Today, Explained - Why Marvel movies look bad

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Bad visual effects in movies may have less to do with technology and more to do with workers being underpaid and overworked. Vulture senior reporter Chris Lee explains in this episode of Into It. This episode was produced for Into It by Travis Larchuk and Jordana Hochman with help from Today, Explained's Siona Peterous, Laura Bullard, and Patrick Boyd. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new animated Spider-Man movie does a lot of things you don't see other comic book movies doing. It opens with a superhero playing in a punk band and imagines what Manhattan would look like if it were mashed up with Mumbai. It acknowledges the existence and importance of Jamaican beef patties. But most important of all, it looks really good. I looked at my uncle and... Let me guess, he died? Like, the movie looks astonishing really good. I looked at my uncle and... Let me guess, he died? Like, the movie looks astonishingly good.

It shifts visual styles as its characters' moods shift. It reminds you that comic book movies come from comic books, a visual art form. It reminds you how easy it can be to forget that fact. Why can I understand you? Oh, great, that's the ooze. Hey, everybody, it worked! Ooze worked. Coming up on today, explain why so many big special effects laden blockbusters don't look very good anymore. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long.

From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today explained Sean Ramos for him, but today we're bringing you something a little different.

I recently had the privilege of guest hosting another show in the Vox Media Podcast Network, Intuit, with Sam Sanders. You might remember Sam from Public Radio if you're a listener. It's been a minute. Now he's hosting Intuit, the pop culture podcast from Vulture and New York Magazine. So while guest hosting, I want to talk to someone from Vulture who could help me understand something that often leaves me scratching my head. Why big budget movies these days so frequently look kind of trashy. I'm talking about the big third act superhero battles, the under the sea extravaganzas, the bomb rolling through Rome. You know what I'm talking about. This is what we dug into when I guest hosted into it. And we're bringing you that conversation on Today Explained.

The VFX industry is in turmoil right now. And with 90% of all movies reliant on, you know, using some sort of VFX in them, there's a real shortage of qualified workers. Chris Lee is going to be our guide today. He's a senior reporter for Vulture and New York Magazine. One segment that I know came up for a lot of criticism that I personally think is incredibly preposterous and poorly rendered CGI was in the most recent Doctor Strange movie, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, when Doctor Strange faces off against this octopus monster in the city streets of Manhattan.

It just looks so cartoony and awful and just ridiculous. Like, the sense of consequence of, like, you know, are these characters going to be stomped, you know, stomped to death by this marauding octopus monster goes out the window because you just, like, think to yourself,

this looks stupid and childish. So I think that there's been a lot of stuff like that in recent Marvel movies. Like, in, you know, The Eternals, there's a Superman-esque character who flies around shooting lasers out of his eyes that people thought was rather poorly done. A lot of people point to the end

of the first Black Panther as appalling VFX. So the first Black Panther was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and is heralded as among the best Marvel movies to ever come out. But if you look at the end, the climactic battle sequence, people say it makes no sense. Like, the characters have been doing super things throughout the movie, and at the end of the movie, the physics with which they operate go out the window. Like, suddenly they're jumping, you know, the height of a skyscraper,

apropos nothing. Like, you know, there's nothing to establish that they can do this. And what I'm told by VFX professionals is that, you know, basically the studio ran out of time and money and just thrust the work upon VFX workers who are out of their depth. And they came up with the best thing that they could, but the result is decidedly lackluster and kind of takes you out of the movie at worst. Help me understand how that could happen. I mean, was the director not around for the making of the last, what, third of the movie or whatever it is? Well, okay, I'm so glad that you asked about that, because this is a crucial part of the problem with the current VFX malaise. Ryan Coogler is a director who earned his stripes as a filmmaker at the Sundance Film

Festival. He directed a small independent film called Fruitvale Station, which was made on a shoestring. We played freeze tag today. Really? Did you win? They couldn't catch me. Think you're fast, huh? And then suddenly he's thrust into the top echelon of directors and given a movie with a nine-figure budget and an extensive computer-generated imagery quotient. A lot of Marvel directors and a lot of people, you know, directing movies in this superhero space come from the same background.

They don't have experience with VFX. This is the problem. Like, they'll get sort of rough drafts of what a sequence is going to look like, and they have trouble conceptualizing what it's going to be like when it's eventually on screen, as opposed to a director who has extensive experience working with VFX.

