How Hollywood is giving its biggest stars digital facelifts

There was no plastic surgeon involved, heavy makeup or archival footage used to take the actor back to his boyish "Cry Baby" face, however.

Civil War, Michael Douglas (in Ant-Man), Kurt Russell (in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and scores of others getting digital facelifts to play younger versions of themselves.

Lola Visual Effects is responsible for Depp's transformation, and most of the Marvel tricks, which have included making Chris Evans scrawny for the original "Captain America" and Hayley Atwell some 70 years older for the sequel.

Brozenich and the filmmakers decided to bring Depp back to how he looked around the time of "21 Jump Street" and "Cry Baby" and went through a number of iterations, over the course of six months, to arrive at the perfect age (roughly 26) — which Depp, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer had to sign off on.

"Working on the human face is one of the, if not the most challenging thing to do," said Trent Claus, the visual effects supervisor for Lola VFX.

[...] while the artists have gotten better over the years and have mostly managed to avoid drifting into the dreaded uncanny valley — the term used to describe the eerie feeling you get when looking at a digital person who is near-lifelike, but not quite enough — there are still trouble spots.

To counteract this, productions will often shoot a younger double to mimic an actor's performance, which they will use as a reference point for how the younger skin should behave and look in certain lights.

[...] they're never a full-on human performer that plays a key role throughout the duration of a feature film, he said.