Quantummania VFX Fail: Marvel’s Phase Five is going great

Others feel it’s more than heated box office competition and harsh holiday comparisons. There’s concern the latest “Ant-Man” extends a potentially worrying trend for Marvel. Though “Quantumania” endured the steepest fall, it’s not the only recent MCU movie to witness a substantial drop in its second weekend. Pandemic-era entries, including “Black Widow” (67.8%), “Thor: Love and Thunder” (67.6%), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (67.5%) and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (67%), suffered similar declines.

Yet those movies — with the exception of “Black Widow,” which was released day-and-date on Disney Plus — earned at least $760 million and as much as $955 million by the end of their theatrical runs. There’s an argument that Marvel hasn’t been appealing beyond its target audience, but that target audience sure is dependable. No other franchise, dozens of films in, has managed to come close to that kind of consistency.

“The loyal fans are going to show up no matter what,” Robbins says. “The increasingly front-loaded nature and, occasionally divisive reception, of some of their recent films might not necessarily be worrying to the brand overall as long as the core fanbase remains.”

Let’s be real, though. It will take more than one shoddy Ant-Man movie to halt the Marvel juggernaut, but even Kevin Feige is aware that pumping out a lot of content over a short period is not the way forward. The Marvels, the team-up starring Brie Larsen’s Captain Marvel and Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel, has been pushed back to November 10th from a summer release. Disney’s Haunted Mansion, starring Rosario Dawson, LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson and Dany DeVito will take over the summer slot.

However, credible rumors are circulating that another reason the movie was pushed back is to have more time to work on the VFX which, if Quantumania is any indication, is a very wise move.

Quantumania just wasn’t a good movie. It nearly managed to make Paul Rudd charmless – something previously only theoretical, like cold fusion. The characterization was non-existent – why was the Wasp even in the movie? She had nothing to do and no character arc, something even Evangeline Lilly hinted at in interviews. Glen Weldon at NPR had a hilarious summation f the characters:

But as depicted here, Scott’s entire personality, the whole of his character, is defined thus: “I love my daughter Cassie. Where is Cassie? What have you done with Cassie?”

Douglas’ Hank Pym? “I like ants.”

Pfeiffer’s Janet? “I have secrets I refuse to divulge for no reasons I can point to.”

Newton’s Cassie? “I am every teen ever depicted in popular culture.”

Lilly’s Hope? “…”

In theory movie-goers could put up with this weak sauce if the movie looked cool but…it didn’t. Not only was Modok a horrifying disaster, but the inevitable third act CGI-fightfest was even lighter on physical things that looked like they were happening in real space than usual. And this was no accident.

Marvel’s VFX artist have been complaining about overwork for a while, and according to Vulture, work on Quantumania suffered because more resources were being given to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The Black Panther franchise is the MCU’s most socially important character, and the tragedy of Chadwick Boseman’s death and the serious themes of colonization and grief certainly deserved a lot of attention. Quantumania’s more light-hearted Star War’s Cantina Scene vibe suffered. Three VFX artist interviewed had mostly critical things to say about how the movie was made:

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 [company name redacted].

Unfortunately, it is noticeable that there were shortcuts. 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.

A viewing of the  the finished product does nothing to refute these accusations: a lot of frantic jumping around against a swirly background that is just NASA space photos blown up and run through Procreate.

Engadget has a similar report on AMATWQ’s VFX woes:

“Making big pivots late in the game has consequences, and there is a constant scramble from the VFX houses to keep up,” a former VFX worker told Engadget. (They requested anonymity due to confidentiality agreements around their work.) “And near the end, it’s almost always a disaster. Lots of miracles. Lots of clever solutions, not based on heightening the art, but just being able to do a week’s worth of work in 24 hours.”

Even AMATWQ director Peyton Reed noted that The “volume” – a projection system shooting for non-existent environments that is increasingly used on Marvel and Star Wars projects – worked better on The Mandalorian (which he also directed) because they had more time. 

REED: I think, again, it’s like the idea of LED technology and using that as interactive light and visual effects is good. You know, there are limitations to it, and we push that system to its limit on this movie. There are things that it could do and it can’t do. What works so well in Mandalorian is they have a lot of lead time, because they’re doing a whole series, to invest and create these environments, and on the schedule we were on, it’s not always right for that situation. It’s cool, I like the volume.

When a film director is admitting that a TV show has more time to get things right, something is seriously out of whack.

Luckily, the powers that be at the MCU seem to have noticed this, hence pushing back The Marvels and tapping the brakes on the TV/streaming schedule. It’s not often that overworked craftspeople complaining that their work is being compromised by tight deadlines and last minute changes are listened to, but if that’s the case here, kudos to the decision makers.

Look, nothing is ever going to top the Infinity War/Endgame one-two punch. The next Avengers movie will have mostly replacement characters – Tony Stark, OG Cap and Black Widow are dead or retired – and the new “Young Avengers” have big shoes to fill. Blasting out Phase Five movies at a furious ace will do nothing to help that – and a slower pace might just prove the old adage “absence make the heart grow fonder.”