So it's not like Ryan Coogler abdicated his responsibilities as a director. It's just, you know, I'm told again and again that somebody like Chloe Zhao, who similarly came from directing a movie like Nomadland and, you know, got Marvel's The Eternals. Five years ago, Thanos erased half of the population of the universe. But the people of this planet brought everyone back with a snap of a finger. These guys all don't have any background in VFX, and yet they get these big VFX-heavy movies,

and then they're expected to know what to do, but they don't. You're mentioning a lot of Marvel movies, and I know the most recent Ant-Man movie got a lot of criticism too for just being this sort of garbage feast of VFX. The faces looked bad, the Scott doubles looked awful, and it got me thinking how this was approved to be in the final cut of the movie. Why is it that Marvel gets so much attention here? Is it because they're making the biggest movies or are they actually the worst offenders? Both of those things. So, you know, Marvel is the most reliable blockbuster factory in the history of moviedom. I mean, their track record of success is unparalleled. It's truly astonishing,

the number of billion-dollar movies that they put out. So, they're floating on money. They have a ton of money. They could, you know, flood the zone with money and surround all of their VFX and CGI people to prop them up and make sure that these movies look as good as they possibly can. But they're notoriously cheap. And, um... You're calling companies that spend, as you said, nine figures on movies cheap. Yeah. And I mean, if you've ever sat through the closing credits for one of these movies, the interminable closing credits where there's like hundreds of credits of VFX workers, yeah, there'll be up to 12 VFX houses working on a, you know, to get to one of those post-credit sequences that I watch. I don't know if you do. It seems incomprehensible, I know,

to think that Marvel would be cheaping out, But they underpay and overwork these employees on these films systematically. I worked a 28-hour shift. People would drink on the job. Or they would use substances to be able to finish the work. And so it just physically exhausted us, probably like shaved off like 10 or 20 years of my life. This is bad news, man. My name is Maggie Chryslemut

and I'm a visual effects artist based in Los Angeles. The best way to describe my job is basically Photoshop for video. I have never worked for Marvel. I do have many friends who work in the Marvel productions. And I've heard a lot of the worst stories and abuses that we hear about the industry has come from the Marvel productions. But it's not just exclusively a problem with Marvel. It's a problem with the industry as a whole. Are there good examples of this work relationship between directors and visual effects artists or even just the work itself?

I mean, Avatar 2 comes to mind. They spent forever making it. I didn't read any articles about how everyone making it was miserable the whole time. And obviously the director is a competent guy, if not like a bit of a raging narcissist. I'm so glad that you brought that up because yeah, that is really a model of how things can work. And it works for a number of reasons. James Cameron is a perfectionist, albeit a narcissist and control freak,

but he would never consent to putting a movie into the marketplace that looked bad or had shoddy VFX. freak. But, you know, he would never consent to putting a movie into the marketplace that looked bad or had shoddy VFX. So the bulwark against doing that is to budget as much time and money as needed. And, you know, the box office returns speak for themselves. I mean, the way of water crushed it. Now, James Cameron, of course, Avatar 2 out in theaters now, about to cross $2 billion. Hopefully, hopefully, a few weeks from now.

Hopefully, I'm saying it, I'm predicting it. Generally speaking, everyone loved the VFX. I mean, I've heard some people deride it as, you know, it looked like a screensaver. But I think it was beautiful and fresh and really the cutting edge of technology. The flip side of that is movies that have a release date staked in the calendar months, if not years in advance. So everyone's moving towards that release date and the deadlines can often be untenable, but they're immovable.

So if a movie isn't quite ready or if it's not quite ready for prime time, they just crack the whip on the VFX workers and make them rush it into production. So to answer your question, yeah, if more people had the juice and clout of James Cameron to take as much time as they needed and enable all the quality controls necessary,

this wouldn't be a problem. But the way Hollywood works is that these release dates are staked out and everyone's got to move heaven and earth in order to meet those deadlines. Do you think, broadly speaking, audiences really notice the difference between really good visual effects and sort of ham-fisted, last-minute rush jobs? Yes. And, you know, I want to bring The Little Mermaid into this conversation. Hey, have you not heard the scuttlebutt? No, the gossip, the buzz, the who say what, who does that?

