[Editor’s note: The following post contains spoilers for “Deadpool & Wolverine.”]
One of the highlights of “Deadpool & Wolverine” was the climactic Ant-Man Arena battle. That’s where Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) team up with Elektra (Jennifer Garner), X-23 (Dafne Keen), Blade (Wesley Snipes), and Gambit (Channing Tatum) to fight Cassandra Nova’s (Emma Corwin) henchmen. But the memorably wintry look was not planned.
That’s because they were supposed to shoot the battle last summer at Pinewood Studios but got delayed by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. When production resumed in December, the U.K.’s bleak skies weren’t what they had planned for. Plus, they now had snow to contend with.
ILM was in charge of VFX for the battle (under the supervision of Vincent Papaix), so they brainstormed with Marvel production VFX supervisor Swen Gillberg to figure out how they could change the look. “I was on set one day where the stuntmen in costume were doing some rehearsal and we shot a wide angle shot and a very tight shot with one set of lighting and one with natural light,” Papaix told IndieWire. “Also, it was very cold [33 degrees] on the set, so when people talked, they had smoky breath, which was not part of the script. So they were asking if we could remove the breath. And I’m like, we can, but it’s very time-consuming, and it’s going to be a lot.”
Gillberg and Papaix proposed a test where they shot in natural gray and ambient light. “I took those images and, on my laptop, I did some very quick composites to show director Shawn Levy and [actor/producer] Ryan Reynolds what it can look like,” added Papaix. “I said, ‘This is what you see right now. But if we turn off our slide and we start to put some snow, we can have a very different aspect, something more grungy that is more “Deadpool.”‘ And so we showed them a wide-angle shot and a closeup that I did overnight. And it was very well received. They said, ‘That looks cool, let’s do it.’”
A week later, the on-set team sprayed the set with fake snow. “The fact that we’re filming in December and embracing the coldness of it and it remained in the movie, I think, really helped the look of that final battle, and they even used some Christmas music in slow motion,” Papaix said.
The snow was a combination of practical, fake, and added CG that wasn’t part of the plate photography. In addition, there was machine learning assistance for depth-layer mapping, which composited snow and other atmospherics. “Depth-layer mapping is also a useful artist-driven technique that allows a volumetric representation of a 2D image to improve the integration of CG effects like dust and snow,” explained Papaix. “These in-house tools allow our artists to focus solely on their artwork and individual creativity and spend less time on the mundane and repetitive aspects of the pipeline, which can take time away from that.”
In terms of the battle, which was shot on the main floor of the arena set, ILM did CG set extension for the upper level, as well as the giant Anti-Man helmet, arm, hands, and gates as they open. They also did the digi-doubles for all of the principal and crowd mutants (which number about 40), consisting of model, texture, shading, and cloth sim for their costumes. The stunt and CG fighting were sandwiched in layers (Marvel handled the mocap).
“So it was extensive roto and very complex compositing to integrate that battle all in layers,” said Papaix. “It’s pretty fast in the cut but we had six very complex shots, which took a very long time to plan, to execute, and finish until the very end.”
One of these occurs when the camera moves around all of the mutants using their superpowers; another uses simulation and pyrotechnics to convey the particular superpowers of Gambit (explosive, bio-kinetic energy displayed with playing cards). He makes his Marvel debut with Tatum, who was to have starred in an unproduced feature.
“He creates some very nice energy,” Papaix added. “And you can put cards on people. So there’s a shot where you juggle with his cards, and then he throws cards at people, and they stick to different characters. And you detonate those cards and they explode the body in a very cool way. And there was lots of blood. We do the bones, the flesh, the muscle, including the organs. We are to showcase those in a very gory way, which was very well received by Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds.
In one shot, Gambit jumps into a hero pose and presses a button that extends and becomes very hot metal. He stabs the Russian (Billy Clements), whose entire upper body explodes in another gory way.
“So we studied all those previous ‘X-Men’ movies to make sure we pay tribute to those effects,” said Papaix. “And we have better tools now. So we’re able to do more accurate simulation on the physics. And the way also how things glow, we were able to relight characters and have them glow more in 3D. We want to make sure it looks great on screen.”
