She-Hulk on Disney+

[Keltest]

Isn't She-Hulk almost permanently "Hulked"?

Probably, but the trailer at least has several scenes of her being normal sized.

[Rynjin]

Then I'd say it's probably easier to CG her rare untransformed moments (like they did in Captain America) or just film around it.

I dunno. I'm not a VFX engineer or anything. Just seems like practical effects (maybe with CGI "help" on certain aspects) might have been more budget/time friendly here than fully inserting a "fake" character.

[Ramza00]

That was in 2018, and it went away.

The Russians tried to nuke with a Gamma Bomb, Jen ate it it, overloaded, and burnt off all of her excess Gamma by channeling it into the body od dead celestial that the Avengers have been living in, which either removed the power up that made her super bulky or stabilized it so it no longer had a visual effect. Not sure yet.

Unrelated but what is happening with that 2018 Celestial I am talking about 2022’s comics with Eternals 12 and the upcoming AXE event of X-Men, Avengers, and Eternals?

[Giggling Ghast]

Her and the Wrecking Crew nearly beat She Hulk to death.

The Wrecking Crew (plus Goliath and Mister Hyde) also nearly beat a drugged Hercules to death and put him in a coma. They do that a lot.

Isn't She-Hulk almost permanently "Hulked"?

This kind of changes back and forth over the course of her life as a superhero, as you can imagine.

First the transformations were brought on by anger, then she transformed permanently, then it became random again and triggered by rage, then she gains control over the transformations again, then she loses her powers, then she gains them again, et cetera et cetera.

[Sapphire Guard]

Is there some basis to believe that practical effects would be cheaper or easier or more convincing? Seems like that would vary widely depending on what they needed.

[Millstone85]

When I first saw this in the theater, I misheard “gamma lab” as “gamelan,” and for a while I was assuming that Banner went on some sort of spiritual odyssey mediated by Eastern musical traditions. I actually like that more than the gamma lab version.

What I would have liked is for this scene to be kept in Infinity War.

Banner is inside a power armor (ironically, the Hulkbuster) because Hulk has become scared of Thanos and his goons. But Banner and Hulk finally make peace and decide to face their enemies together. Banner hulks out of the armor and, surprise, he is now Professor Hulk.

So much better than pre-sequel offscreen gamma training or whatever. But it was apparently too hopeful a note amidst all the tragedy. They feared it would be like "Yeah, Vision is a corpse and half the universe turned to dust, but at least Hulk is smart now".

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Is there some basis to believe that practical effects would be cheaper or easier or more convincing? Seems like that would vary widely depending on what they needed.

More convincing I think.

I wonder if it’s a COVID thing? It was probably easier to keep a cgi specialist six feet away to put green on her than a makeup artist.

What I would have liked is for this scene to be kept in Infinity War.

Banner is inside a power armor (ironically, the Hulkbuster) because Hulk has become scared of Thanos and his goons. But Banner and Hulk finally make peace and decide to face their enemies together. Banner hulks out of the armor and, surprise, he is now Professor Hulk.

So much better than pre-sequel offscreen gamma training or whatever. But it was apparently too hopeful a note amidst all the tragedy. They feared it would be like "Yeah, Vision is a corpse and half the universe turned to dust, but at least Hulk is smart now".

Drat, that would have been much nicer.

[LeSwordfish]

Disney/Marvel uses extensive CGI because it's cheaper, because practical effects technicians have a pretty strong union and are paid reasonably well, while you can hire (non-union) CGI artists for pennies and treat them as horribly as you'd like.

[Ramza00]

Disney/Marvel uses extensive CGI because it's cheaper, because practical effects technicians have a pretty strong union and are paid reasonably well, while you can hire (non-union) CGI artists for pennies and treat them as horribly as you'd like.

It is also the illusion of control and we can debate how much illusion and how much is real. CGI can use multiple firms, it is not a bottleneck in production.

