Among the many troubles facing Justice League was one particularly unusual hurdle: Henry Cavill‘s mustache. By the time Justice League reshoots had rolled around, Cavill had grown the facial hair for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and he was contractually prohibited from shaving it off. This gave DC two choices: either Superman could appear with facial hair in some scenes of the film, or they could digitally remove all traces of the mustache from Cavill’s face. They opted for the latter, and the results were… not so great.
But apparently, DC just didn’t employ the right mustache-removing technology. One unassuming individual has seemingly outdone the Justice League special effects artists by training an AI to convincingly shave Henry Cavill’s face in any video it’s given!
Via io9, the Deep Fakes Club has posted a video demonstration of its Cavill-shaving results side-by-side with the original footage from his press appearances. To pull this off, the AI was given access to thousands of photos of Cavill, all of which can be found online. From there, the AI was able to extrapolate what Cavill’s face should look like when he’s not sporting a villainous handlebar.
To put a further punctuation on this achievement, Deep Fakes Club posted its version of Superman’s shaved face alongside the one that appeared in Justice League. Assuming the legitimacy of this video, the Deep Fakes Club version does seem to have a more convincing take on Cavill’s face. It’s all about his lips and the way that they move while he’s talking.
For more information about Deep Fakes Club, you can visit their official site here. And hopefully the next time we see Cavill in costume as Superman, he’ll already be shaved as Rao intended.
What do you think about this Cavill-shaving AI video? Tug on Superman’s cape in the comment section below!
Images: Deep Fakes Club/Warner Bros. Pictures
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