When it comes to speculation and theorizing about a movie as massively anticipated as Avengers: Endgame, fans leave no stone unturned, picking up on the smallest details and from those extrapolating intriguing conclusions. While much of the discussion about the Avengers: Endgame trailer has been about Ant-Man and Ronin, one such sleuth was paying attention to Scarlett Johansson's hair. This person believes that Black Widow's hair is CGI'd in the trailer. Take a look.
from r/marvelstudios
Lacking the requisite expertise, it's difficult to say for sure, but Reddit user walkinmermaid might be on to something. In the first half of the image, Black Widow's hair does look kind of off. And if you watch the Avengers: Endgame trailer in motion, you can get a better idea of that. It's hard to pinpoint what it is but it does look somewhat unnatural (deepest apologies to ScarJo if I'm wrong).
I'm less convinced that the second half of the image is CGI'd. If anything her hair looks more like it could be a wig there. But, again, it's hard to say. Even if the Reddit user is right, what does it matter? Well, why would you CGI someone's hair unless you had a specific reason to do so?
Assuming that Scarlett Johansson wasn't just having a bad hair day that required digital assistance to fix, there are other possible explanations. The Reddit poster speculates that either those shots are not in the movie at all or they are being used to hide something, specifically a time jump.
Addressing the first hypothesis, we know that not everything that is in a trailer is always in the movie. Furthermore, Marvel has shown that it is not beyond putting things in the trailer to set expectations that will ultimately be subverted.
For example, that shot of the Avengers charging from the first Avengers: Infinity War trailer was not in the film. Hence this is definitely possible, but why her hair would need to be CGI'd for a red herring shot is less clear.
The other hypothesis, that Black Widow's hair has been CGI'd to hide the time jump, is very interesting. We have heard that Scarlett Johansson's character might be going back to her signature red hair in this film, along with a shorter haircut. In theory that's no big deal, after all, the trailers for Avengers: Infinity War didn't hide that some of the heroes (including Black Widow) had new looks, and we've seen that Cap trimmed his hair and shaved off his beard in the Endgame trailer.
Perhaps the thought was that people would buy that Cap just felt like a shave, which is a quick thing, but for Black Widow to have also changed her look in a drastic way might have given away too much about a potential time jump. (Rumored promo art recently leaked, showing Black Widow with long hair in a braid, for what that's worth.)
So they CGI'd her hair to make her look as we last saw her. That's the theory. Of course, if that's the case, why didn't Marvel get in on the facial hair CGI fun and give Cap a digital beard?
Many have long speculated that this film will have a time jump and leaks and rumors have supported that. Everything from hearing about Tony Stark and Pepper having a kid, to Scott Lang's daughter being older, has led us to believe that this film will jump ahead to long after Thanos' Decimation. However, the trailer does not support a time jump, or so we think.
These two shots with the suspect hair could both be set after the time jump, while some of the other stuff in the trailer is before. It would make sense too. If the snap just happened and Hawkeye is still on house arrest/just lost his family, it wouldn't make sense for him to be Ronin already.
Also, the tallying of the fallen after the Decimation would have taken a while. The Avengers might not have known for some time that Scott Lang was even missing. For his appearance at Avengers HQ to be the big deal it appears to be in the trailer, they have to have been all but certain that he was gone.
It's a lot to chew on, and it will be interesting to see once we get more trailers whether this CGI hair hypothesis is supported or not.
Avengers: Infinity War opens in theaters on April 26, 2019. For all of next year's biggest movies, check out our 2019 Release Schedule.
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