Man-Thing: How Cult Horror Film Established Its Spooky Look

Though Man-Thing only received just a fraction of other Marvel-based movies received in the early 2000s, the filmmakers behind the production went to great lengths to stretch those dollars as far as possible. That includes building a massive practical suit for the eponymous monster and using a certain brand of film to achieve the desired look, rather than relying on visual effects for either scenario.

Man-Thing helmer Brett Leonard tells us it was paramount for his crew to make the film as green as possible, so as to make it feel as if the swamp monster was consuming everything. As such, the director and his cinematographer opted to use film from a certain manufacturer due to its respective qualities.

“For the green color palette, we actually used Fuji film because it had a greater green in the chroma. This is to Steve Arnold’s brilliance because we wanted the green to really represent that green that you felt in the comic books of Man-Thing,” Leonard says during ComicBook.com’s exclusive director’s commentary for the film.

The filmmaker adds, “And so those shots, you’re exactly right, are really examples of us achieving that feeling of just the whole atmosphere, is Man-Thing. The whole atmosphere is a swamp. And we did a lot of additions to all of the trees and for any of those shots, so we were always augmenting the real locations with further aspects of the Bayou, swamp feel.”

The choice in film and framing, coupled with the practical sets built for the film, gave Leonard just what he wanted for a tone.

“We’re about to go from a real location, which was raining, because there was a lot of rain in Sydney as well. So a lot of times we had to deal with rain and that actually added to the locations like this for this particular film. It also did a lot of silhouetting,” he concludes. “Again, as I watched the film, one of the things, I do like the visual style of the movie, I’m happy with that.”

Man-Thing is now streaming on Tubi.

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