The bad visual effects work was one of the most serious accusations leveled at Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. It was one of the more vexing aspects of the picture because you’d think that with a big-budget tentpole film from Marvel Studios, they’d want to offer the highest quality work possible.
Even the VFX artists who worked on the film recognize that this isn’t their best work, and in a recent Vulture story, three artists discuss the CGI work and why it wasn’t as excellent as it could have been.
The interviewees claim to have been “severely understaffed” and had an “unrealistically short timeline” to complete the film in time for its February premiere. They stated that they worked up to 80 hours each week to complete all of their tasks.
According to one of the sources, “Jim,” Marvel ended up taking several VFX artists from Quantumania to work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which was in post-production at the same time as Quantumania. As you are aware, the visual effects in the film are poor.
“There were a lot of editorial adjustments happening towards the latter third and fourth of the process for Ant-Man that was just too late,” Jim explained. There is no turning back. Marvel is responsible for why certain things were modified and why certain notes were nitpicked for longer than they should have been. But it did put a lot of strain, conflict, and weight on everyone.”
Marvel Studios has received criticism for how they have treated these artists, which you can read about in full here. Jim went on to say that most of these artists remain silent because they don’t want to “endanger their livelihood” by complaining. They must work to earn a living, and if they speak out about how Marvel treats them, Marvel may fire them.
Jim goes on to describe how he and the other artists are perplexed as to why the studio, which has the resources and deep budgets to produce high-quality films, is unwilling to go deeper and provide them with the tools they require to create amazing CGI effects. He does, however, have an answer… greed.
“A lot of us are sitting here thinking, ‘The money is there,'” he says. ‘Why isn’t it falling?’ Even if Marvel spent a little more money to hire more VFX artists, it wouldn’t make much of a difference to the executives at the top. Yet, if it comes down to them not being comfortable with their bank statistics and us laboring till we burn out, we always lose. To be honest, I associate it with human avarice.”
Jim went on to say that all of this is to blame for the film’s poor reception. “I think there was a lot of promise for this story, and for visual effects in general. I believe the film has received the positive reviews it has because Marvel is doubling down on quality control. They’re extracting blood from stones. We’re also out of the blood.”