MPC created over 660 of the vfx shots seen in Marvel’s “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” movie. Check out the vfx breakdown reel for Dark Phoenix:
MPC’s role on Dark Phoenix
MPC was the lead VFX vendor on the film. Its Montreal studio ran the project, with teams in Bangalore, London and Los Angeles pitching in. More than 1,500 artists worked on the show between July 2017 and May 2019.
Greg Butler supervised the work for MPC. Phil Brennan was the overall VFX supervisor, working closely with director Simon Kinberg.
The scenes MPC handled
- Jean Grey’s Phoenix Force scenes, as her power keeps growing
- Mystique changing back to Raven after the space mission
- The party in the woods, with Dazzler’s first appearance
- The alien dinner party, where the aliens take human form
- Jean’s return to her old neighborhood and her father
- All of the scenes in Hank’s lab
- Jean’s trip to Genosha to find Erik
- The 5th Avenue fight between Jean and Magneto
- The third act train attack
MPC also built digital doubles of every X-Men character. It shared those models with the other vendors on the film.
The train sequence
The train attack was the toughest part of the job. The third act was first set in space. It was reshot on a prison train, which left much less time to finish it.
It was also the last scene filmed. Almost every shot needed stunt work, digital work or both. Many shots use partly or fully CG backgrounds, plus digital doubles that take over from the real actors mid shot.
Building the Phoenix Force
The look of the Phoenix Force moved from fiery to cosmic. The team used Hubble images as reference and mixed liquid elements into the cosmic simulation.
The effect had to scale from subtle to massive as Jean loses control. When she pulls things apart at the molecular level, heavy particle simulations do the work. Some shots run over 1,000 frames and layer liquid, gas, vapor and particle sims.
Other vendors on the film
About 1,350 of the film’s 1,700 shots have visual effects, so MPC had help. Rodeo FX created the opening car crash. Rising Sun Pictures handled the Cerebro sequences.
