Every week at SiftPop.com, we challenge our writers to choose what they think is the best movie under a certain topic related to a recent release. So this week, with the release of Eternals, which features a huge physical transformation from Kumail Nanjiani, we’re counting down our favorite movies featuring physical transformations! Let us know @SiftPop what your ranking is!
Tom Hanks is one the greats. He’s transformed himself into many iconic characters over the years, but those transformations generally don’t usually include massive body transformations. The performance that won him his first Oscar — Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia — is one exception. Hanks plays the role of a man with HIV that is fired by his law firm and sues for wrongful dismissal. In order to portray his character’s physical decline, Hanks lost 30 pounds for the role. It’s an important film, not only for Hanks’ career, but for what it did for the visibility of the AIDS epidemic. Director Jonathan Demme’s desire to increase awareness about AIDS was a major goal of the film and Hanks’ casting was a key part of that. The physical transformation Hanks goes through helps illustrate the lengths to which the production was willing to go to get the film’s powerful message across. (Jake Bourgeois)
Rooney Mara is phenomenal as the unusual, but brilliant investigator and hacker, Lisbeth Salander, recruited by journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to uncover a 40-year-old disappearance of a girl from a wealthy family in 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After seeing her great, but short role in The Social Network as Ivy League ex, Erica, I didn’t even recognize Mara. Featuring hair that was jagged and chopped, bleached brows, piercings, and tattoos, Mara took on the role as the asocial hacker. Mara completely loses herself as Lisbeth, and she takes the scene every time. You’re only fixated on her. She made you feel for her, want her to be happy, and get her revenge. Lisbeth was feral, vengeful, and unforgettable, which garnered Golden Globes and Oscar nominations for Mara. This performance is definitely in my top 10. (Chantal Ashford)
Starring Tom Hanks in an Oscar nominated role, and directed by Robert Zemekis, Cast Away can surely, by now, be classed as classic cinema. After being washed up on a deserted island resulting from his [insert product placement here] delivery plane crashing into the ocean, Chuck Noland (Hanks) faces every kind of emotional torture imaginable. Rather than telling you plot points you should already be aware of, I’ll just heap more superlatives upon this masterpiece. Hanks is at his peak, managing to encapsulate us on his metaphorical and physical transformations. He solely commands the screen, and our attention for nigh on 120 minutes on his own. There is a lot to be said for how well-directed and performed Cast Away is when you can be so engaged when so much of the film is without dialogue, and has just one sentient on-screen character. Cast Away is endlessly rewatchable and deserves to be revisited very soon by not only me, but also you good reader. (Adam Ritchie)
It might not seem like it now, what with all the movies that followed leaning into the bodybuilding more than the actual boxing physique, but it’s actually pretty difficult to look the way Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers looked for Rocky. There’s not a huge amount of muscle definition like, for instance, in Rocky III or IV, but it’s undeniable that the both of them look like actual boxers. I could probably get into how that’s yet another aspect of where this franchise switched gears from being an underdog story about a man who knows how to fight and not much else getting a chance to prove himself, to the story of a man dealing with his success in the midst of opulent glamour and wealth. But hey, maybe this not not the place for it. Suffice it to say Rocky isn’t as much a boxing movie as it is a movie about a boxer, and the man actually looked the part early into his career. It’s a classic for a reason. (Chris Bakker)
While the true beginning of the so-called “McConaissance” started in 2011 with movies such as Killer Joe and Bernie, the peak was in 2013 with his Academy Award winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club. Playing the real life Texan AIDS patient Ron Woodruff, Matthew McConaughey steps into a world that we had never seen him in before and delivers what I would call a career-best performance. McConaughey lost an incredible amount of weight for the role, shocking audiences for one of the first times in his career as he fully committed to every aspect of Woodruff’s battle with AIDS and the FDA. Not to be outdone, Jared Leto also went through one of his first dramatic physical changes in his career, also earning an Academy Award for his work. A movie like this can be tough to pull off in a lot of ways, where things can feel insincere or glamorized for Hollywood. Dallas Buyers Club works hard to navigate the real life prejudice and struggles those with AIDS experienced and I think, for the most part, it lands with everything it’s trying to pull off. I think if you haven’t given it a watch, this falls into the must-see category for me. (Nashua Doll)
I saw Black Swan at the ArcLight movie theater in Hollywood, California. It was a deeply unsettling movie, but I ended up loving it. The main reason why I loved this movie was because Natalie Portman absolutely crushed this role. For Portman, this was a career-defining role. It won her an Oscar for Best Actress, she met her now husband while on this role, and it showed how dedicated she was for the role and her range for preparing for a role. She spent over a year training in ballet, which ultimately explained why her ballet scenes were so natural and genuine. I also read that Portman proactively paid for the training herself, showing her selflessness and dedication to the role of Nina Sayers. If you’re looking for a film where someone transforms from an actor to a strong ballet dancer, check this one out. (Mike Hilty)
