Nudity in movies is nothing new – it’s been a part of filmmaking since the very beginning. Of course, standards and practices regarding nudity changed over time, marking several advances in the medium. Hollywood imposed rules and rating systems as the medium developed, and nudity remains an important aspect of filmmaking more than a century later.

The role of nudity on screen has changed significantly since the beginning, allowing for the showing of various body parts and sexuality. Still, the vast majority of nudity in modern movies is limited to female toplessness and the occasional glimpse of a man’s rear end. Granted, not every actor is willing to bare it all in front of the camera — some use body doubles, while others flat-out refuse.

The game began to change with the development of photorealistic CGI, and in 2010, computer artists manipulated a feature film to make an actor appear nude when she wasn’t. Since then, further developments have allowed an actor’s face to be placed on a body double, pushing the technology further. In fact, there’s a good chance you watched one without realizing the supposedly nude actor had a little computer-generated help to film their scenes.

Jessica Alba’s nudity in Machete isn’t real

The first time CGI artists edited a film to make an actor appear nude dates back to 2010’s “Machete,” starring Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jessica Alba, who played Agent Sartana Rivera, an immigration officer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In one scene, Rivera is taking a shower, and like most folks, she’s fully nude. The filmmakers shot the scene in such a way as to show her body without fully exposing her breasts or pubic region.

Still, she’s naked in the scene, which goes against Alba’s long stance of refusing to appear nude in films. She told Glamour in 2014 that she doesn’t do nude scenes for familial reasons. Four years earlier, she told Page Six she’d never shoot a nude scene, so it was surprising to see her doing precisely that. Of course, she didn’t shoot the scene in the buff, having worn underwear throughout the entire process. This left the VFX artists with the task of removing the underwear in post-production.

While it may seem odd to see an actor appear nude through digital manipulation while steadfastly opposing filming in the buff, Alba didn’t have a problem with it. Her publicist released a statement to Entertainment Weekly saying, “The decision to digitally remove the underwear from the shower scene in Machete was one she and Robert Rodriguez made together, which would serve his vision for the film, as well as honor her personal convictions regarding nudity.”

Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde’s nudity is all CGI in The Change-Up

There are two nude scenes in “The Change-Up” involving Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde, and neither of them is free of digital modification. Mann’s scene is played for laughs far more than Wilde’s, and it’s the more extreme example of CGI nudity. The body-swap comedy sees Dave (Jason Bateman) and Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) switch places after they urinate into a fountain, wishing to have one another’s lives.

This leaves Mitch (now Bateman) lying in bed as Dave’s wife, Jamie (Mann), walks by completely naked in slow motion, looking absolutely incredible. The scene quickly swaps sexy for silly by upending any desire Mitch had when Jamie slams herself down atop the toilet and noisily unloads the entire contents of her bowels. It’s played for laughs, but it’s also not Mann’s body — at least, not entirely. Her breasts were digitally enlarged, and she used a body double for the close-up shot of her butt. She also wore a prosthetic for other topless scenes.

Although Wilde also appears topless in the film, she avoided showing her nipples, filming a scene with pasties on instead. When the pasties showed up in the footage during the editing process, VFX artists stepped in to digitally create Wilde’s nipples to cover them. Wilde took part in choosing how the nipples would look, explaining, “They sent me an email saying, ‘Please review nipple cover shot one through seven and decide which one is most like the original” (via Gizmodo).

Dakota Fanning’s nudity in Very Good Girls isn’t as real as it appears

In “Very Good Girls,” Dakota Fanning plays Lilly Berger, a young woman who falls in love with the same man as her best friend, Gerri Fields (Elizabeth Olsen). The film delves into issues of sexuality and does so with various instances of nudity, with one scene standing out without actually showing anything, through the use of careful camera placement and editing. It involves Lilly and Gerri running naked on the beach into the water.

Looking at the scene, it’s not unusual, nor is there any indication the actors weren’t actually naked. In truth, they wore bathing suits, which were edited out during post-production. Still, because it wasn’t clearly digitally altered, the press pounced on the young actor, as it was her first nude scene. She discussed it with MTV News at the Sundance Film Festival, saying, “I’ve never done that before, and I’m very newly allowed to do that. I was newly 18, so yeah, it’s kind of a sensitive thing, but it’s a part of life.”

