Find Out How Ant-Man Made Michael Douglas Young Again

To open Marvel's Ant-Man, Michael Douglas storms into S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters to hand in his resignation. Only - it's a very Wall Street looking Michael Douglas despite being filmed in 2015.

Unfortunately, we still haven't found the Fountain of Youth in reality, but Lola VFX revealed their movie tricks to Vulture. Lola specializes in visual cosmetics and their resumé includes X-Men: Days of Future Past and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, so Ant-Man wasn't their first rodeo. They even created the skinny pre-super soldier serum Steve Rogers seen in Captain America: The First Avenger. But how do they do it?

Trent Claus of Lola VFX says they can make anyone look "older, younger, thinner, or fatter." In the case of Hank Pym in Ant-Man, they went younger. Marvel brought the company in early in the production process, which aided Lola VFX because, "They did everything we needed right from the start," says Claus. As for Douglas's look, the impressive amount of movies Douglas has been featured in helped Lola but also added pressure to their final product, as Claus tells it, "It helped us a lot to have that reference," he said, "but it made us work harder, because the audience already knew what he looked like at that age. There wasn't a whole lot of leeway."

The VFX specialists found themselves watching Wall Street over and over again to study Douglas's young face, making note of every wrinkle or tendency they could find. "What's really important is the way his face moves as he speaks, the way that the muscles in the face have changed over time, the way the skin reacts to those muscles. To sell the effect you have to look at the way [the face] looks in motion," Claus explained.

It's almost as if the folks at Lola dabble with health issues or take advice from doctors. They notice the changes in the face which, to the untrained, would go unnoticed or without though when. "The most obvious thing is that the skin along the jaw in most people tends to get lower and lower and sag a little bit as you get older. Particularly around the throat and the Adam's Apple area, you'll get a build-up of extra skin down there," Claus said. "One thing we'll have to do to de-age someone is restore that elasticity and try to not only to remove the excess skin, but pull it back up to where it once was." Our faces thin out a bit when we get older, so Lola had to add a bit of extra plumping to young Pym's face and they did a heck of a job.

The final product is as good as it gets, which we all know, because we've all seen Ant-Man by now...right? If you haven't seen Ant-Man, get out there this weekend to see Lola VFX's seamless de-aging of Michael Douglas and all the rest of its heistful glory.

Ant-Man is now playing in theaters.