Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's VFX Boss on Getting MODOK Right (Exclusive)

By Adam Barnhardt

MODOK is a character virtually impossible to adapt to live-action, with his bizarre look crafted specifically for the land of comic books.  The comes along Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which decided to use the film as one of its villains, even bringing back Ant-Man alumnus Corey Stoll back to play the role. Because of the character's haphazard nature, Digital Domain was the one visual effects vendor charged to focus on building the model for the villain.

According to Digital Domain VFX supervisor Dave Hodgins, an incredible amount of care went into the character's design to make him at least somewhat realistic—or, at the very least, as realistic as such a design can be.

"One of the goals was to keep a lot of Corey in the design both in the performance, and in the overall design," the visual effects supe tells us. "At that point, we gathered up the scans and the data and we started mocking [the MODOK 3D model] up with originally just Corey's face as more of a direct translation."

Then came time to give MODOK a super-suit, which made the process much more challenging given the limitations it introduced.

"Over time, the limitations of the metal suit started to elongated the character. He became more and more Humpty Dumpty, which was one of the things we were trying to avoid," Hodgins recalls.

One of the major sticking points was the fact MODOK's massive head posed a challenge whenever he talked as his jaw and face would disappear behind the supports of his chair.

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"Let's say he's angry and he moves his head or shakes, when we translate that to MODOK, he looks very light and floaty and it looks staccato,"  he continues. "So then you might take something like that you'll slow it down so that you're still kind of grounded in the physics of the real world with MODOK and just look of him in his giant metal suit. He just has a certain amount of mass that once you break that, it all falls apart."

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be available for purchase as a digital copy beginning April 18th while it will receive a physical home media release on May 16th. It has yet to be confirmed when the movie will hit Disney+.

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