Fanning spoke to Vulture about the scene, explaining, “It’s, like, complicated. It’s kind of mine,” referring to her exposed rear end. Director Naomi Foner expanded on Fanning’s comments, saying, “They weren’t actually naked,” explaining how they wore bathing suits. “They painted the bathing suit out — it’s CGI.” Fanning’s co-star, Olsen, also admitted to working with a body double for shots of her butt and explained that CGI took care of anything happening under the water.

Daryll Hannah’s nudity in Splash received a Disney digital downgrade

“Splash” came out in 1984, and there was no hope of digitally altering a scene to make nudity appear realistic back then. Still, the film features some nudity, and thanks to the relatively conservative nature of Walt Disney Studios, it was the first film released by the company’s label, Touchstone Pictures. Touchstone allowed Disney to produce slightly more mature content without associating it directly with the House of Mouse.

During one pivotal scene in the film, Madison (Daryl Hannah) runs into the ocean from the beach, and because she’s a mermaid, she’s naked. Her hair covers most of her naughty bits, but her rear end is visible. What worked for Disney via Touchstone in 1984 did not carry forward to digital streaming, because once Disney opted to stream “Splash” on Disney+, the studio turned to CGI to assist with Madison’s modesty.

This is a case of CGI being used to cover up nudity rather than to expose it. Viewers noticed in 2020 that the newly streamed film featured an addition — specifically, a cluster of hair extensions covering up Madison’s butt. Eventually, when the film received a 4K upgrade, the digital hair was nowhere to be found. Disney likely opted to adjust the scene after landing more mature content following the arrival of Marvel’s Netflix series on the platform.

The nude fight scene in The Northman added CGI genitals

“The Northman” is an epic telling of the tale that inspired William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” starring Alexander Skarsgård as Prince Amleth. After his uncle murders his father and kidnaps his mother, Amleth leaves, swearing to one day have his vengeance. The film sees Amleth become a Viking berserker and an intensely powerful fighter. Eventually, he confronts his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang), and they have an epic battle in the crater of the volcano Hekla.

They fight in a hellscape of flowing lava, and they do so utterly devoid of their clothing in a duel known as a Holmgang. The fight sees the men brutally attack one another, and it goes back and forth for some time before Amleth beheads his uncle and stands victorious. But if you watched the scene and thought the two actors had a lot of skill and confidence to swing weapons about while completely nude, you’d only be half right.

Filming a fight scene in the nude is dangerous, as director Robert Eggers explained to The Hollywood Reporter. “We actually had to add things digitally because they were wearing thongs [instead of being naked] because no one wanted to get their bits chopped off. So, we actually had to add some CG genitals for certain shots so that they didn’t look too Ken doll-ish. You’ve got to make it look real, so I’m sure we did some full-body scans of Alex. They’re out there.”

Fight Club’s sex scene is entirely CGI

“Fight Club” is a highly stylized film about a man known only as the Narrator (Edward Norton). He befriends Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), and they create the titular evening activity with some like-minded men. There’s also Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who plays Tyler’s love interest. The only thing is, Tyler isn’t real — he’s an alternate identity of the Narrator, so, in reality, Marla is his love interest, and despite believing Tyler has sex with her, it’s actually the Narrator.

Because of this, the film’s sex scene is incredibly surreal, using slow motion and close-up rotations of the camera around both people as the focus fades in and out. Because of the identity issues in the film, it makes sense that the sex scene is shot this way, but it’s far more unusual than you might think. While both Carter and Pitt are nude in the scene, they weren’t naked during filming, and despite how it appears, the entire scene was made via CGI.

French VFX company BUF Compagnie created the sequence using 2D photographs. These gave the artists what they needed to generate realistic 3D composites for the scene, which director David Fincher wanted to encapsulate a “surreal, still moment in time.” Carter and Pitt spent three days recording sounds for the sequence. They wore motion capture suits while getting into various positions from the “Kama Sutra,” which helped finish out the details, though neither of the actors was nude during filming.

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