Ant-Man 3 VFX artists reveal why MCU film's CGI is so bad: 'Human greed'

By now, Disney is this huge juggernaut with an untold number of intellectual properties at its disposal and despite recent losses, the future looks bright. The studio has reaped rich dividends in the last decade or so with properties like Marvel and Star Wars. But in this humongous machine, not every cog is working as well as it should. Many of the company's Marvel shows and movies, which come under the umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have suffered in quality after the 2019's culmination that was Avengers: Endgame. The latest entry, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was supposed to be this important and yet light-hearted introduction to the next Big Bad of MCU, called Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors, and yet the film did not please most critics.

Also Read:Ant-Man 3 movie review: Formulaic and forgettable, Paul Rudd movie is a dud

One of the major things critics took exception to was the CGI quality of the film.

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Now, as per a report in Vulture, it may be the case that bad CGI and VFX in the film may have been due to the focus being on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Both films were in development and post-production at the same time. And it appears the VFX artists on Quantumania were not provided proper resources as compared to those working on Wakanda Forever.

Why are VFX artists resentful?

VFX artists have long been complaining about long hours, low pay, lack of job security, and poor working conditions in Hollywood. They are often required to work overtime and weekends to meet tight deadlines, and the intense pressure to deliver high-quality work can lead to burnout and mental health issues. Many VFX artists have also expressed frustration with the lack of recognition they receive for their contributions to blockbuster films, which often generate billions of dollars in revenue.

One VFX technician told the publication, "A lot of us are sitting here thinking, The money is there. 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."

One other said, "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. 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: Ant-Man moving across something. 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. 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."

In recent years, some VFX artists have organised to demand better working conditions and unionisation, which they believe would give them greater bargaining power and more leverage in negotiations with studios.

What is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania all about?

Quantumania continues the story of Paul Rudd's Scott Lang or Ant-Man. In the film, which also brings back director Peyton Reed, Lang, his daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) find themselves stranded in the Quantum Realm. And there, they face Kang the Conqueror.

Is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania a good movie?

As mentioned above, most critics have dismissed the film. It currently holds a score of 49 per cent on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. The critical consensus reads, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania mostly lacks the spark of fun that elevated earlier adventures, but Jonathan Majors' Kang is a thrilling villain poised to alter the course of the MCU."

Also Read:Explained: Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania

WION also gave the film a negative review. It read, "Quantumania is an absolute dud. I felt bad for genuinely great actors that populate this thing for having to mouth lines that might as well have come out from that AI thingy everyone these days seems so fond of. The script is, and I cannot stress this enough, execrable. The screenwriter behind this film is Jeff Loveness and that should frighten you. For he is also writing the next Avengers movie, The Kang Dynasty. MCU is certainly not getting any better soon."

That said, at the time of writing this film is doing extremely well at the global box office.

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