“Black Panther” character Erik Stevens, aka N’Jadaka, aka Killmonger, is one of the best villains, not just in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in all of comic book movie history. Played by Michael B. Jordan, he’s a warrior, a son of Wakanda, a Navy SEAL, and a brutal killer, as you can tell by the scarification he has on his body; one mark for every person he’s killed. His motives are corrupted by his history, but oh wow, do you sympathize with him at the end.
Well, you mostly sympathize because when we say he’s a brutal killer, that’s an understatement. There were almost 3,000 prosthetic dots applied to Michael B. Jordan’s body, meaning he’s taken down a whole lot of people while in the Navy, as well as the Joint Special Operations Command ghost unit.
That is a lot of makeup work for a character who is doing plenty of fight choreography, including a battle in the water, as well as wearing costumes that could rub them off. Makeup artist and founder of Morphology FX Joel Harlow, who has worked on films like “Logan,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” and “Star Trek Beyond” came up with the techniques to get these things to stay on and talked about the challenges of the work in an Insider video, which gives us a bit of a look at the process. That wasn’t his only task on the film, though. Harlow also created the looks for the lip disc for the tribal elder based on the Mursi tribe in Africa and Shuri’s (Letitia Wright) jawbone accessories.