It’s clear to see from the studio’s recent output that Marvel has gotten lazy — its over-reliance on CGI stretches to almost every facet of production, including Jonathan Majors‘ Kang suit.
Some have taken issue with Marvel’s creative decisions with one fan claiming it’s painfully obvious to see that Majors isn’t wearing the suit in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. “I’m constantly getting distracted by the CGI used for Kang’s suit.” The issue with nanotech has been brought up numerous times as a complaint against the franchise. It’s just not as fun when the actors are obviously not wearing the suits themselves. “Having a real helmet would mean he wears the helmet almost all the time… which I feel like Kang should do.”
Fellow fans agreed that the CGI suits were an annoyance, although the problem isn’t just limited to Majors. Every hero in modern Marvel movies has a CGI suit that’s simply added in post. For some reason, literally every hero and villain now has access to nanotech.
“Replace Kang with everyone and I’m right there with you.”
On the other hand, it does make sense for Kang to have access to nanotech. He is from the 31st century, after all. One fan in the subreddit pointed this out.
“I don’t think Kang is the sort of guy to use a practical helmet, he’s too advanced for that, it’s like Tony Stark going back to practical suits after discovering nano-tech.”
However, none of this changes the fact that the nanotech trope is getting incredibly tiresome. Everybody taking off their helmets all the time sort of ruins the moment. Kang’s dissolving helmet would look unique if he were the only one with that technology, but everyone in the MCU uses that technology now. Rather than looking cool and futuristic, it just looks like those behind the movie don’t care about attention to detail or making their films look interesting anymore.
This problem goes way deeper than just laziness, though. Marvel uses CGI for pretty much everything, and this is because the higher-ups at the studio tend to change their minds at the last minute about many things, meaning placeholder suits and props are often used when filming. Furthermore, the VFX artists work in shocking conditions with unreasonable workloads and deadlines, meaning that the CGI often comes out looking shoddy.
Perhaps it’s time to write out nanotech. That might sound crazy, but Marvel has done it before with things like Extremis not being mentioned in the MCU for over five years. Marvel could just drop the annoying nanotech trope and give the fans what they actually want: real, physical suits.