If there’s one group of industry professionals who can’t catch a break, it’s VFX artists. The teams behind the CGI creations we all take for granted are among the most overworked and underpaid creatives in the business, with a string of shocking revelations regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe in particular painting things in an even more unsavory light.
The most recent scuttlebutt has claimed that exiled studio executive Victoria Alonso was the number one culprit behind the technicians and computer wunderkinds being run into the ground and stretched beyond capacity, while hardly any top-level professionals within Hollywood have given them any notable backing with the inevitable exception of wholesome icon Brendan Fraser.
To say the digital creations in the likes of Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ranged from inconsistent and underwhelming to outright laughable and unconvincing would be an understatement, with audiences piling on to trash the MCU for its constantly substandard CGI work.
Unfortunately, the VFX crews themselves are fully aware of the discontent, and they’re even in full agreement. Speaking to IndieWire while making sure to retain their anonymity for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who’s been keeping abreast of Marvel’s purportedly brutal treatment of its pixelated purveyors, being forced to adhere to strict last-minute deadlines left them “embarrassed by some of the work they produced” as “results became increasingly inconsistent.”
That’s a sentiment a lot of fans would agree with, but with murmurings of things slowing down considerably as the Multiverse Saga progresses, let’s hope a change is in the offing.