The Avengers: How Marvel Covered Up Cap's Beard BEFORE DC's Superman Moustache Fail
Sometimes the solution is as plain as the moustache on your face...
Hey guys, remember when Marvel and Joss Whedon needed to do a last minute reshoot but they found out their lead actor had facial hair for another role so they just CGIed his face poorly because the effects team weren't given enough time and then everyone laughed so much at the cinema that it became an instant meme? No? Well, you wouldn't, because that was Justice League, wasn't it?
In a weird twist of fate, that film was actually the SECOND time Whedon had had to hide a superhero's facial hair, after the shawarma scene reshoot for The Avengers. Chris Evans had come back with a beard for Snowpiercer and it presented with a problem since Cap wouldn't get beard hot until Avengers: Infinity War.
Speaking as part of the Marvel Directors' Roundtable special feature on the Avengers: Infinity War digital release, Joss Whedon revealed the gestation of the scene and how they dealt with Evans' beard:
"It was during... While we were doing press after the premiere at the hotel. There was a shawarma place, like, three blocks away. [Kevin Feige] got everybody in there. Evans had a beard. So they put, like... It looked like the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy, like, giant jaw on him, and he just sort of hid it like this [puts his right-hand over his jaw]."
Naturally, everyone was sympathetic to Evans having to wear the prosthetic... Or not. Robert Downey Jr apparently ribbed him mercilessly, calling him the Elephant Man, which sounds exactly like something he'd do.
Apparently, Whedon also had to deal with the fact that Chris Hemsworth had slimmed down considerably for Ron Howard's In The Heart of the Sea to the point that his costume didn't fit. Hemsworth had to hunch down inside the suit to hide the fact that he was no longer Asgard-swoll.
It was quite subtly done in the end...
See that? See how they obviously realised that even the prosthetic jaw wouldn't look right so they had Chris Evans cover his face? THAT'S what you should do when your first approach doesn't work out well enough. You don't just say f*ck it and release Superman to the world looking like he has some form of localised giganticism in his weirdly blurry top lip.
But hey, at least Mission: Impossible - Fallout rocked...