While the whole MCU thing is now a factory floor where you are filming 4 movies a year and several tv shows. When prior to Age of Ultron but after Iron Man 2 they were doing 2 movies a year. Think about that for a second, everything is production where when one movie finishes you move to the next movie, and the actual parts are moving to the new movie prior to you finishing the post production of the first movie you worked on that year.

Thus it is not about making a good product, for any slow downs to improve quality does not just impact that movie, but several movies in the chain for several years. It is the McDonalds of Movie Making not just the Theme Park predictable Roller Coaster of movies where each roller coaster is almost the same but may have slightly modified themes.

———

CGI is just there to fill the gaps, and the goal is to make as many gaps as possible for everything is cookie cutter.

———

Of course it is way more complicated than this, I agree with you LeSwordfish about the unions and how it is management / Wall Street pejorative to the point it is irrational just emotional / repetitive, and a whole lot more opinions yet I am censuring myself here due to forum rules.

[Sapphire Guard]

Okay, but my question was what specific practical effects would be convincing? Where has this been done well before? She Hulk will have to fight, so a bulky costume or stilts would get in the way, camera tricks would only get you so far.

[BRC]

Okay, but my question was what specific practical effects would be convincing? Where has this been done well before? She Hulk will have to fight, so a bulky costume or stilts would get in the way, camera tricks would only get you so far.

The general CGI Criticism is valid, but I'm with SG. She-Hulk as a character can't really be done without CGI? I guess you could paint the actress green and do the whole thing like the Hobbiton scenes in LOTR, with perspective tricks and smaller sets, but that's pretty limiting.

[Rater202]

Unrelated but what is happening with that 2018 Celestial I am talking about 2022’s comics with Eternals 12 and the upcoming AXE event of X-Men, Avengers, and Eternals?

The Eternals learned from the ghost of the Celestial that the Avengers are living in that the true purpose ofhte Deviants was to... Stabalize th genetic material of Earth.

The Celestial died on earth and vomited up it's blood into the molten surface of the planet, which means that all life on Earth is infused with traces of both the celestial's power and that of the disease that killed it.

Thus, life on earth is far more prone to genetic mutation and the development of superpowers.

The deviants were engineered to rapidly evolve and mutate, sucking up most of the "necrofluid" to keep the other races stable... But sometimes Deviants end up in stable forms and then interbredd with other earth lif forms resulting in stabalized deviant DNA ending up in the gene pool.

in short, Deviants exist so that Mutants, Spider-Men, Hulks, and so on developed relatively stable mutations instead of turning ito some kind of cronenbergian cosmic cancer that serves as a worse version of the disease that killed tha first celestial.

The purpose of the Eternals is to protect the Earth from outside threats, kill any deviants who threaten the rest of the baseline population, and euthanize any deviant who mutants into a feral or monstrous form.

The last step is called "correcting excess deviation" and the Eternals a times have expanded that prerogative.

Druig, the Eternal who is programed to be a complete backstabbing *******, has decided that since mutants, like all superhumans, have deviant ancestry, that makes them deviants, and that since the mutants recently colonized Mars that means that they are ane example of excess deviation that needs to be corrected.

Which wound't normally be a problem but he's recently become the Prime Eternal and 75% of Eternals will do whatever the Prime Eternals says.

So most of the Eternals are going to be attacking Krakoa, the living island that the mutant has claimed for their own nation, and the Avengers are apparently going to be trying to deescalate the situation before one race genocides the other.

This was established in this weeks issue of Eternals.

[t209]

The Eternals learned from the ghost of the Celestial that the Avengers are living in that the true purpose ofhte Deviants was to... Stabalize th genetic material of Earth.
(Plots and origins)
This was established in this weeks issue of Eternals.

I swear that this is straight out of 40k lore, especially War in the Heaven (Basically great space war that screwed up the galaxy aeons later).
Too bad that Eternals MCU failed to be “grand galactic opera”.

[Ramza00]

I swear that this is straight out of 40k lore, especially War in the Heaven (Basically great space war that screwed up the galaxy aeons later).
Too bad that Eternals MCU failed to be “grand galactic opera”.