Welcome to another entry in the Jake-Gyllenhaal-should-have-been-nominated-for-this-performance cinematic universe. Gyllenhaal’s 30 pound weight loss for 2014’s Nightcrawler only scratches the surface of his transformative portrayal of Lou Bloom, a deceptively articulate con man finagling his way up the L.A. crime journalism ladder. Lou’s greasy, slicked back hair and bugged-out eyes combine with his unsettling charisma to create an all-time great film character. Nightcrawler’s unnervingly compelling protagonist would provide me with more than enough reason to recommend this movie, but it turns out that the filmmaking surrounding Gyllenhaal’s excellent performance is just as good! In presenting you with our morally dubious lead, the film forces you to grapple with the fact that individuals like Lou would not be able to thrive without the sizable consumer demand for the product he provides. Nightcrawler is tense, exciting, consistently surprising, and absolutely worthy of your time. (Foster Harlfinger)
War may never change, but war can change people. No better example of this fact comes to mind than the film Full Metal Jacket, which is one of the most interesting Kubrick films I’ve seen, and actually one that’s not on the list of shame. I quite honestly still cannot believe that Vincent D’Onfrio is Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence, who needed to gain 70 pounds for the role, but I feel that this makes his character all the more harrowing as he is driven insane by the actions of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, provided by the truly legendary performance of R. Lee Ermey. However, that’s not the only thing about this story of two halves that draws me in regarding changes in people. You see people who are raw recruits get transformed into eager soldiers, who are then transformed in ways that only war can. With great character work, solid camerawork, and a touch only Kubrick could provide, you have a movie that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. So if you somehow haven’t seen this movie, drop and give me 50, then go watch it. (Joseph Davis)
The Holocaust is one of the greatest travesties in the history of humankind. Many films have depicted its events in the decades since, and one of these is the great picture, The Pianist. It tells the true story of Władysław Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody, a Jewish concert pianist, who also performs as part of the local Warsaw radio. The film follows Szpilman as he is confined in the ghetto, and as he eventually flees from captivity to live alone in a bombed out Warsaw. Almost the entire second half of the picture is just Brody performing by himself to truly emotional effect. The film was nominated for Best Picture, it won Best Director, and Brody won the Oscar for Best Actor. A big part of that was due to Brody’s willingness to physically transform his body. He lost over 30 pounds to play the role, and at 6’1”, he stood like a twig at a mere 130lbs by the end of the movie. Brody was starving himself in real life to match the starvation that Szpilman was feeling on screen. Brody’s turn in The Pianist is a truly breathtaking performance in a powerful film, one that you should take the time to see whenever you get a chance. (Heath Lynch)
After a few impressive roles in Scorsese films, would Robert De Niro top them all with his turn in Raging Bull? Jake LaMotta was an interesting role that pushed De Niro in many ways. First, there was a layer of anger and rage that would boil along the surface for the whole entire film. De Niro channeled his inner beast while filming the boxing sequences, as well as his rampaging domestic moments. These iconic boxing sequences and unnerving sequences of domestic violence were not possible with just De Niro’s emotions. His physicality was essential as he swung from peak muscular physique for this boxing prime… then a doughy and unkempt LaMotta, who packed on plenty of weight. De Niro committed to this role so completely and it paid off within the context of Scorsese’s devastating character study. You will not see many committed performances on this level, and that is one of the main reasons why Raging Bull is so memorable and iconic today. (Shane Conto)
Guardians of the Galaxy
Chris Pratt, now ever-present in the pop culture zeitgeist, had quite a year in 2014, despite only appearing in two films. His role as Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy required him to lose 60 pounds in six months, an impressive feat by any means, and it certainly paid off. Guardians made Pratt not just a movie star, but a headliner, a status that many hope to achieve. It’s going to be remembered as the film that popularized strange, inter-galactic elements in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I’m always going to remember it as one of the first Marvel films I saw in theaters, and the movie that introduced me to Chris Pratt. He established a self-image with Guardians that remains to this day, and it’d be difficult to not be impressed with it as one of the more successful (and less extreme) Hollywood physical transformations. It’s a shame he won’t be able to show it off in Garfield and Super Mario Bros. (Rowan Wood)
Batman Begins
