While we don’t know the exact number of prosthetic appliances needed for “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” makeup department head Alexei Dmitriew and award-winning hair department head Cassie Russek confirmed that the work done on ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3″ surpassed Christmas movie on-disc control.
According to Variety, which interviewed the duo, “Guardians 3” required some 75 makeup artists to apply 22,542 prosthetic devices spread across 100 lead actors and more than 1,000 background artists. On top of that, they wore nearly 500 wigs, more than 130 facial hairpieces, and 117 pairs of contact lenses. That’s leaps and bounds more than the team of 50 makeup artists who applied approximately 1,250 prosthetics between the main cast and extraterrestrial extras in the original “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Why so many makeup effects? In addition to the typical makeup jobs required for the main cast and the various aliens that populate the cosmic story, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” had a specific influx of prosthetic-heavy characters: the Humanimals. These animal-human hybrids live on Counter-Earth, the planet created by the High Evolutionary in an effort to create a perfect world. All of the characters on that planet required prosthetic makeup to resemble these hybrids, and all were complete with mostly practical effects, though some may have required a bit of visual effects in post-production. This is exactly how director James Gunn prefers to operate, as Dmitriew explained to MovieWeb:
“James has a real track record of using practical effects, even going back to his first movie, ‘Slither.’ He loves practical effects. It really helps him see things on camera, and it helps the actors get into the role and what they’re playing. We are very lucky that he believes in that as much as he does. It gives us a purpose so we can create amazing things. I worked on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ as well, and for us, it really helps make that world a whole thing, and a really rich environment.”