Yeah it feels like it. I knew the Eternals bit from the last 12 issues, but I do not read Jason Aaron's Avengers stuff (I do read some of his other books like Thor) so I was behind with the Avengers base in a dead celestial which was borrowed from that Nowhere head which Guardians of the Galaxy did in space (same but different.)

But yeah lots of themes in the 12 issues of Eternals that were released, themes I can't really talk about due to forum rules for Eternals is exploring themes of religion (since the Celestials are Gods who made the Eternals.) And that was the final issue of Eternals number 12, and they are about to do a crossover that has all 3 teams (Avengers, Externals, and X-Men) fighting each other in AXE, which will continue the story from Eternals 1 to 12 with the same author being the main writer for the crossover.

And after the crossover we may get Eternals back, or maybe not, Marvel is doing better recently trying to create self contained books as seasons and then selling those collected books as Trade Paperbacks to attract new readers. It is still horrible, but better than it used to be.

[Tyndmyr]

Okay, but my question was what specific practical effects would be convincing? Where has this been done well before? She Hulk will have to fight, so a bulky costume or stilts would get in the way, camera tricks would only get you so far.

Even fairly old timey films have used perspective, etc for size a great deal. It isn't perfect, but that, plus good physical fitness and good costuming to accentuate that, can certainly let you fake a good degree of stature. You would probably always need some CGI. Still, scenes like the hobbiton ones hold up really well, whereas rough CGI generally does not.

I won't go to the extreme and say that practical is *always* better than CGI, but both have a place. Going all one way or the other is risky. On the one side, you have goofy rubber suits, and on the other, you have unrealistic floaty CGI. This show just appears to have the balance a little too far to the CGI side.

But it is still early, and perhaps there is polishing left to be done on the show. Or maybe we can bully them into fixing it, Sonic style.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Even fairly old timey films have used perspective, etc for size a great deal. It isn't perfect, but that, plus good physical fitness and good costuming to accentuate that, can certainly let you fake a good degree of stature. You would probably always need some CGI. Still, scenes like the hobbiton ones hold up really well, whereas rough CGI generally does not.

I won't go to the extreme and say that practical is *always* better than CGI, but both have a place. Going all one way or the other is risky. On the one side, you have goofy rubber suits, and on the other, you have unrealistic floaty CGI. This show just appears to have the balance a little too far to the CGI side.

But it is still early, and perhaps there is polishing left to be done on the show. Or maybe we can bully them into fixing it, Sonic style.

+1 all of this.

She Hulk will have to fight

Will she, though? If 90% of the thing is a courtroom comedy, will she?

[Lord Raziere]

I swear that this is straight out of 40k lore, especially War in the Heaven (Basically great space war that screwed up the galaxy aeons later).
Too bad that Eternals MCU failed to be “grand galactic opera”.

actually Eternals #1 and thus Celestial lore was published in 1976, a full 11 years before Wh40k was ever a thing, so Marvel lore predates 40k lore.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Rynjin
Just seems like practical effects (maybe with CGI "help" on certain aspects) might have been more budget/time friendly here than fully inserting a "fake" character.

Tatiana Maslany is 5’4” and on the skinny side. Green facepaint won’t change that.

If you want actual hulking, you need the CGI. Makeup and stilts would just look ridiculous, and wouldn’t give a fraction of the range of movement that mocap allows.

Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard
Okay, but my question was what specific practical effects would be convincing? Where has this been done well before? She Hulk will have to fight, so a bulky costume or stilts would get in the way, camera tricks would only get you so far.

Very much this.

It’s also worth noting that Tatiana Maslany is no stranger to fight scenes and she can do them quite well. A costume or stilts would only make that more difficult, whereas mocap allows her to take full advantage of her prior experience.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
It isn't perfect, but that, plus good physical fitness and good costuming to accentuate that, can certainly let you fake a good degree of stature…. Still, scenes like the hobbiton ones hold up really well….