You can’t make a list about best Physical Transformations in movies without talking about Christian Bale, and especially in Batman Begins. Bale reportedly put on 100 pounds of muscle to bulk up for the role of Batman, after losing weight for his previous role. Batman Begins is the first in Christopher Nolan’s series of Batman films where we finally see a vigilante like Batman in a real world environment. This movie also brought into live action for the first time two of Batman’s foes with Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) and Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson). Batman Begins was a great film to start off this trilogy and led to its sequel being one of the best comic book movies. For a lot of people, myself included, Bale is our live action Batman. This film is a marvel, and Nolan truly shows his keen storytelling and great eye for detail in this incredible series of films. If you haven’t watched these movies. they are a high recommendation from me. Batman Begins is an excellent comic book adaptation and is a great movie. (Austen Terry)
Rescue Dawn
It’s one thing for one actor to commit to a role enough to want to lose weight for it. It’s another thing entirely for most of the principal cast to do so together. The opposite of the gang that made up Zack Snyder’s 300 Spartans, the cast of Rescue Dawn played a group of prisoners of war in Laos during the Vietnam War. Featuring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, and Jeremy Davies, chief among them, the group spent several months on a weight loss regimen to look as emaciated as possible at the end of the film, from which point they began to film the movie in reverse to allow the actors to gain weight through production. Add to that the fact that this is a Werner Herzog film based on his own documentary, shot almost entirely on location in Thailand in the actual jungle, and it’s no surprise that the movie looks as brutal and hopeless as it does at times. What it is, though, is the harsh, yet inspiring, mostly-true story of Dieter Dengler. There are a lot of POW escape films, but this one is especially haunting. (Chris Bakker)
The Lobster
Sometimes a movie comes at you with a premise so interesting you just have to take a crack at it, if only due to curiosity. That’s how I found myself with 2015’s The Lobster, starring two of my all-time favorite actors in Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. This film’s concept really intrigued me, which kept me drawn into the story it was telling. Not only that, but you have a broad range of actors giving great performances in this movie, especially Colin Farrell, who is not the thin and fit man from In Bruges,but a man whose physicality might be better expressed as a “dad bod” (I prefer the term “father figure,” but I digress). I also like how this movie delivers a message about finding love in the wrong ways: looking for superficial similarities as opposed to a deeper connection while being set in the backdrop of a dystopian society. So, if you’re looking for a film with an interesting plot hook and some all time greats in front of the camera, The Lobster might just be worth taking a look into. (Joseph Davis)
The Machinist
Christian Bale, at this point, is the reigning king of body transformations for his various roles, especially for the 2004 dramatic thriller, The Machinist. To play the guilt-ridden insomniac Trevor Reznik, he whittled his way down to 120 pounds. His reported daily diet consisted of 200 calories of black coffee, an apple, and a tin of tuna. The change in appearance, though drastic, really does help the portrayal of Trevor as his sanity deteriorates throughout the story, thinking that everyone is out to get him after a new employee Ivan joins the factory he works for. The appearance of Ivan is the catalyst of his further deteriorating mental state and only makes his non-existent sleep schedule far worse. His constant suspicion of those around him conspiring against him and the random appearances of Ivan result in him losing his livelihood and further flip his world upside down. The Machinist is a solid film backed by a transformative performance that will be talked about for many more years to come. (Joe Vargas)
Bronson
Bronson stars Tom Hardy as the real-life Charles Bronson, often referred to as Britain’s most violent criminal, whose one goal in life is “to be famous.” Singing, acting, crime… it’s all the same to Bronson. As long as it brings him some level of notoriety, Bronson is a happy man. If his name sounds familiar to you, that would be because Bronson’s promoter suggested he abandon his birth name, Michael Peterson, in favor of the name Charles Bronson (as in the star of Death Wish and The Dirty Dozen). The theatricality of this role allows Hardy’s immense talents as an actor to shine. In addition to packing on a hefty 42 pounds for the role, Hardy gets the chance to bring director Nicolas Winding Refn’s surrealist vision to life. When he is not riling up his fellow prisoners, Bronson doubles as the film’s narrator, acting out his own story in front of a live audience in a vaudeville-style theater — it’s even stranger than it sounds! Though the film may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I highly recommend checking out Bronson if you consider yourself a fan of Hardy, because this is easily one of his most impressive and underseen performances. (Foster Harlfinger)
Les Misérables
