Why Some WHAT IF...? Characters Look Like the Actors and Others Don't
Fans have been enjoying the first few episodes of the animated Marvel series What If…? on Disney+. We are halfway through the nine episode first season, and while the animation and storylines are solid, some fans are left scratching their heads about why some of the characters are exact replicas of their voiced counterparts, and some are not.
In a recent interview with ComicBook, What If...? production designer Paul Lasaine explained that “the show tried keeping the animated characters looking like their live-action counterparts until Disney's legal team would step in.” He said:
"I can lie and tell you that stuff is on purpose, or I can tell you the truth and tell you that usually those things are legal issues. There are characters who we are allowed to take their likenesses, because it's not just a character's likeness. It's an actor, it's a human being's likeness, and there are legalities. I don't even know how far up chain that goes, but there are definitely some characters we were told, 'Nah, you can't have their likeness. You got to back off a little bit.' Some, we were told, 'You need to make them look more like it.'"
Lasaine then went on to applaud What If...? character designer Ryan Meindering's work on the series, saying:
"I mean, we could make them look exactly like these characters if we wanted to. I mean, Ryan Meinerding is our character designer. He designed most of the MCU characters to begin with anyway. So there's not one person on the planet that would be able to hit these likenesses better than that guy. And if anything doesn't look like them, it's because he was told not to. And that is usually the reason, is because we're just not allowed to."
That explains almost all the characters. I still don’t think the character Christine Palmer looked like actress Rachel McAdams in this past episode, despite McAdams returning to the role. But I’m no animator, and they did an incredible job capturing Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. Keep tuning in to see who else looks like the characters we know and love. The first four episodes of Marvel's What If...? are now streaming on Disney+, and episode five will drop this Wednesday, September 8th.