The Struggle In The Film: Dr. Brundle
Dr. Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) invents a teleporting machine, then tries it on himself. Unfortunately a fly enters the transportation chamber with him and in the process their genes got mixed. Brundle's body and mind start to change he is a lot more powerful than before, he can think better and faster, but then he begins to transform into something he later name 'Brundlefly' he loses nails, then teeth. His girlfriend (Geena Davies) is pregnant but she doesn't know whether it's a Brundle or a Brundlefly baby, so she wants an abortion. The Brundlefly kidnaps her right from the operation table.
The film won an Academy Award for artist Chris Walas and his team's’ work in transforming scientist Seth Brundle into a human/fly hybrid. The film is said to be a metaphor for the effects of aging, and therefore, the effects team focused on making Brundle’s appearance seem more fragile over time. This includes adding skin blemishes, hair loss, and increasingly hunched body posture. They started by first creating the look of the final stage of the transformation and then worked backwards from there to depict different steps during the course of the film. Cronenberg really wanted to show the …show more content…
helplessness of us all as we age, and he used scenes such as Brundle’s fingernails falling out to remind us of our mortality. While grotesque and disturbing, the makeup and creature effects used in The Fly are nonetheless effect.
Jeff Goldblum was the opposite of what the filmmakers thought would work for the stages of man-to-fly transformation.
"Casting was a major issue," creature effects artist Chris Walas said in a DVD special feature interview. When he and the effects team signed on to the project, they asked Cronenberg to make finding the lead actor the number one priority because it would be the hardest part of their job. The director asked Walas for input in terms of physical attributes that would help the effects team. "Get somebody with no ears and no bridge of the nose so that way we have a lot more control with the makeup," Walas said. When Goldblum was mentioned as the top choice, Walas and the others agreed that it was not what they wanted, but they were fans of the actor so they wanted to make it
work.
In addition to the makeup concerns, not everyone was convinced that Goldblum was the right choice as the character of Seth Brundle.
The film won an Academy Award for artist Chris Walas and his team's’ work in transforming scientist Seth Brundle into a human/fly hybrid. The film is said to be a metaphor for the effects of aging, and therefore, the effects team focused on making Brundle’s appearance seem more fragile over time. This includes adding skin blemishes, hair loss, and increasingly hunched body posture. They started by first creating the look of the final stage of the transformation and then worked backwards from there to depict different steps during the course of the film. Cronenberg really wanted to show the …show more content…
helplessness of us all as we age, and he used scenes such as Brundle’s fingernails falling out to remind us of our mortality. While grotesque and disturbing, the makeup and creature effects used in The Fly are nonetheless effect.
Jeff Goldblum was the opposite of what the filmmakers thought would work for the stages of man-to-fly transformation.
"Casting was a major issue," creature effects artist Chris Walas said in a DVD special feature interview. When he and the effects team signed on to the project, they asked Cronenberg to make finding the lead actor the number one priority because it would be the hardest part of their job. The director asked Walas for input in terms of physical attributes that would help the effects team. "Get somebody with no ears and no bridge of the nose so that way we have a lot more control with the makeup," Walas said. When Goldblum was mentioned as the top choice, Walas and the others agreed that it was not what they wanted, but they were fans of the actor so they wanted to make it
work.
In addition to the makeup concerns, not everyone was convinced that Goldblum was the right choice as the character of Seth Brundle.