Yeah, the scuttlebutt. Because, you know, that movie came out recently. It did $118 million over Memorial Day weekend domestically. But I've heard the CGI described as clunky. I've heard the VFX described as soulless. People saying it's unfinished. And it's hard to come out under the sea after Avatar, The Way of Water. It's really, really hard.

But those movies still make, as you mentioned, like over $100 million in their opening weekend. Is there an incentive for studios to rush out whatever they've got because maybe audiences will just show up anyway for the nostalgia, to see the sequel, to see where the story's going, to see Paul Rudd, whatever it might be. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, this Ant-Man that you were just referring to is the most successful installment of the franchise. So yes, for all the reasons you just mentioned, like, there's a built-in consumer base, especially for the MCU, where each movie is an interlocking part of a larger soap opera with a meta-narrative of characters and storylines that jump in between each other. So there's almost a doing-your-homework

quality to seeing Marvel movies at this point. It's like, you know, a big portion of moviegoers are just going to go just to stay current. But, you know, I think that Hollywood proceeds with cheaping out on VFX at its own peril. The fans don't take kindly to being given low-quality product. I still don't know how Marvel let these scenes slide into their movies. They hate that. Why does Marvel's visual effects look so bad? They feel insulted by that. Like, it's not good when you notice something is bad, especially me as somebody that does not look for it at all.

If only there were a magic wand someone could wave over Hollywood to fix this problem. Actually, a lot of VFX workers say there is one, and it looks a lot like a union. That's coming up on this episode of Intuit on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained. Ramp.com slash explained. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank.

Member FDIC.IC terms and conditions apply. Wake up, wake up, wake up. What? Hey, have you not heard? Today Explained is back. I'm Sean Ramos from and today we're bringing you an episode of the Intuit podcast I recently guest-hosted in which we tried to figure out why visual effects in so many big-budget movies look bad. I asked Vulture reporter Chris Lee to give me a day in the life of a visual effects artist. I don't want to say it's doom and gloom across the board because there are positive experiences to be had, but by and large, these workers are gig economy workers. They might have a temporary position at a VFX house. The studios farm out the work to outside vendors. They don't have dedicated teams of people inside the studio doing this work. So

they find outside contractors and these houses employ these workers on gig-by-gig basis. Sometimes they pay them by project. Sometimes they pay them by the month or by the week or by the day. I was working these long, insane hours without any kind of coverage for health. And so I remember when that project was over and, you know, the vendor that I was working for thanked us for a job well done. Congratulations, you did it. We made the deadline. Here's your check.

Good luck finding your next job and, like, you know, take care. They're also not unionized. Unlike writers, directors, producers, etc. Unlike the person handing a wrench to the key grip on the set of a movie. Everyone else below the line in Hollywood is unionized, except for VFX workers, which is astonishing. I have to say that most union workers, whenever I tell them that I'm not union, they are shocked because

everyone assumes that we're in a union because the post team is in the union, the camera department is in the union, writers union, actors union, everyone's union. I mean, given how important they are, they're a key part of the food chain, and they are not unionized. So they have no health benefits, they have no paid overtime, they have no retirement plans, unlike just about everybody else in the movie-making ecosystem. But ever since the pandemic, to go back to your question, it's work from home. So you'll have dozens of workers working remotely and zooming in. And basically the studio farms out scenes and these workers will get the specs and they'll look at the pages in the script. And then they'll have to sort of figure out how they can devise this visually and come up with something that will have to be approved by the director.

And it's up to the director to say, yes, I like this or no, go back to the drawing board. The scourge of this process is what the VFX workers refer to as pixel fucking. What does that mean? The director doesn't know what they want. All they know is what they don't want. And because of their unfamiliarity with VFX, they just keep sending the VFX people back to the drawing board over and over and over and nitpicking and saying, I want this, I want that, I want the other thing, but they don't know what they want. The worst directors are the ones that

didn't know how to direct. They couldn't make a decision. Or maybe there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Hence the pixel fucking. I mean, you're making it sound like... A nightmare? It sounds like a nightmare, but it also sounds so counterintuitive. This process you're describing is wildly inefficient, right? You're doing the same work over and over

