Recently, Marvel Studios has been accused of losing its magic touch as the MCU's profit margins have dropped substantially. While filmmakers might be the first culprits, a new report suggests the studio’s special effects policies are to blame for the superhero downtrend.
Those claims had surfaced in several online forums, with many Marvel Studios leakers and fans speculating on how tight of a grip studio higher-ups had over each movie. Those rumors were fueled by Victoria Alonso being fired as Head of Post-Production and VFX. The patterns stem from Marvel Studios knowingly hiring directors with little-to-no background in the area, which only worsens prior news of the special effects firms being overwhelmed by the MCU’s demands.
Those allegations now have more formal backing, as reporter Chris Lee summed up many of the problems in The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast. Lee said Marvel Studios "systemically harvests directors from the Sundance Film Festival" and specifically called out Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, and Chloé Zhao's hiring as clear-cut examples. Without naming names, Lee referred to a conversation with a Marvel Studios who said Alonso told them, “They don’t direct the movies. We direct the movies,” thus why they simply don’t have control over the VFX end of the job that makes up so much of these films.
There is a pattern among Marvel Studios' picks for directors. Most don’t have a proper background dealing with massive special effects budgets and sequences, save for Jon Favreau, James Gunn, and the Russo brothers. In that sense, Lee likened Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and someone like James Cameron to apples and oranges because the Avatar creator has spent nearly his entire career helping the VFX field progress.
In the past, Marvel Studios saw plenty of success with this approach. Movies like Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther are highly regarded by fans, but the MCU is “not working as well as it used to.” The MCU machine is tough to re-engineer because it spent nearly an entire decade putting out hit after hit, yet box office loser Ant-Man 3, a film that’s almost made up entirely of blue screen scenes, appears to be the turning point for Disney.
It’s no secret there is a lot more Marvel Studios content nowadays than five years ago, and with ballooning budgets all across the board, returning CEO Bob Iger wants to fix all these problems. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 seems to get a pass on all these points, but maybe Nia DaCosta's The Marvels could have been burdened the same way.
Source: The Town with Matthew Belloni