers in Deadpool suits walking together in that scene, including
00:41such striking variants as Welsh Deadpool and Golden Age Deadpool.
00:46Only one variant was a CGI creation as opposed to a live actor, naturally, Baby Deadpool.
00:52Otherwise, the only CGI additions to the scene were the city background, save for a handful
00:56of practical scenery elements like a parked bus and the portal through which the variants
01:01emerge.
01:02Matthew McFadyen is no stranger to portraying discomfort and despair.
01:06It's part of what earned him so much acclaim in roles like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice
01:10and Tom Wamsgans in Succession.
01:12His ability to effortlessly project that kind of sustained anxiety made him a great fit
01:17to play Mr. Paradox in Deadpool and Wolverine.
01:20But in addition to playing to his strengths, the movie also made unique demands of him
01:24as an actor.
01:25Specifically, in the scene where Cassandra Nova faces her hand through Paradox's head,
01:29the Framestore reel reveals that the shot was accomplished by filming McFadyen normally,
01:33then layering the effect on top of him via CGI.
01:36You know she doesn't wash that hand.
01:39McFadyen had to act as though his face were being invaded by a hand, which must've been
01:43a pretty challenging task, even for a two-time Emmy-winning actor.
01:47Mary Bubbins, aka Dogpaw, was famously played by Peggy, the puggy's dog, who was crowned
01:52Britain's Ugliest Dog in 2023, then turned her infamy around by becoming a global superstar.
01:57Some of the more physically demanding shots of Dogpaw were accomplished by filming Peggy
02:02as a reference and then animating a CGI model in accordance with her movement, while others
02:07featured Peggy in the flesh.
02:08Sweet little puppy.
02:10Even for some of the shots featuring the real Peggy, however, the effects artist augmented
02:14her performance by giving her goggles.
02:16Within the goggles' lenses, Dogpaw's eyes were widened and animated with CGI, allowing
02:20the filmmakers to avail themselves of Peggy's tour-de-force physicality while having more
02:25control over the directions in which Dogpaw was looking at any given moment.
02:30It's not unheard of for films to give actors some extra pounds of muscle via CGI, and given
02:35that Hugh Jackman's body in Deadpool and Wolverine is so lean and muscular as to look sculpted
02:39in stone, you might've wondered if it really looked like that in real life.
02:43As a matter of fact, it did.
02:45The Framestore reel shows that, in the sequence where Wade and Logan absorb the power of the
02:49Chambers of Matter and Antimatter, the only CGI additions were the flow of red-hot energy
02:54coursing through Logan's body and the rifts being opened on his skin.
02:58The muscles themselves, including the dilated veins on Jackman's arms, were, well, practical.
03:03Granted, even without any CGI involved, one could argue Hollywood's muscle-building regimens
03:08like the one Jackman underwent to get ripped for Deadpool and Wolverine are their own kind
03:12of special effect.
03:14The Time Ripper
03:15A cubic device with timeline-destroying capabilities owned by the Time Variance Authority and eventually
03:20hijacked by Cassandra Nova, it's one of the most impressive pieces of production design
03:25in Deadpool and Wolverine.
03:27Its edgeless cubic shape, the dense batch of wires and reset charges of which it's made
03:31up, and the surreal mass of energy it produces in the subway station all combine to form
03:36the kind of mind-boggling visual that blockbusters are made to deliver.
03:41Even more impressively, it was a practical set.
03:43Every bit of light and wiring and nut and bolt and screw is, like, yeah, it's incredible."
03:49While the mass of energy behind it was naturally CGI, the Time Ripper itself was an actual
03:53glowing white cube full of glass and metal parts, which Emma Corrin physically interacted
03:58with in Nova's climactic scene.
04:00Let that serve as yet another testament to the power of practical effects.
04:04If there's one technical aspect that the Deadpool franchise has become known for, it's the incredibly
04:09elaborate and energetic stunt work.
04:11The craftsmanship of the stunt team is once again on display in Deadpool and Wolverine,
04:16which offers up some of the most brutal and balletic sequences in the series so far.
04:20But what you may not realize is that some measure of CGI work was involved in pulling
04:24off some of the stunts, namely by hiding the rigs.
04:27"...the M.O. from the beginning of this movie was, we want it in camera.
04:31We don't want to play with this in post.
04:33We want to bake this into the lens."
04:35As the framestore reel shows, in Deadpool's opening fight against various Time Variance
04:39Authority agents attempting to arrest him, one stunt performer's movement of being intensely
04:44vaulted backwards and falling on his back was accomplished via rigging.
04:48He was literally pulled upward and backward, and the VFX team proceeded to hide the cables.
04:53Talk about interdepartmental teamwork.
04:55Another interesting tidbit about the opening forest fight is that not all of it was shot
04:59on location.
05:00Although, in a rare and amusing case of another country standing in for Vancouver, Canada
05:05instead of the other way around, the production did hop over to Black Park in Buckinghamshire,
05:09UK, to shoot some of the forest sequence.
05:11The framestore reel reveals that at least one shot was filmed in a soundstage, namely
05:16it's the shot in which the camera spins around Deadpool as he takes on numerous TVA agents
05:20at once.