To this very day, Les Misérables is the only film I have seen twice in the cinemas. Part of the reason could be the fact I have always heard about the Broadway show, but never seen any adaptation before this one. And I know despite its pretty high rating on IMDb (7.6) and brilliant performances all around (Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried), this is a fairly divisive movie because they literally sing everything. So you either are on board with it or not. Obviously, given the fact I’ve seen it twice in the cinemas, I was on board, mainly due to the performances — talk about a transformation, from the “beefcake,” a.k.a. Wolverine, to Jean Valjean, Jackman did what people in the “business” call “go full-on Christian Bale” and went all in. And it paid off, as it’s one of his best performances. We knew he could do it all (if you haven’t seen his now legendary Oscars opening for the year 2009, do yourself a favor and watch it on YouTube), but he definitely went all-out with this performance. I would definitely recommend watching this film, especially if you aren’t bothered by singing every single word. Also, to address the elephant in the room, yes, it’s the same director as the infamous movie Cats, but they are miles apart. Don’t let this fact discourage you. This film happened way before he asked, “how can we do a musical about cats terrifying, confusing, and infuriating at the same time?” (Luke Burian)
300
Sometimes a movie requires a few of its actors to undergo a physical transformation to embody a role. In the 2006 film 300, Zack Snyder had dozens of actors and extras become Herculean gods to portray the Spartan army. Gerard Butler put on 30 pounds of muscle and lost virtually all his body fat for the role over the course of several months, and had to maintain it during 60 days of shooting. If I wrote down the workout he had to do to get in shape for the role, you’d probably throw up just reading it. The diet, as he joked on a talk show once, did not contain steamed vegetables and the hearts of his enemies, but it wasn’t far off. The challenge he underwent to become Leonidas paid off, because he transformed into that character both physically and mentally. 300 is beautiful and an action-packed spectacle of a movie, which is fun to watch and has left us with many memorable moments. Say what you will of Snyder’s directing, but when it comes to thrilling visuals and cinematography, he is a master. (Nick Ferro)
The Informant!
Well, there are reasons it’s called a “list of shame,” and I’m more than ashamed it took me so long to knock this one off my list. The Informant! is one of those films that once you start, there isn’t much that can take your focus from it. From the jump, Matt Damon delivers a stellar performance as you see him transform from Mark Whitacre, anxious employee, to anxious informant, to ever confident agent 0014. I can’t say enough great things about this roller coaster that had me going from rooting on our protagonist to cringing and yelling “No! What are you doing?!” to “nooooo…what did you do!?” Stories told from the viewpoint of an unreliable narrator have always been my jam, and Steven Soderbergh directs a perfect version of it, while following Mark’s journey (un)balancing corporate life and espionage. Complimented by a wonderful score that keeps things lighter in the transitions, this film demands your attention and doesn’t disappoint! (Matt Lawson)
Vice
Christian Bale, as you have seen from this list, is the absolute master at becoming a role. Playing former Vice President Dick Cheney, Bale pulled off some of the best acting of his career. He does not just look the part, but everything he does screams, “I am not acting anymore; I am now Dick Cheney!” He is subtle in his expressions, playing his cards close to the vest. He does not immediately come out and let his motivations be known, and all of that is clear with every movement Bale makes. There are good imitations and fun lookalikes on shows like Saturday Night Live, but nothing comes close to being as good as this. When he is making a political play, you see in his eyes that he is full of fight and is ready to battle. Towards the end of the movie, Cheney instructs his oldest daughter Liz to denounce same sex marriage and you can see the confliction he has in making this call knowing it will upset Mary, his youngest daughter. If anything can make you believe this is no longer Bale, watch the end monologue. I truly believe after the events of this film unfold, I am being talked down to by Vice President Cheney, and not an actor. Bale will continue to crush every role he is in, but as far as transforming into a role, Vice is the best you will ever see. (Scott Batchelor)
Pain & Gain
Pain & Gain is one of those overlooked Michael Bay movies that is very loosely based off of the true events. It follows Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), who tries to extort Monk for some money in ‘90s Miami. This is one of my favorite movies off of this week’s list because of several transformations that it is responsible for, all of which are little-known facts. Here are 5 things about Pain & Gain:
1. This movie is set in the ‘90s, back when Mark Wahlberg was Marky Mark; this is how we used to make the party start.
2. The Rock got in shape for this movie. Prior to this role he could barely lift a house.
3. Before and after this movie, Bay made Transformers movies.
4. Prior to this article, I worked for SiftPop, but am now fired for picking this movie.
5. The title Pain & Gain is a play on the phrase “No Pain, No Gain,” which refers to exercise where one could transform their body. In this movie, Captain Falcon cheats by taking steroids, which is really a commentary on the way society holds up physical appearance over just being a good person, when in reality, people need to find their own balance between being healthy and not being a total jerk. (Frank Kemp)
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