The perspective shots in LOTR worked well mainly because the secondary actors playing the hobbits were almost always seen in long shots, usually out of focus, and they weren’t doing anything more than running or standing. And for the primary actors, there wasn’t any whole-body transformation involved.

It’s completely different with someone who’s hulked up, because their body is distorted and massive and their features are altered. Tatiana Maslany has to go from 5’4” to 7’ plus and bulk out massively. You simply can’t do that convincingly with makeup and rubber suits.

Remember also that audiences are trained to expect CGI, so anything practical will more than likely be highly visible and distracting, as if they'd brought back Lou Ferrigno to stand in for CGI Banner.

Originally Posted by Millstone85
What I would have liked is for this scene to be kept in Infinity War.

Banner is inside a power armor (ironically, the Hulkbuster) because Hulk has become scared of Thanos and his goons. But Banner and Hulk finally make peace and decide to face their enemies together. Banner hulks out of the armor and, surprise, he is now Professor Hulk.

So much better than pre-sequel offscreen gamma training or whatever. But it was apparently too hopeful a note amidst all the tragedy.

I usually like deleted scenes, but in this case I think removing it was the smart move. It’s an interesting option for character development, but it would’ve slowed the pacing and sent things on a distracting tangent.

Even though their final approach isn’t as action-y, I like the idea of Hulk and Banner reconciling from the shared trauma of their double defeat. That at least opens it up for a little more nuance, as opposed to the rather silly “live and let live” exchange in the deleted scene.

[Rynjin]

Tatiana Maslany is 5’4” and on the skinny side. Green facepaint won’t change that.

If you want actual hulking, you need the CGI. Makeup and stilts would just look ridiculous, and wouldn’t give a fraction of the range of movement that mocap allows.

I think there might be a bit of a miscommunication, misunderstanding on what "CGI help" means?

There's a pretty broad spectrum between full practical and full CG. What they're using falls into the latter. The issue with a fully CGI character, poorly done, is that they don't seem to actually be in the scene. They're just kind of sloppily edited into it, like greenscreen.

You can choose to use CG to enhance what's already there instead of replacing, though. Or de-enhance, as I already mentioned with the Captain America scenes they did where he's a skinny nebling.

Use the CG to make her green and give here a bit of bulk, but film around the fact that she's short. Give her the Tom Cruise treatment, basically. Seems like it would have come off as more believable here, especially as I'm assuming (and hoping) this is not going to be an action-heavy series.

[Mechalich]

I think there might be a bit of a miscommunication, misunderstanding on what "CGI help" means?

There's a pretty broad spectrum between full practical and full CG. What they're using falls into the latter. The issue with a fully CGI character, poorly done, is that they don't seem to actually be in the scene. They're just kind of sloppily edited into it, like greenscreen.

There's also the issue that if you do mocap with the 5'4" Tatiana Maslany and then stretch the results out to be She-Hulk there's going to be weird clashes, which seems to be what's happening from the trailer.

There's a very real argument that they should have tried to cast a taller actress for this series. There's no one in Hollywood who's actually She-Hulk's hulked-out height (the 6'3" Gwendoline Christie is Hollywood's tallest actress, and even she's not tall enough), but there are definitely actresses who are closer.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mechalich
There's a very real argument that they should have tried to cast a taller actress for this series.

From what I’ve read, the original character of Jennifer Walters was 5’1”, so they seem to be holding true to the comics in that regard.

[GloatingSwine]

Yeah, Jennifer Walters is supposed to be basically a completely unremarkable woman, she's a YA romance protagonist that even the sparkly vampires didn't notice.

Meanwhile She-Hulk is 6'7" with the physique of a pro wrestler. Visibly large, strong, and unavoidably standing out in a crowd.

So the options are cast for Jennifer and use effects to turn into She-Hulk, or cast for She-Hulk and still have to do that anyway but get a less appropriate Jennifer Walters.

[Lord Vukodlak]

The problem isn’t that the cgi is flawed it’s that it’s flawless. Her skin is perfectly smooth the ultimate air brush, no imperfections, no pours. So it looks unnatural and cartoony when next to everyone else.
Her skin needs all those little blemishes to look real.

