How Henry Cavill's Justice League Mustache Was Removed

Screen Rant

Justice League: Henry Cavill Explains How His Mustache Was Removed

Henry Cavill explains how his controversial Mission: Impossible 6 mustache was removed during reshoots for Zack Snyder's Justice League.

Henry Cavill's mustache was the subject of some controversy during Justice League's reshoots this past summer, and he has now explained how the VFX team went about removing it during the film's post-production. The actor - who previously played Superman in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice - reprises his role as the Kryptonian superhero in Justice League, and he returned for the film's reshoots with the rest of the cast and crew in London, but he did so with a new look.

Since Cavill is also starring in Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible 6, in which his character sports a rather interesting mustache, the actor wasn't allowed to shave his facial hair until that film wrapped principal photography. Unfortunately, the Justice League reshoots coincided with that film's production schedule, and so, Cavill donned Superman's costume sporting that '70s-looking mustache. To add fuel to the fire, some of Justice League's detractors partially blamed the film's cost for reshoots - approximately $25 million due to scheduling conflicts - on removing Cavill's mustache, which wasn't necessarily the case. Still, people wondered how they would remove the facial during post-production and Cavill has now explained how that happened.

In an interview with Fox 5 DC, Cavill explained how the VFX planned on removing the mustache and he even joked about it being a new look for the iconic DC superhero.

“It’s nothing to cover it up. What we do is we try and pull it back from the top lip as much as possible, so they kind of wax it up, and then I have dots all over my face. And they try and put dots, which are barely visible, sort of in the various points on the face, which you would see them during normal — not face replacement — but whatever CGI aspect they may be applying to a face. And, yeah, I was covered in dots and had a big mustache. It was definitely a new look for Superman.”

While digitally removing Cavill's mustache may not have been costly, it could certainly be taxing on the VFX artists. But considering how quick the industry is advancing in digitally altering faces and even digitally de-aging actors and actresses, removing the actor's facial hair may not have been as tedious as general audiences might think. Still, some people may wonder why he couldn't shave it off in the first place. McQuarrie never disclosed the reason Cavill needed to keep his mustache, other than to say that audiences will find out when his film hits theaters in 2018.

The good thing is that Cavill certainly had fun with the online response to his Superman mustache, and audiences can try to find the scenes in which his mustache was digitally removed when Justice League hits theaters later this month.