with no clear direction, just being told what someone doesn't want, not what they do want. That isn't cost efficient. No, I being told what someone doesn't want, not what they do want, that isn't cost-efficient. No, I'm told time and again that this is a terrible way to work. That, you know, if they would hire directors who had a clearer idea of what they wanted going into it, or if they propped them up with people who have extensive experience with this,

or, you know, studio executives who have a specific idea of what they want, there would eliminate a lot of confusion, a lot of budget overruns, and a lot of 11th hour production chaos. But in addition to all the other things I've described, Marvel is the primary offender in this arena because they release three tentpole blockbusters a year. And then on top of that, four TV shows, each one being about 12 hours of content. So they are kingmakers in this industry. It's an unsustainable business model, basically, is what I'm told over and over again. By not knowing what they want and by overworking these employees who are already so few in numbers, basically, it's a race to the bottom. And the films decline in quality. The fans revolt. race to the bottom. And the films decline in quality,

the fans revolt, they earn less money, and the population of qualified workers is that much closer to complete burnout. What keeps these VFX artists in the industry if their experiences are so miserable? I mean, I'm hearing that there's an exodus from the industry, but the countervailing force is the unionization drive. filmmaking are attempting to unionize and let these workers know their true value, let them know the strength that they have, you know, their crucial part in the moviemaking ecosystem. And when they finally get what they want, i.e. health benefits, paid overtime, retirement, you know, a livable wage, not being forced to work, you know, 80 hours a week for six months on end, then it's going to be a dream job. I mean, you know, 80 hours a week for six months on end, then it's going to be a dream job. I mean, you know, if this gets unionized like the rest of the film industry, this is going to be a sweet gig.

And, you know, this is creative work. People love it. We are craftspeople, you know? Like, while we might not do it the old-fashioned way with our hands and building sets and puppets, you know, it still comes from our traditional kind of training, you know? It's art and science. People are proud of what they do. De-aging Nick Fury in an Avengers movie is just inherently cooler than de-aging Robert De Niro in The Irishman.

You just get more cool points. So people love what they do, and they work really hard. Audiences love these movies. They're huge hits, so they want their name on it. I mean, I think that that's one of the main reasons why people tolerate so much nonsense in order to enact this work. I guess I wonder, Chris, if there's a world in which we can solve all of these problems. Because,

you know, it's easy to look at Avatar The Way of Water and say, like, why can't everything look like this? That being said, you know, James Cameron is one of the most experienced directors in the history of cinema, especially in the history of visual effects. He's famously hard to work with. And there's not a lot of people with his level of talent and experience. So even if you could make conditions better for visual effects artists, you don't have a dozen, two dozen, three dozen directors who can handle the work at that level. Is there really going to be a day where everything kind of works as it ideally could? Okay, so forgive me for going back to Marvel, which is my bugbear.

That's my white whale as a reporter, and I've been on this beat. They have the money to pay for more time and more resources to make the VFX better. They could pay for more people. They could make these lives not miserable in making these movies. Outside of that, they could hire competent producers to institute a quality control project by project. Let's say surround them with a strike force that has the wherewithal to make sure that everyone has everything they need, enough time, enough personnel, the money that these movies make. It's not like they're hurting for it. It's just on a balance sheet. They want to say, you know, this is how much money we spent and this is how much money we made. Yay us. If you diverted a little profit and put it towards the VFX workers, you wouldn't have this crisis situation where everyone's becoming alcoholics and getting burnt

out. And we get better movies. The fans get better movies. Exactly, Sean. Chris Lee is a senior reporter at Vulture. Read him at Vulture.com. You also heard from a visual effects artist named Maggie Kreisemuth. She also volunteers on the advisory council of the entertainment union IATSE. Again, this was a rebroadcast or a repodcast of Intuit, Vulture and New York Magazine's pop culture podcast. Sam Sanders is the host. I was guest hosting while he went to pay his respects to the queen. In England, he got tickets to see Beyonce. You can find Intuit wherever you listen to your podcasts. They drop episodes on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Check it out. Intuit's Travis Larchuk and Jordana Hochman made this episode with help from Today Explains' Siona Petros. Vulture's Chris Lee reached out to Marvel Studios for comment, and the team at Intuit did too. Mums the word over at Marvel. you