The Flash isn’t so much a standalone movie as the personification of every major problem plaguing superhero films today. At the top of the pile is its widely panned visual effects, with virtually every CGI-heavy moment in the Ezra Miller vehicle being eyeball-blisteringly hard to endure. Director Andy Muschietti has maintained that this effect was for some reason intentional, but that hasn’t stopped critical fans from wanting to know what went wrong behind the scenes.
For those curious for further info, TikTok user No The Robot has gone viral for digging into what he thinks is the real reason for The Flash‘s CGI woes, from his vantage point of being someone who claims to have worked on the DC film. Unsurprisingly, No The Robot proclaims that the real issue lies with how movie studios are putting too much pressure on VFX artists to work too hard and too fast.
“The way VFX companies get work is that Marvel and Warner Bros and other studios will approach VFX companies and say ‘hey I have 2000 shots that I need for this sequence.’ The VFX studios will place a bid based on that quantity of shots,” the TikToker explained, before digging into the problem with this system:
“But here’s the catch: the amount of work per shot varies dramatically, so one shot could have wire removal, another shot could have wire removal, smoke simulation, fire sim, face replacement, green screen. Despite the difference in workload between those two shots they both are considered just one shot each. Because of this, VFX artists are forced to work relentless hours, overtime almost every day including weekends.”
Acknowledging that complaints about bad CGI in superhero movies have seriously increased in recent years, in films such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Thor: Love and Thunder, No The Robot points out that it’s all to do with how the genre’s offerings are coming out at a faster pace these days. Meanwhile, Avatar: The Way of Water took years to make and it features beautiful visuals.
Despite the clear indication that a little more time is needed to produce superior CGI, the TikToker argues that “movie studios don’t care about CGI” and in the aims of increasing profits are pressuring “super-talented and hard-working artists” for “faster and faster results.” No The Robot concludes by saying, “So if it looks like a VFX shot in The Flash was made in a week… it’s probably because it was.”
The Flash is a particularly egregious example of this issue, but as this TikTok video warns, it’s not something that’s likely to be fixed anytime soon.