The most unforgiving job in Hollywood has to be that of the VFX artist, for reasons that have been brought to the fore once again by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In the aftermath of the Phase Five kickoff’s negative reviews and even more criticism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shoddy CGI, it was revealed that the studio had shifted the focus so heavily towards Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at the expense of the Quantum Realm-set threequel, leaving the team with a near-insurmountable task to deliver 100 percent consistency.
In short, they’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. When the digital wizards effortlessly succeed in their goal, then nobody brings up the fact they don’t get compensated anywhere near fairly enough. On the other side of the coin, some sketchy pixels and unconvincing creations lead to an outpouring of backlash and dismissal of their work.
As you can expect, then, Quantumania visual effects supervisors Jesse James Chisholm and Dave Hodgins revealed to Variety that they know damn well they’ve got a difficult job, but they remain proud of their work regardless of what the critics have to say.
“I feel like working for Marvel, I’m in the NFL. They asked me to do Ant-Man and I was like great, these films have all this heart, but I read the script and thought, ‘Holy shit! This is not Ant-Man, this is gigantic. I got to play in the Super Bowl. I got to create characters and environments and bring Peyton’s movie to life, and it’s really exciting. I feel fortunate to do what I do, and I work my ass off. It’s easy in this climate right now to bash things and that’s the easy way. I don’t know if many people know what we have to do and what it takes to make a movie of this magnitude, but I’m proud of what we accomplished.”
If the VFX crew had more time and were paid more, then maybe the MCU’s shortcomings in that department wouldn’t become a conversation point as regularly as it has been, but based on what we’ve heard from behind the scenes, that isn’t going to change anytime soon.