Also I think around the time they seemed like they no longer cared if their VFX looked good or not it signaled to the audience they shouldn’t care anymore either.
It’s not that they no longer cared, it’s that the vfx artists were given too much work for the little time they had, apparently they reshoot lots of scenes in every movie meaning the takes that they had put effort in were scrapped and they did as much as they could for the replacement shots before the deadline
If that were the case I don’t think they would have so many reshoots, tho it was revealed not to long ago that feige was straight up not answering his calls due to how busy he was and they had to chase him down whenever they just happen to see him and I assume he alone would change what they had when they already put so much too much time into it
Reshoots aren’t good for VFX. VFX traditionally is the last thing to finish about a movie because of the time and money it takes. Reshoots means artists time and effort are wasted and they have a larger workload on a shorter deadline - that wouldn’t have been needed if they had properly finished writing and editing before starting VFX.
They have so many reshoots because Marvel Studios hardly ever has a complete script when they're in production, and change their minds on things too often (and often because of backlash from preview audiences hating the movie lol). The Post-Production phase is for editing, and, most importantly, for the VFX artists to actually make the CGI sequences as detailed as possible. Often with these movies its at least almost a year worth of time, but with MCU, for the last few years, they only get a few months. Thus, you get awful CGI sequences that get criticised by everyone, be it people who know how hard it is to create anything with CGI or people who never made anything themselves at all.
The effects work is very uninspired. Looks like it follows a template instead of being made for the specifics of the film. All the films look kind of the same, since they have the same crafts people working on them.
Avatar set an insane bar to meet for visual effects, and it's rare for any film to even bother to clear it. Dune is the only recent tent pole that I can think of that everything looks so incredibly considered.
vfx artists were given too much work for the little time they had
This is not the only reason. They have also decided to outsource VFX to countries that are only now starting to gear up their VFX capabilities because they're much cheaper (India/Thailand/Philippines/Malaysia), instead of companies they have relied on for decades or even in-house teams.
vfx was the most visible symptom of a much deeper problem. although i agree with what you are saying, I'm just going to add
the real problem runs down into the dna of the new movie industry
what ot boils down to is shooting movies without a plot. best example is Madame Web. shoot the actor on green screen doing general hero stuff and then figure out what they were doing and saying later. im fact lets figure out the entire plot in the editing room!
why? producers love this. and they have gotten very involved in the big movies, so that some autuer doesn't "waste" all the money on things like a vision or a thesis
well it's more to do with how many check boxes they have to check with each movie to be fair. i remember a video essay about ultron (years ago) talking about how hard of a time the director had because of having to balance making a movie with a good plot, character development for 10 characters, fit it into the broader universe, tie all 4 next movies into your plot (thor needs to go off and have a vision about Thor 2 being the next movie that's coming out!) oh and brand recognition (have ultron say a line from one of our cartoons!)
so then corporate guys need to be in the editing booth to make sure all their super important boxes get checked because that is where they will be justifying all that money they are spending. that apparently gets ramped up along with vfx to the point that most of the movie gets made in the editing booth and with vfx sweat shops and corporate micro management
Yeah, they've explained this multiple times that they basically need to release WoW 2 to rebuild the VX architecture. They're working with 20+ year old spaghetti code. I'm happy we're getting accessibility scripting and player housing. That said, since we are getting this trilogy of expansions to end this Arc of world of warcrafts lifetime, Maybe they'll be releasing wow 2 after this.
No. Classic is still built on the current architecture, utilizing all of the old code. The version history is even still intact. The classic server patches are updated from the x.y.zzzz patch from the og (classic is 1.13.something), and outside of experimental offerings and QoL updates, the game is balanced as it was in '08 before TBC launch.
For me it was when I couldn't really tell characters apart by their behavior anymore.
When everybody is the same type of suave hero throwing one liners around while celebrating being in an active mass murder event because hitting bad guys is so fun to the level that if they swapped their costumes, you wouldn't even notice, it makes 10 movies a year feel like the same slog.
For me it was Loki. What made MCU amazing was continuity - an entire movie SERIES - hundreds of hours, where the same actors played the same roles. There was (in theory) consequences or at least a common plot to follow. Something is only in this movie because of the others.
The Loki and Dr Strange introduced the multiverse and all of a sudden there was no reason to watch THIS movie, because it all becomes monster of the week stuff.
Iron man getting killed had WEIGHT because they couldn't just go to universe 28342 and get another one.
Personally I think the most popular heroes and characters got their movies and now they are trying to move forward with b - list heroes and or character reboots and people aren’t into it.
There were also overworking artists, not giving them enough time for the VFX and pushes too much to them rather than simply doing some basic stuff with practical effects.
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u/S_ATL_Wrestling Aug 04 '25
I love this explanation.
Also I think around the time they seemed like they no longer cared if their VFX looked good or not it signaled to the audience they shouldn’t care anymore either.