Loved Black Panther In ‘Captain America: Civil War’? He Was All CGI

Captain America: Civil War was a breakout hit for Marvel Studios this summer, bringing almost all of the Avengers together in a clash of ideals and fists. One of the cool things this movie did as well was introduce two new characters into the MCU: Spider-Man and Black Panther. Upon release of the film one of those characters had a much-talked-about CGI job, with everyone weighing in on what they thought of the web-slinger’s new computer-generated duds. There was no such conversation about Black Panther, but that changes now with the reveal that all of the character’s scenes implemented CGI as well.

For whatever reason, it wasn’t all that obvious to viewers (or not to me, at least) that Black Panther’s presence in the film relied on computer graphics to capture the end result of what we saw on screen, but if you picked up a copy of the Blu-ray this past week you might have noticed the directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s reveal on the topic.

While speaking on Black Panther’s aesthetic, Joe Russo gives a shout out to ILM for their work on the character:

“[They] really did a ton of work on that outfit. I mean, we had an outfit that we used on set. It’s impossible when you’re talking about an otherworldly outfit like the one that the Panther wears, which has a certain luminescence to it because it’s made of a woven metal. We could never afford to construct an outfit like that that an actor or a stunt player could move around in without sweating to death or that would capture the luminescence that we need. So what we ended up doing in post is ILM came in and painted over Chadwick and the stuntman. The outfit is completely CG.”

Turns out Black Panther was just as CGI-heavy as Spider-Man in the movie. With pictures of the costume and other details released over time, its a bit of a surprise  to learn that the final version on screen is all computer graphics. It wasn’t immediately noticeable as Black Panther’s costume looked pretty real, which of course is the goal. I think it’s safe to say they nailed it. With CGI this good, this should only bring reassurance to fans of the MCU that our favorite characters with more outlandish visual qualities are being brought to the big screen with real quality.  And just a reminder: we’ll get a full Black Panther solo film in February of 2018 in all of his CGI glory.

Source: ScreenCrush (via ComicBook)