It’s rare to find a Hollywood movie that’s completely VFX-free, 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: Quantum of Solace was more CGI than real, and critics took note of the film’s poor visuals, helping the film become one of the lowest-rated MCU films to date. Anonymous VFX industry veterans reveal how the film ended up the way it did in a new article from fingerboard.
“(Black Panther) Wakanda Forever got the upper hand,” said one VFX artist who has worked on several Marvel Studios films. “It seemed like senior management and supervisor roles had changed to put it on their plates, and Ant-Man was being worked on by a smaller team.”
Like many other films, Ant-Man sometimes required VFX artists to create scenes out of whole cloth.
“There were times when we created the entire action of the actor — Ant-Man moving on something. And you wondered why they didn’t shoot it right or wrong the way they wanted? Why do we need Frankenstein together with the actor’s performance? A quick shot that takes maybe two seconds will have to be redone 20 times to get the look you want.”
“Many of us are sitting here thinking the money is there,” said another. “Why isn’t it going down? Marvel spending a little more money to play more VFX people wouldn’t make much of a difference to the execs at the top. But if it comes down to them not getting their bank numbers right and us working ourselves to burnout, we lose every time. Frankly, I equate it to human greed.”
“There was so much potential for this story, for the visuals in general; i think the movie is getting the reviews it’s getting because marvel is keeping the quality as low as possible. They squeeze the blood out of the stones and we’re done,” said one vet.
“There were some cool sequences we were putting together that seemed promising. But more people could have been involved in the project. Maybe more money was spent. When we work on many projects at the same time, resources become smaller. The quality begins to lose. You can’t expect all VFX companies to deliver the highest quality work, especially if you’re going to do it on a smaller budget,” said another.
If you haven’t seen Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania, you must check out our review. However, if you’ve seen it, you can get all the details on your MCU by reading on everything we know since Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantum Mania..
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