05:21In the reel, we can see that the shot used what appears to be video wall technology,
05:25similar to the stagecraft tech used in previous Marvel productions like the Marvels and Ant-Man
05:30and the Wasp, Quantumania.
05:31We do know that it's not specifically stagecraft, though, because no stagecraft crew is credited
05:36by Industrial Light & Magic in the film.
05:39Much like Framestore, Industrial Light & Magic also released a behind-the-scenes VFX reel
05:43for their work on Deadpool and Wolverine, and it contains a lot of fascinating stuff.
05:47One thing the reel shows is that the void scenes were shot using a combination of digital
05:51environments and real locations.
05:53The dry, rocky terrain of the void is real.
05:56It's the soil of Pitstone Quarry, a chalk quarry in Buckinghamshire, which was used
06:01as a location for the scene.
06:02But the scene in the shot where Wolverine and Deadpool walk slowly while sizing each
06:06other up, a lot of elements of the void were inserted digitally, with the most notable
06:10being the replacement of the green, tree-filled horizon of Pitstone Quarry, with even more
06:15miles and miles of barren land.
06:17While Ryan Reynolds' physical and vocal performance as Deadpool are perfect for the character,
06:21the fact remains that the mask hides a lot of his facial acting.
06:25We know from previous VFX reels showcasing what Deadpool films look like without CGI
06:29that Deadpool's mask is animated in post-production to give him more expressive features.
06:34But for Deadpool and Wolverine, one specific shot saw localized use of CGI combined with
06:39another, equally specific use.
06:41During the epic katanas-versus-claws fight between Deadpool and Wolverine in the void,
06:45the shot in which Wade reaches out to grab his sword then swings around to strike at
06:49Logan again used CGI for two purposes.
06:52The first one was animating Wade's mask, and the second was creating his right-hand katana,
06:56which was not actually a practical prop in that shot.
06:59But never mind faces and swords, there are shots in Deadpool and Wolverine in which the
07:03entirety of the titular characters is the work of CGI wizards.
07:07Digital models of both Wolverine and Deadpool were created to make some sequences easier,
07:12and they're so good that you might not even have noticed you weren't looking at live actors.
07:16Take the scene in which Wolverine gets on all fours and charges towards Deadpool like,
07:20well, a Wolverine.
07:21It wasn't actually Jackman hunching down and doing that superhumanly fast quadrupedal running.
07:26The Wolverine in that scene is 100% CGI, even in the reverse shots that show his face.
07:31The animators did a great job of making the model look indistinguishable from a real human
07:35being in those few seconds.
07:37The various performers involved in the scene at Nova's lair, including principal actors,
07:42background actors, and stuntmen, will have to get together to pull off a convincing group
07:45performance in the shot that finds Alioth, the terrifying guardian of the void, attacking
07:50them.
07:51As shown in the ILM reel, the scene was shot on a soundstage, and the shot of Alioth descending
07:55upon Nova's face was done by keying in the background of the set.
07:59This method left everyone on screen reacting to an imaginary Alioth, whether by panicking,
08:04hesitating in confusion, or preparing to somehow take it on.
08:08Emma Corrin, meanwhile, had to walk away from the scene, indifferent, which may well have
08:12been the toughest acting challenge in that particular shot.
08:15The giant Ant-Man corpse, which serves as a meeting spot for Nova and her henchmen,
08:19wasn't practical, though it certainly would've been interesting to see Marvel's take on the
08:23gigantic Metropolis-esque set for that scene.
08:26The structure around the Ant-Man corpse, however, was real, as we can see in the ILM
08:29reel.
08:30It was all there and all functional.
08:31It was mind-blowing."
08:32In the shot where the Ant-Man helmet opens for Cassandra Nova to emerge from it, the
08:36metal rails and scaffolds propping up the lair's structure, the jawline of the helmet,
08:40and the central staircase are all practical.
08:43The only elements of the set that are 100 percent digital are the shoulders and the
08:46top of the helmet, though the CGI artists did construct and work with a model of the
08:50entire set, including the practical components.
08:54The most interesting thing about CGI showcase reels is that they show just how many layers
08:58of visual effects go into a given shot.
09:01In the overhead shot at the start of the Resistance's fight against Nova's henchmen, for instance,
09:05there are at least three layers.
09:06First, the practical pyrotechnics, sparks and gunfire and smoke going off around the
09:11set.
09:12Second, the computer-generated environmental details, including laser blasts, force fields,
09:17additional smoke, and the glow of Gambit's Bo staff.
09:20And third, the fully CGI-animated henchmen taking part in the scene.
09:24The fight scene between the Resistance and Nova's goons culminates in Deadpool and Wolverine
09:28getting the heck out of there via interdimensional portal, a staple of the MCU since Doctor Strange,
09:34and all the more so since acting as the catalyst for the franchise's biggest scene ever in
09:38Avengers Endgame.
09:39We've seen our share of MCU characters jumping in and out of portals by now, which raises
09:44the question, how often are the actors themselves actually jumping?
09:47In Deadpool and Wolverine, as the ILM Reel reveals, Deadpool and Wolverine really did
09:51jump, though, into a portal, from a practical inside-of-a-skull set into a chroma-key pit.
09:56Since they're backsides of the camera, we can't know for sure whether it was Reynolds
09:59and Jackman or two stuntmen in the shot, but the fact remains that two people did jump.