There have been some new changes when it comes to the leadership at Marvel Studios. Victoria Alonso, the president of VFX and postproduction has left the studio. Alonso has been a part of the Marvel crew since 2006 and has appeared as the Executive Producer on all the films since the release of The Avengers in 2012. This news comes as a shock to a lot of people who have been looking at the most recent films through the Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) and Visual Effects (VFX) angle.
Marvel Studios’ Visual Effects
Since the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, fans have been extremely critical of the visual effects of the film. They have even resorted to making their own changes or sharing images with better visual effects they created by themselves at home. Most problems related to the visual imagery have been attributed to the fact that VFX artists were not being treated well enough to do their extremely strenuous and detailed job of manufacturing every shot from scratch.
The lack of good CGI and VFX became extremely clear in the show She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, where fans pointed out that Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk) didn’t even look like a person when she turned into the Hulk. Moreover, the fight sequences and the rest of the visual effects seemed in poor taste compared to the visuals in previous films and television shows.
When Marvel Studios released their original slate of movies and TV shows, they were all grouped together in close proximity. In 2021, there was a new episode or a film from Marvel Studios releasing every week. This kind of constant superhero content has led to Superhero Fatigue in audiences, where they are tired of seeing the same kind of images and visuals across the film screen. Whether it be Marvel Studios or the DC ones, fans are discontent with seeing mediocre and poorly designed visual content on screen.
It is unclear whether the studio took in fans’ criticism of the visual effects and graphics, but they did manage to delay many projects and even moved the release of Avengers 5 and Avengers 6 a year apart to give filmmakers and technicians the full opportunity to develop their projects well. While this is just one prong of the problem, many have also expressed how keeping the scripts away from the actors, having them not interact with their backgrounds and changing things at the last minute is perhaps one of the reasons why the projects have not been doing well so far.
A journalist who writes for New York Magazine and the Vulture, Chris Lee, mentioned how Victoria Alonso essentially ran the VFX department. While a larger legacy media hasn’t stepped on this conversation, Lee has shared on his Twitter that he has spoken to multiple VFX techs who have come forward and told him that she has been leading the team quite harshly while also sharing that things were not working well under her leadership.
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Fans have come forward to both express their happiness following her leave but also questioned whether she is being painted as the scapegoat from a long list of people who are currently at the company. Others have also shared how the VFX problems really only started a few years ago and Alonso had been on the team for the past two decades. They have also said that she is one of the few Queer Latina woman at the head of a production company and her being blamed for everything wrong at Marvel Studios is a concerning move.
Perhaps, the studio is really listening to the fans when it comes to their criticism about the visual effects and the CGI, but viewers are now asking bigger questions about the writing and the structure of these films and whether they really work with the current, overtly critical cultural climate that films are being released in. It is entirely possible that creators from Marvel Studios are now figuring out how important fandom opinion is when it comes to films and television shows. If Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is any indication, they will take the hint.
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 will be releasing in theatres next on May 5, 2023. What do you think of the new projects being released by Marvel Studios? Let us know in the comments below.
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