That Opening Scene with Kurt Russell in GUARDIANS VOL. 2 Was Done Without CGI!?
The opening scene for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 featured something that was so cool and so well done. If you've already seen the movie, then you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, then there are light spoilers ahead:
The movie opened up with a young Kurt Russell as Ego driving around Missouri with Peter Quill's mom in the 1980s. As you know, making old actors look young with the help of CGI has become a popular thing to do in movies. We've seen it done with Michael Douglas in Ant-Man, Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War, Carrie Fisher in Rogue One, Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and more.
When I initially saw the young version of Kurt Russell, I thought it was the best de-aging with CGI that I had seen yet. The only thing is, it mostly wasn't CGI! Seriously! That was freakin' makeup! They used old-fashion makeup techniques to pull off the actor's young look! Russell revealed this little bit of trivia during an interview with CinemaBlend saying:
"I have a terrific makeup guy, we've done 28 movies together. He did a lot of work makeup wise with some of his own tricks and it's about 90% that, they didn't do much [digitally]. It's amazing what he could do and what we could do with a wig...And then, you know you lighten your voice and you pick up your physicality and you play it, you play young."
90% of that was makeup! That's amazing even with the digital touchups! I would never have thought that you could make Russell look that young with makeup, but his makeup artist did a hell of a great job! He looked almost exactly like he did when he made Big Trouble in Little China.
The name of the makeup artist is Dennis Liddiard, and they've been working together since Tango & Cash. This little bit of news kinda blew my mind because I would have never thought that was makeup had Russell not pointed it out.