With Zack Snyder's Justice League clocking in at a whopping four hours, there is clearly a lot that has been added to the movie. One of the most intriguing things about the film is exactly how much went into touching up unfinished FX, and how much was brand new.
The massive production required multiple VFX teams to handle all of the scenes. Luckily, we managed to speak with both WETA Digital and Scanline VFX to learn some behind-the-scenes details about multiple points and changes in the film.
Representing the latter, we spoke with Julius Lechner, who had also worked on the 2017 version of the film. Alongside his composite supervisor, Curtis Carlson, he spoke to us in detail about the Russia sequence, which was widely expanded. We also learned about the updates to the Parademon gun design.
"Russia was in the original movie, so we didn't have to start from scratch. Warner gave us the environment from back then. So we had a really good base to start with. We did have to expand that a little bit and change just because the whole sequence is different, like in terms of action. So there were things that we could keep and things that we had to build, such as new buildings to destroy and things that weren't in the original movie. So we had a good base to start from, but we still had to change a few things to make it work.
Like the Parademon guns, these big cannons, for example, just didn't exist. They had pieces of that gun on set. So when Batman was shooting it, he had like a little prop that was part of that gun. The handles and the main piece that you can move around, but obviously not this gigantic gun. So that one, there was a basic version of it, but we expanded that based on our own design ideas or kind of matching it into how the rest of the Parademon things usually look, like the smaller guns that they have. So kind of following that design language."
Hear the full conversation with Scanline VFX team members Julius Lechner and Curtis Carlson below, and be sure to share your thoughts on their comments in the usual spot!