After taking the risk to invest their time and money in catching the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, more than a fair share of audience members found themselves put off by the consistent and noticeable lack of quality present throughout the entirety of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – including some of the very VFX artists who worked on the film.
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From an overall aesthetic that looks more reminiscent of Spy Kids than a multi-billion dollar film franchise to the revival of Darren Cross as a ‘Humpty Dumpty’-esque version of MODOK, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is plagued with questionable CGI (a shot of MODOK’s bare bottom has been found to be so absurd in both concept and execution that it’s already on its way into the annals of meme history).
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And as many already know, whether through social media or by catching Marvel’s latest outings themselves, this is not the first time in recent years that audiences have been put off by the poor visual quality of the studio’s efforts.
In particular, Black Widow, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Thor: Love and Thunder all left audiences baffled with their abysmal CGI quality.
Sadly for the few fans who still hold out hope for the franchise’s future, it seems that things will not be getting any better in the foreseeable future.
According to some of the very same VFX artists who worked on Ant-Man’s latest adventure, the film’s lacking CGI was not the result of their teams’ skills and dedication, but rather Marvel’s reluctance to actually invest any of their profits back into their product.
This insight into Marvel’s inner turmoil was provided by three VFX artists – all of whom chose to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation – in respective interviews about the situation given to Vulture.
As per a technician who has worked on multiple Marvel projects and whose employer was hired to provide CGI services for both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and its MCU predecessor Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, “In terms of priority, Wakanda Forever was definitely at the top of the list. All the money went to that. All the best resources went to that.”
“It’s understandable given the context — with Chadwick and everything and how well the first film did,” they conceded. “But it did diminish the ability to carry Ant-Man all the way through.”
The technician then further recalled how “For Ant-Man, there were a lot of editorial changes happening toward the latter third and fourth of the project that were just too late. There’s a point of no return. Why certain things were changed, why certain notes were nitpicked longer than they should have been — that’s on Marvel. But it definitely did cause a lot of tension, turmoil, and weight on everybody at [his employer, whose company name has been redacted].”
“Unfortunately, it is noticeable that there were shortcuts,” they added. “Certain things were used to cover up incomplete work. Certain editorial cuts were made to not show as much action or effects as there could have been — likely because there just wasn’t enough time to render everything. There was a lot of shortening and rolling of shots (rolling is when you don’t shorten or lengthen a shot — you just move it a few frames in the cut). It really did feel like certain scenes were trimmed or otherwise altered to either save money, save time, or cover up the inability to get it done.”
Turning to the question of “Why didn’t we push back?”, the technician explained, “You don’t want to do anything that’s going to jeopardize your livelihood in the slightest.”
“Part of that means when an executive decision comes down the line that says, “This is what we’re going to do,” you just assume you don’t have the power to say anything against it,” they continued. “You can’t be like, “Well, that’s kind of sh—y. Shouldn’t we do something better?” Because that will never happen.”
“A lot of us are sitting here thinking, ‘The money is there’,” they noted. “Why is it not coming down?’ Marvel spending a bit more money to pay more VFX people wouldn’t make that much of a difference for the executives all the way at the top. But if it comes down to them not being comfortable with their bank numbers and us working until burnout, we lose out every time. Honestly, I equate it to human greed.”
Ultimately, the technician admitted, “Overall, I think what they came up with is satisfactory. It’s a good placeholder for the beginning of Phase Five. But I think there was so much potential for this story, for the visual effects in general — I think the movie is getting the reviews it’s 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.”
Another source, an unnamed photogrammetry tech, offered a less ‘doom-and-gloom’ outlook on the industry as the above technician, but revealed that such mismanagement is par for the course within the industry.”
” I wouldn’t say other projects necessarily took priority or that morale was particularly bad (although one of my co-workers actually became unhappy because of the lack of work he was given on that movie — he spent days on standby only to end up doing nothing, and this went on for months),” they said. “Our working conditions are often less than ideal, and Quantumania was just another in a long line.”
This Marvel Studios ‘farmhouse’ was further detailed by Vulture’s third source, a VFX artist whose portfolio includes a number of superhero films from across the last ten years.
According to them, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania suffered this drop in overall visual quality because “Wakanda Forever took precedence.”
“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. It was on the back burner — less of a pressing thing,” said the artist.
To that end, speaking to the threequel’s actual development process, they further recalled, “Maybe the director had an idea of what he wanted, but he wasn’t 100 percent clear. We had a rough environment that we were sticking a few main characters in. At that time, we weren’t told where the characters should be in that environment. We were just going with what felt right.”
“Then there were times when we were creating an actor’s entire action [like] Ant-Man moving across something,” they said. “And you just think, ‘Why didn’t they film it the right way or how they wanted in the first place? Why are we having to redo and re-create? Why do we have to Frankenstein together an actor’s performance? 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,” the artist stated. “I ended up taking over and reworking a large portion of other artists’ work — which is not how things usually go when you are working for other studios.”
Ultimately, they concluded that the film’s problems could have been alleviated if “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 insider asserted. “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.”