[Azuresun]

I'd have liked to have seen the faces of the contractors when Banner asked for "one spinning-blade death-prison chamber, sized for one adult woman".

[Sapphire Guard]

At that point you're just casting for height, and is that really more important than the performance? Tatiana has a lot of experience playing similar people with different personalities. You could just cast some giant, but then you don't have her performance.

(Aside: Is Gwendolyn really the tallest actress in Hollywood? Is that written down somewhere? I imagine this production is in new york anyway. Or did you just mean 'among American actresses')

I feel like it's optimistic to expect a full Hobbiton level production from a Disney+ miniseries.

Something like the BFG did a great job, but the effect doesn't hold up nowadays.

Skinny Steve Rogers took upwards of 3-400 people to get the effect done, and that's when they already have Chris Evans as a big, strong person and a full movie production budget and a small double.

It's easy to say 'this other effect would be perfect' when we never have to make it and find out.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Azuresun
I'd have liked to have seen the faces of the contractors when Banner asked for "one spinning-blade death-prison chamber, sized for one adult woman".

They’d shrug and ask about overtime. Contractors don’t care.

Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard
It's easy to say 'this other effect would be perfect' when we never have to make it and find out.

This.

[Tyndmyr]

It’s completely different with someone who’s hulked up, because their body is distorted and massive and their features are altered. Tatiana Maslany has to go from 5’4” to 7’ plus and bulk out massively. You simply can’t do that convincingly with makeup and rubber suits.

Remember also that audiences are trained to expect CGI, so anything practical will more than likely be highly visible and distracting, as if they'd brought back Lou Ferrigno to stand in for CGI Banner.

Some limitations are imposed by casting choices, sure.

If you want someone to be imposing physically, casting someone with that stature does help. That said, Tom Cruise is a pretty short dude, and has been in quite a few action movies where it's been successfully hidden. If the range of film shenanigans doesn't quite allow scaling a 5'4" person up to she-hulk proportions, then maybe a larger actress is called for. She doesn't seem to have any lack of skill, but sometimes a person needs specific physical traits to truly fit a role, and this is a role that does call for unusual dimensions.

I think there might be a bit of a miscommunication, misunderstanding on what "CGI help" means?

There's a pretty broad spectrum between full practical and full CG. What they're using falls into the latter. The issue with a fully CGI character, poorly done, is that they don't seem to actually be in the scene. They're just kind of sloppily edited into it, like greenscreen.

You can choose to use CG to enhance what's already there instead of replacing, though. Or de-enhance, as I already mentioned with the Captain America scenes they did where he's a skinny nebling.

Use the CG to make her green and give here a bit of bulk, but film around the fact that she's short. Give her the Tom Cruise treatment, basically. Seems like it would have come off as more believable here, especially as I'm assuming (and hoping) this is not going to be an action-heavy series.

Exactly. Like...I can do this level of sketchy compositing, and I am not a professional film editor by any means. The hard part is making it all work together. Matching the lighting, making sure the actions fit in the space and that interactions look smooth is genuinely challenging. This is especially true for dynamic scenes like fights, where CG elements are interacting with practically filmed elements. Good doubles can help, but availability of those is not infinite.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
If you want someone to be imposing physically, casting someone with that stature does help.

….She doesn't seem to have any lack of skill, but sometimes a person needs specific physical traits to truly fit a role, and this is a role that does call for unusual dimensions.

And yet Mark Ruffalo is only 5’8”, not exactly bulked, and he did a convincing job playing an 8’2” character.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Good doubles can help, but availability of those is not infinite.

Fortunately the actress in question has an excellent double she’s worked with for years.

[Tyndmyr]

And yet Mark Ruffalo is only 5’8”, not exactly bulked, and he did a convincing job playing an 8’2” character.

Indeed. So they should be able to have a better she-hulk than they do.

[Manga Shoggoth]

They're just kind of sloppily edited into it, like greenscreen.

How very appropriate...