Captain Marvel Production Designer Andy Nicholson Details the Challenges Behind Creating Hala and Torfa

When the Captain Marvel team first started putting its collective head together, it was clear that [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

When the Captain Marvel team first started putting its collective head together, it was clear that one thing was going to stand out as the most challenging part of the film. That, of course, would be the task of designing two alien planets from the ground up. Captain Marvel production Andy Nicholson tells us it was a struggle because they not only had to design Hala and Torfa, but they had to make sure the planets would stand the test of time as they're likely to show up in future properties in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

"That was a big responsibility, so that was a constant headache, that was what I thought about more than almost anything else when I was coming up with the looks from two different worlds," Nicholson tells ComicBook.com. "I think the generating Torfa was a challenge because Marvel have done so many different planets, that coming up with a new look for a new planet that was quite unique was tricky because you know you go down to almost any look, from a swamp, to a forest, to a desert, to a volcanic rock base, to a sulfur pools based planet."

"The geology of that has been seen before in different Marvel shows, so coming up with something new with a new style of architecture for that opening sequence in Torfa was, that took a lot of time."

Torfa serves as the home some refugees of the race of shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls, a place feature very prominently very early on in the film. At the beginning of the film, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and the Kree Starforce team launched a mission on the planet to recover and undercover Kree spy. But it didn't stop there, almost just as tricky was the design of Hala, a planet that's one gigantic city.

"The city is a big thing to work out you've got to make it look like it contains people so the buildings have to have a certain look but yet also they have to look alien and that's a fine balance, it's a tricky thing to do," reflects Nicholson. "And when you're dealing with something that enormous, it's hard and I think the most sensible suggestion I made was having them be in a train that was taking them somewhere rather than having them walk through the streets."

"It just means you can develop a much bigger world in the CG background than if you're just walking down a couple of roads which was how the script was originally written."

What was your favorite shot of Captain Marvel? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by hitting me up on Twitter at @AdamBarnhardt to talk all things cosmic Marvel!

Captain Marvel is now available digitally ahead of a home media release on June 11th. Avengers: Endgame is now showing while Spider-Man: Far From Home swings into action July 2nd.

Trending Now: