Despite fans theorizing that the white mask in Monkey Man was in more scenes and then cut from the film, that isn’t the case. In fact, the white mask was always meant to be largely symbolic, which is why it wasn’t used in any action scenes in the Dev Patel movie. In fact, only one white mask was made for the movie, while there were three regular masks.
“It was always one [white mask],” explained mask designer Eddie Yang to ComingSoon. “I think he knew he was gonna use it very briefly, and it’s symbolic. I only now realize, after having seen the film, that it was based on that monkey that you see very briefly with the white hair and the dark roots and stuff. He showed me photos of that, and I didn’t realize they had already shot that ’cause it, it looked like it was the same photos that we based the hair color.”
As for how they got the white look for the mask, it wasn’t actually bleached like in the events of the movie.
“We cheated it and, and made it with white hair. Because he knew exactly how he was gonna use it. He explained the scene and how he was gonna dip it in this liquid and all that stuff. So we were very well prepped for that. Most of the focus was on the dark-haired mask because that was gonna be featured more, and he was talking about several stunts. So yeah, we wanted at least one backup. Then I think he had production meetings, and everybody kinda came to the conclusion that, yeah, it should be three of these, and the white one would be seen only very briefly.”
Monkey Man is now available to rent or buy at home from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
