The Icy Challenge of Mickey 17: Creatures, Snow, and Lots of Digital Magic
When Bong Joon Ho imagined Niflheim, the ice planet of Mickey 17, he didn't ask for something cold, he asked to freeze the audience's credibility. The DNEG team took on the challenge: create 350 shots of perfect snow, multi-legged creatures, and human clones, all so real that even an Eskimo would doubt it. ❄️ The result is a masterclass in visual effects where every snowflake was planned with more care than a plot twist in a Korean thriller.
Creating convincing digital snow is like doing magic: if you do it right, no one wonders how the trick works.
From an English Hangar to an Alien Tundra
To capture the essence of extreme cold, the team built:
- A stadium-sized set covered in Epsom salts
- 10-meter white walls serving as an infinite screen
- An "army of rakes" that kept the artificial snow perfect
Then, in post-production, they replaced everything with digital simulations so detailed you can almost feel the cold through the screen. 🎥
The Creepers: When the Catbus Had Problematic Kids
These multi-legged creatures are what you'd get if the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro had a nightmare:
- Mama Creeper: Slow, heavy, and probably tired of so many Juniors
- Juniors: Teenagers with too many legs and energy
- Babies: Chaotic like snowballs with legs
Animating them required rewriting DNEG's entire crowd pipeline, because apparently eight legs are more complicated than two. 🐛
Flitters: The Flying Trucks That Hate Flying
These rough and shaky ships prove that in space, even vehicles can't escape the laws of physics:
- Modeled from a practical vehicle built for reference
- Details like accumulated ice and irregular propulsion jets
- That constant vibration that says "I'm flying out of pure stubbornness"
The animation team managed to capture that quality of a machine that works despite itself, like that old computer we all have at home that keeps working... miraculously. 💻
Ultimately, DNEG's true achievement isn't the perfect simulations or detailed creatures, but having created a world so believable that the audience will forget they're watching visual effects. And that, in the movie business, is more valuable than an Oscar... though an Oscar wouldn't hurt either. 😉