Now that the Deadpool movie rights are back in Marvel Studios’ hands and Deadpool has joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe (sorta, kinda, in an elliptical way), one fan is hoping for a specific hero crossover. Wētā FX’s Daniel Macarin, who was part of the VFX tech team on 2016’s Deadpool and became the VFX supervisor on Deadpool 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, is hoping to get his hands on Spider-Man. Or more specifically, Spider-Man’s mask.
“A moment between Deadpool and Spider-Man — it would be a dream. I think we could have a tremendous amount of fun with it,” he told Polygon in an interview around the time of Deadpool & Wolverine’s release.
That interview mostly focused on Wētā FX’s effects work on Wolverine’s mask and facial expressions in Deadpool & Wolverine, and on how Ryan Reynolds asked the company to turn Wolverine’s skeleton into a rotting mummy for the opening-credits combat sequence. But asked what other character he most wanted to work on, Macarin immediately brought up his Spider-Man fandom.
Macarin thinks ILM’s work on Spider-Man’s masked facial expressions as of Captain America: Civil War were in part inspired by Wētā’s Deadpool work. “They did [the digital] work on Spider-Man,” he said. “I think a lot of that had to do with the influence of when we did it on Deadpool — it gave them a bit of an opening of We can animate this. This is a personal feeling — [I think they realized] that they could animate Spider-Man’s mask, and people would still believe it’s Spider-Man. It gives the character something.”
But Macarin would like to push those expressions further. “I think there is room to do more with it,” he said. “Some of the humor Tom Holland has, that he brings out in his character — I really love it, and I feel we could definitely push in that mask.”
ILM’s version of Spider-Man in Civil War was an entirely digital creation, but in the Deadpool movies, Wētā is only making tiny tweaks to real footage of the actors in costume, manipulating faces in ways that make their emotions more obvious in the masks. (For instance, in Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds was adamant that he wanted the audience to be able to see his character’s love for Dogpool written all over his masked face.)
A very subtle difference: Left, the original shot from the set. Right, Wētā’s expression tweak on Deadpool
Chances are good that if Disney ever does put Spider-Man and Deadpool in the same movie, Macarin will be involved: He’s worked on a number of past Marvel Studios movies as a digital effects supervisor, including The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Iron Man 3. And he has no intention of letting anyone else take over Deadpool for future movies.
“I was involved in the tech side [of 2016’s Deadpool], not in the art side,” he said. “The guy in the office right next to me [right now] ran Deadpool 1. [But] because I understood the technology and I’m a huge fan of the character, I took over on Deadpool 2, and I’ve kind of kept it locked ever since, because I refuse to let it go.”
Deadpool & Wolverine is now streaming on Disney Plus, and is available for purchase on Amazon and other digital platforms.
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