‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ Almost Went the ‘Justice League’ Mustache Route

We’ve now seen Henry Cavill‘s Mission: Impossible – Fallout mustache in all its glory in the sixth entry into the M:I franchise, but was it worth that CGI chin in Justice League? Turns out, at least according to director Christopher McQuarrie, that the production *almost* went with CGI-ing Cavill’s mustache in order to allow the actor to shave it for Justice League reshoots.

McQuarrie stopped by EMPIRE Magazine‘s podcast recently and spoke a bit about the situation, as well as why M:I opted for facial hair in its full non-digital glory:

“When the question came – the reshoots for Justice League came out – [Justice League producer] Chuck Roven called me, and he said, ‘We need your help and we need to shave Henry’s mustache. We need him to come back and we need to do these reshoots.’ And I said, ‘Look, Chuck, naturally, I want to do everything I can to help you, but I also have to think about our production. Let me talk to everybody and figure out what the scheduling would be.’ And I went and spoke to [our producer] Jake Myers, and the suggestion was made through channels that we shave the mustache [and] Henry [could] begin to grow the mustache back and then they would give us the resources to digitally fill in Henry’s mustache. Because like it or not, a fake mustache in close-up on a 75mm lens is never going to look like anything but a fake mustache in a close-up. if you have any doubts about that, just go back  and watch Tom Cruise in Rogue Nation with his beard and mustache. It’s passable for a scene, not for [an entire] film.

So, we offered the following compromise: Jake Myers calculated the amount of money that it would take to replace the number of shots, and essentially, what Jake was able to project was about a $3 million visual effects budget. So, I don’t know how much Henry was in Justice League, I’ve never seen the movie, but I can tell you how much it would’ve cost for Mission: Impossible to digitally add Henry Cavill’s mustache, and we said yes. We said, here’s what we’ll do: give us the $3 million and we’ll shut down, and that’ll give Henry Cavill the time to grow his mustache back, and we’ll just shut our movie down. … We said we’ll do this, at which point, somebody from Paramount Pictures said, ‘What is going on? What are you people even talking about?’ They’re like, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that. We’re not shutting down.’ We were just like, ‘Okay.’ That was the best plan that we could come up with.

Nobody wanted to stick it to Justice League. Nobody wanted to hurt those people. I’m sorry that they were ever in that position [but] I had other things that I had to contend with, and one of them was Henry Cavill going 100 miles-an-hour on a glacier with a fake mustache on. That was just never gonna happen. It was just never, ever, ever gonna happen.”

McQuarrie went on to say that had star Tom Cruise not broken his ankle on set during that parkour building jump when he did during production, the mustache issue more than likely would have been a non-factor.

Now if only we can get Cavill and McQuarrie to comment on the case of the mysterious pocket and three-frame shadow from this clip.

There’s a scene in Mission Impossible: Fallout @MissionFilm in which Henry Cavill has a growing in beard, then he doesn’t, then he does again. In… seconds. I thought I was imagining it.

But then I saw this thing where his shirt grows a pocket and… 🙄😒 pic.twitter.com/WfgV7x3ovg

— April (@ReignOfApril) July 31, 2018

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is currently in theaters now.