In perhaps the most passive-aggressive interview of 2010, Baker sweetly noted his desire to work on the remake of the 1941 classic ("It's a film that kind of just shaped my being, you know?") while also noting some dissatisfaction with the way CGI took over the transformations -- the types of sequences Baker revolutionized in An American Werewolf in London (and for which the Academy practically invented its Best Makeup Oscar in 1981 to reward him). That dismay isn't to say that the filmmakers did a crummy job, though. Except, well, maybe they did. I can't figure it out:
CGI has a lot of backlash now. I think it's just because there are so many people doing it. It's a tool and it's only as good as the people behind it. When you have some amazingly talented people doing it, you get some amazing work. When you have some not-so talented people doing it, you get some not-so amazing work.
My whole beef with the CG thing is that it's made for sloppy filmmaking. So often it's like, "we'll fix it in post," but it's just stuff you could do there on the day and not have to spend a great deal of money fixing it in post. You can also put off decisions. That was part of the whole reason the transformation is CGI. They didn't want to think about it then: "If we do it CGI, we can finish the movie and then start thinking about it."
With me, I only have the preproduction time to try and get the stuff made. I couldn't get answers out of anybody. The first thing I said was, "I don't know how we're going to do transformations in this movie." People were expecting what we did in American Werewolf 30 years ago and they want 30 years of advancements.
In American Werewolf we had a naked man changing into a four-legged hound from hell. Here we have Benicio Del Toro, whose practically a f*cking werewolf already, and then we have Benicio with a little more hair on him. I didn't know how we were going to make it a big deal. [...] They used some of my suggestions and they scanned some sculptures that we did, but I was pretty much aced out of their whole thing, which was disappointing. I think they did some terrific work, though.
Well, you can't argue with that! "Yeah, the whole process was sloppy and inert and wishy-washy and anticlimactic and disappointing, but hoo boy, how about that Wolfman?" Really, though, how does a guy get from the low road to the high road in under a second without the aid of CGI? Now this is a transformation.
ยท Interview: Rick Baker Opens Up About 'The Wolfman' [Horror Squad]