Marvel Studios’ “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” hit the President’s Day weekend box-office this past weekend, pulling in $120 million in North America – a high for the franchise.
Even with a soft turnout in China and some of the worst reviews to date for a new MCU film, the $200 million budgeted project still managed to make $241.3 million worldwide in its debut weekend.
It now stands as one of only two MCU movies dubbed ‘rotten’ on the Tomatometer alongside “Eternals,” and its B CinemaScore does not bode well for its longevity. There are various complaints about the film but arguably the most common being the poor quality visual effects.
Now in a new piece in Vulture, some of the VFX technicians and artists who created those sequences have discussed the work and agree the CGI quality control on the film was ‘subpar’.
The outlet indicates two of the three people interviewed admitted that “shortcuts were taken” as “critical resources were diverted away to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” which was in post-production around the same time with several effects houses working on both films. One artist says “all the money… all the best resources went to that” and “it did diminish the ability to carry Ant-Man all the way through”.
Marvel’s visual effects problems have become a growing discussion in the wake of effects techs speaking out online about problems with the VFX industry working conditions as a whole, combined with Marvel ramping up the number of projects it has in the pipeline.
The workers tell Vulture the new “Ant-Man” was severely understaffed while facing an unrealistically short deadline to hit its release slot. Not helping? Filmmakers and studio executives reportedly ‘nitpicked’ and “revised vast swaths of Quantumania without budgeting enough time to implement the changes”.
One artist says: “Why didn’t they film it the right way or how they wanted in the first place? A quick shot that maybe takes two seconds would have to be redone 20 times to get the look that they want. There was a lot of reworking, a lot of inefficiency.”
This all resulted in VFX workers reportedly clocking up to 80 hours per week for months with understandable burnout resulting. It also impacted the film, resulting in a “lot of shortening and rolling of shots” due to there not being enough time to render everything – scenes were trimmed to save money, time or an inability to get the work done.
One of the VFX artists says: “Marvel is doubling down as much as possible on constricting quality. They’re squeezing blood out of stones. And we’re out of blood.” Another artist says their experience on the film was “comparable to the majority of productions we [VFX specialists] work on and, therefore, not especially bad or difficult”.
The same tech adds that it’s an issue across all projects as overall working conditions in the VFX industry involve “a lot of unpaid overtime, unrealistic deadlines… our working conditions are often less than ideal, and Quantumania was just another in a long line.”
Recently Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige indicated that Marvel is intending to slow down its output. This has already resulted in a several-month delay for “The Marvels” along with the number of Disney+ Marvel series this year looking likely to be restricted to just “Secret Invasion” and the second season of “Loki”.
