Regardless of your thoughts on Marvel Studios’ latest film, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” there’s no one who can deny that the film is VFX-heavy. From the moment the main characters venture into the Quantum Realm (about 15 minutes into the film), there isn’t a moment on screen that doesn’t include some sort of VFX work. I mean, we’re talking about a film that takes place in an alternate reality. So, it makes sense. However, when you have such a VFX-heavy film, you better hope the talented folks working on those visuals are given enough time and money to bring them to life in the best way possible. Unfortunately, according to some of the crew who spoke to Vulture, recently, that wasn’t always the case.
Before we get into what some of the VFX people who spoke to Vulture had to say, it’s important to note that the opinions of only a few people can’t be totally representative of an entire crew. To say as much would be unfair to everyone involved in ‘Quantumania.’ However, in light of recent VFX complaints in Marvel films and TV series combined with the crappy working conditions shared by some of the people who did the visuals on those projects, it’s worth noting what people have to say. So, with that preamble out of the way, it would appear that there is one thing mentioned by a couple of the anonymous VFX workers that seems to be a running theme with Marvel projects, as of late—a ton of work and not enough time (and resources) to properly do it.
In the case of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” it would appear that Marvel Studios took a number of the VFX crew available and had them focus on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which was released in November. Is this because ‘Wakanda Forever’ was going to be a more important film or just the first one to be released? We don’t know.
“In terms of priority, ‘Wakanda Forever’ was definitely at the top of the list,” said one anonymous VFX crew member. “All the money went to that. All the best resources went to that. It’s understandable given the context — with Chadwick [Boseman] and everything and how well the first film did. But it did diminish the ability to carry ‘Ant-Man’ all the way through.”
Another anonymous VFX worker added, “‘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.”
The first anonymous crew member also talked about how a number of late changes affected the workflow for the VFX crew.
“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,” they said. “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].”
It also must be said that a third VFX person who spoke to Vulture didn’t really see much of a difference with how they were treated on ‘Quantumania’ versus other major blockbusters. So, the VFX worker issues aren’t a Marvel-only thing and just a symptom of how these crew members are treated on a variety of projects.
“My experience on ‘Quantumania’ was comparable to the majority of productions we [VFX specialists] work on and, therefore, not especially bad or difficult,” they explained. “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). Our working conditions are often less than ideal, and ‘Quantumania’ was just another in a long line.”
So, is Marvel treating VFX workers any worse than other studios? Is Marvel’s ambitious schedule of film and TV projects leading to less-than-stellar visuals from an overworked VFX crew? It would appear, based on these stories, it’s somewhere in the middle and likely a more nuanced conversation than you get from just three separate accounts.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is in theaters now.