Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemyng) begins the shocking transformation into the monstrous Mr. Hyde. Photo Credit: Jurgen Vollmer.

The thing that really “sells” Hyde, though, is his face. The emotions Flemyng puts across are truly human and monstrous at the same time. But how can an actor actually act while under so many prosthetics and so much makeup?

“That really was his own nose,” Johnson revealed. “The area around his mouth is the only thing that actually was his own skin. Cheeks, cheekbones, jaw, chin, entire forehead, entire head, ears and neck are all false. The eyes are his, of course. And the appliances became very thin on his cheeks. We reshaped his cranium slightly and really reshaped his jaw in the least mobile areas, leaving the appliances extremely thin on his face so that he could still perform. And his mouth was actually restructured slightly, through a pair of dentures that he wore, so that actually changed the structure of his jaw a little bit as well, from the inside.”

The question arises, why go to all the trouble to build this creature? Why not just hire a really big body builder to play Hyde? It comes down to vision, from the original vision of the creators of the LXG comics — writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill — to its interpretation by director Norrington.

“It’s all about the performance,” Johnson stressed. “Stephen Norrington wanted Jason to play both characters — he didn’t want to have a really enormous, imposing Dr. Jekyll. What really makes this thing work is the fact that Steven knows how to shoot these things. In some ways it’s similar to shooting a CGI character, because the Hyde character was rarely on the set with the other actors. Typically, we shot him separately and extracted a matte from that and placed him in the scene so that he appeared to be 9-1/2 feet tall. Jason is really just a normal height guy, about 5' 11". We added about four feet to his height, but by literally cutting him out and placing him in the sequences as a matte.”

Keeping the tone of both the original League comics and staying true to people’s general idea of what Hyde looks like is another impressive achievement of the Hyde character. Said Johnson of this homage/extension of the character: “I’ve always been a real fan of the Jekyll & Hyde story, and followed all the previous J&H movies really carefully. I was just really excited to have the opportunity to create what I consider to be the ultimate Mr. Hyde. I think this thing is a bit more kick-ass than anything that’s ever been attempted with the character. So I was just really excited by it… I’m definitely an aficionado of every single Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie that’s ever been made, ever since the one with Spencer Tracy.”

That’s a lot of heritage to live up to, especially when modern audiences look for the feel of authenticity in their fantasy and have seen so many incredible visual effects. Some of the most powerful sequences in the film are Hyde’s transformations from monster to human and back. They had a simplicity and a boldness that make them linger in the viewer’s mind long after the movie is unreeled.

“Once again, that was Mr. Norrington knowing how it’s been done in the past and wanting to make this a really exciting sequence,” said Johnson. “I’ve seen the movie twice, and, both times, after Jason transforms back from Mr. Hyde to Jekyll the first time, the whole audience erupts in applause.

“We created two specific suits for that transformation, so you’ve got four stages. You’ve got Jason as Mr. Hyde in the full-on suit, and you’ve got two intermediate stages and then you’ve got him as Jekyll. We shot each one of those characters in just crazy ways, and then a lot was done through editing and camera angles, and I think it ended up being very successful. But in actuality, there are really just two mid-transformation stages. We made them very asymmetrical, so that the mouth is stretched out incredibly wide on one side, one arm is much larger than the other, the rib cage is popped out on one side and not the other. The goal there was really just to get him completely fluid and allow the structure of the character as well as the camera moves and the editing to create the transformation.”

And in case you were wondering, the other creature who takes Hyde’s potion — the one the filmmakers call the “Dante Creature” and that Jekyll refers to as, “me on a bad day” — was a beast of a whole other nature. Literally.

“It was quite different,” recalled Johnson. “We actually were not involved in the Dante creature. That was done by Phil Tippett’s company and was 100% digitally created. There was talk of creating facial appliances and a large insert torso piece so that we could get the reality of the Hyde character into that, but ultimately it was decided not to because they wanted it to be overblown and slightly cartoony.”

So that’s the Tale of the Two Monsters. Which do you prefer? In the end, it’s a matter of personal taste. I guess the real test is — which one gives you nightmares that make you wake up screaming?

Danny Fingeroth, veteran Marvel Comics writer and editor, led the company's Spider-Man line, as group editor, during its highest-selling years. Danny has also created, developed and written comics and animation for AOL-Time Warner, ShowTime Online, Visionary Media, Brilliant Digital Entertainment and Byron Preiss Multimedia. He is the creator and editor-in-chief of Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! Magazine, published by TwoMorrows, a highly acclaimed publication about writing comics, animation and science fiction. He is also at work on Superman on the Couch: What Super Heroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society, to be published in 2004 by Continuum. The Animated Century, a documentary feature film about the history of animation, which Danny co-wrote, will appear on Bravo later this year. Danny will be teaching a course in comics and graphic novel writing at New York University’s SCPS in September 2003.