Regardless of Bombshell's many problematic elements, there's one element that nearly everyone agrees is worthy of praise. We're referring to the astounding transformation of its cast into the famous faces of Fox News. Since the first teaser trailer dropped, many have marvelled at Charlize Theron's uncanny resemblance to Megyn Kelly. It's a remarkable feat of cinematic transfiguration that was made possible by the work of an Oscar-nominated makeup team as well as Colleen Atwood's clever use of costuming.
The movie has a limited view of the social and political insidiousness of Fox News, but, as it happens with many surface-level wonders, its look is on-point…
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When it came to turning Charlize Theron into the former Fox News anchor, the filmmakers hired one of Hollywood's greatest masters of transformative makeup. Kazu Hiro, also known as Kazuhiro Tsuji, is a Japanese special makeup effects artist that started working behind the cameras in 1989. A fan and disciple of the great Dick Smith, he has amassed a rich filmography full of insane feats of prosthetic shapeshifting, ranging from the simian overlords of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes to the Darkest Hour's Winston Churchill.
It was Gary Oldman who convinced the makeup wizard to return to cinema after Kazu Hiro had turned his back on Hollywood to pursue a career as a visual artist. This comeback to tinsel town earned him his third Oscar nomination (he was previously nominated for 2006's Click and 2007's Norbit) as well as his first win.
This year, he's once again in the running for gold and is a favorite to win for the way he so uncannily molded Charlize Theron's face into the recognizable angularity of Megyn Kelly's.
According to many interviews and featurettes, it wasn't a simple affair and it took many tries until the right combination of prosthetics was achieved. One of the weirdest and most difficult elements to get right was Kelly's heavy eyelids. In fact, through the shooting Kazu Hiro kept tweaking them and changing their overall design. Another issue was the application of the Fox News mask of heavy makeup over the actress' metamorphized visage. Prosthetics and real skin take on cosmetics in different ways, making the perfection of the news anchor look a technical nightmare.
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If you watch some Fox News footage (don't do it, if only for the sake of your sanity), you'll notice a uniformity of appearance across all on-screen women. There's a very specific look to them, which includes heavy glamour makeup and overly styled blond tresses. Throughout Bombshell's narrative, we can see the chronology of this corporate stylistic evolution. There's Nicole Kidman's Gretchen Carlson with her old-school helmet hairdo and then we have the more Instagram-friendly glow of Margot Robbie's fictional Kayla Pospisil.
This last transformation is not Kazu Hiro's doing. He took care of the prosthetics work for Theron, Kidman and John Lithgow as Roger Ailes, but Robbie's visual arc was made possible by Anne Morgan and Vivian Baker. Along with Collen Atwood's costumes, they illustrate how Kayla enters Fox News as a naïve woman, someone who does her face at home before going to work. Gradually, this gives way to the jewel-toned body-conscious dresses of the Fox News' on-air women and professionally done makeup and hair.
There's a downside to all of this technical perfection, however. Apart from Robbie, most of the cast is as helped by their transformation as they are impaired by it. The uncanniness of the whole thing tends to create a barrier between the actor and their audience, eliciting more awe in admiration of the makeup than a real engagement with the psychology of the people onscreen. Jay Roach's direction and Charles Randolph's myopic script don't make the situation any better, underlining the shallowness of the project.
In the end, Bombshell has very little to say about this universe of poisonous conservatism whose visuals it so perfectly recreates.