Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has been receiving unanimous praise from critics and the audience and the box office performance has also been impressive as it already surpassed the total gross of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania with a possibility of matching the numbers of first two films.
Besides its effective emotional storytelling and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy, the film is also receiving praise for its visuals whether it's the CGI, production design, or the makeup of the characters.
However, it looks like the recent MCU film might have broken another impressive record to its slate as Variety claimed that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 now holds the record for having the most prosthetics used in a film.
The James Gunn threequel had over 22,500 prosthetics, 500 wigs, and 130 facial hairpieces according to makeup head Alexei Dmitriew and hair department head Cassie Russek. The 2000 Christmas comedy film How the Grinch Stole Christmas previously held the record.
When you see the film, you can obviously get a sense that a lot of makeup and prosthetics were done with the hundreds of actors whether it's the principal characters such as Nebula, the High Evolutionary, Adam Warlock, and more or the hybrid humanimals in Counter-Earth.
Dmitriew explained that the film took a village of 75 to 90 makeup artists on set to complete the looks.
"We had two people per prosthetic so we could just keep the times down. On this, we used 22,542 prosthetics, 117 pairs of contact lenses, and 500 wigs," he said.
The makeup head also explained the process of crafting the look of Chukwudi Iwuji's High Evolutionary, another character that required a lot of makeup that took "70-75 minutes."
"James Gunn really wanted to make sure we kept the integrity of Chuck himself and his acting. James wanted to make sure that we got to see all the nuances of his performance," Dmitriew explained.
As for the humanimals, Dmitriew said, "Day in day out, we had about 30 people in makeup, all with masks on with unique makeup."
He also discussed that each actor would wear a prosthetic with "intricate 3D-sculpted skull caps" and there was no room for error "because it was so unique and intricate, it has to be perfect and we wanted everyone to know just what they were getting into."
This is certainly impressive news and an awesome fun fact about the film since it also highlights the hard work that the team did in order to bring the characters to life on screen and make us believe that they are real as were watching it.
Who knows, now that the word is out there regarding its record, perhaps it will also receive recognition in the makeup categories during the awards season.
Also Read: James Gunn Claims Phyla's MCU Debut in GOTGV3 Was His Idea
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is still showing in theaters everywhere. You can check more details about it here.
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