The success of Deadpool & Wolverine is largely due to its use of fan-favorite legacy characters and plenty of fan service. One big surprise for fans was the return of Chris Evans’ Human Torch from 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
While those movies weren’t very successful, especially compared to today’s superhero hits, one thing people liked was how Evans’ flames looked.
In a YouTube video, a group of VFX experts called Corridor Crew reviewed CGI in movies. Around 14:41 in the video, they praised the fire effects for the Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine.
Niko pointed out that the fire effects closely resembled those from the original Fantastic Four movies. To illustrate this, they showed a clip of Johnny Storm from those films.
Niko: Now the question I want to ask you guys, did they do the original ‘Fantastic Four’ fire effect?
Oh, interesting, it does look based on my dusty recollection – very similar
It does look very similar.
Like it may be slightly updated but, yeah. The heart is still there. So like the old ‘Fantastic Four’ fire effect because of the way you had to like render the fire you had to kind of like artificially tell it to be like “make this part bright, make this part dark.” Feels like the same effect.
It does feel like they’re trying to be very true to the original style.
It almost looks like it’s plate photography of fire composited on.
And I will say too for this entire movie what often gets dramatically overlooked in every major blockbuster is the environment work.
Like it’s crazy how much, you don’t even register it even when you’re visual effect artist, you don’t even think about it when you’re watching the movie, which is obviously the goal. But, it’s like they built the whole world in the sheer amount of like full CG takeovers.
Wow, that’s 100 % CG it’s just we’re in the “you can do it” era now.
This was interesting, they have real footage but then they have a full CG replica, and they combined them for some reason.
I guess it’s because they relit the whole thing. They’re taking the raw plate, they’re pulling an Albedo channel aka the color, they’re pulling the luminance AKA you know shading, and high pass which is probably for the detail noise. And then making a rough CG version of it possibly from a photo scan, lighting that and then it’s taking that lighting pass and putting on top of the real footage to change the lighting.
But they have real footage broken out to the different channels so they can manipulate it.
According to the experts, the CGI for the Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine was a masterpiece. Even though the scene was brief, a lot of effort went into making it shine. The decision to replicate the style of the 2000s movies was a smart move, as Deadpool & Wolverine stays true to the original source material, showing more respect for Johnny Storm than fans might have expected.
