There’s rarely a movie out of Hollywood that’s completely free of some VFX work, but when we’re talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can multiply the normal amount of VFX by a hundred or more. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was more CGI than it was real, and critics took notice of the movie’s poor visual effects, helping the movie become one of the lowest-rated MCU movies to date. Anonymous VFX industry veterans talked about how the movie ended up the way it did in a new article from Vulture.
“[Black Panther] Wakanda Forever took precedence,” said one VFX artist who has worked on a number of Marvel Studios movies. “It felt like the higher-up and supervisor roles were shifted around to put that on their plates and there was a smaller team working on Ant-Man.”
As with many other movies, Ant-Man sometimes required VFX artists to create scenes from whole cloth.
“There were times when we were creating an actor’s entire action–Ant-Man moving across something. And you think, why didn’t they film it the right way or how they wanted in the first place? Why do we have to Frankenstein together an actor’s performance? A quick shot that takes maybe two seconds would have to be redone 20 times to get the look they want.”
“A lot of us are sitting here thinking, the money is there,” said another. “Why is it not coming down? Marvel spending a bit more money to play more VFX people wouldn’t make that much of a difference for the executives at the top. But if it comes down to them not being comfortable with their bank numbers and us working until burnout, we lose every time. Honestly, I equate it to human greed.”
“There was so much potential for this story, for the visual effects in general; I think the movie is getting the reviews its been getting because Marvel is doubling down as much as possible on constricting quality. They’re squeezing blood out of stones, and we’re out of blood,” said one vet.
“There were some cool sequences we were putting together that seemed promising. But there could have been more people involved on the project. Maybe more money spent. With a lot of these projects being worked on simultaneously, resources become thinner. The quality starts lacking. You can’t expect all of the VFX companies to give the highest-quality work, especially if you’re going to do it on a lower budget,” said another.
If you haven’t seen Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania yet, make sure to check out our review. If you have seen it, though, you can get all your MCU details straight by reading up on everything we know after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
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