Some fans have been unkind to the look of the latest Ant-Man's Quantum Realm, but the issue may be one of quantity rather than quality.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the franchise that gets the most attention, for better or for worse. When something goes well, the world sings its praises. When it makes a mistake, it's the most publicized bad call of the year. Take for example the ongoing discussion of Marvel's visual effects, which are frequently criticized for the wrong reasons.
As Marvel continues its tread into the Multiverse Saga, more projects have taken the story to wonderful fantasy worlds. Many of these alternate universes are visually incomparable to anything we have on Earth, which means that most of them are achieved by the use of a digital backlot. Unfortunately, people are getting sick of it.
RELATED: Marvel Studios Taking Action After VFX Community Backlash
Does the Quantum Realm of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania look bad or is it just too similar to the other MCU universes? It's a maelstrom of colors, like a walk-in version of the Doctor Who opening titles. Islands seem to raise out of the ground, leaving massive craters throughout. Lightning the size of skyscrapers carves the sky. The air seems to shimmer like carnival glass when it isn't bubbling up or falling apart. It would be truly staggering to behold if we hadn't seen it all before. The upcoming film won't be the first look into the Quantum Realm, but it will join the long catalog of Marvel films with alternate universes with extraordinarily similar designs. Thor: Love and Thunder, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Loki, and many more Marvel films have employed the colorful mess technique. It appears to be losing its appeal.
There's simply no visual effect that won't eventually get old. People got tired of seeing massive versions of regular animals in the 50s and 60s, they'll get tired of seeing colorful screensavers as settings today. CGI can be used to tell a story, but Marvel's digital backlot gimmicks rarely serve the story. The main goal of most of these big visual displays is to wow the audience. It's a firework display to keep things exciting. It's stuff like this that leads professionals to compare beloved blockbuster films to rollercoaster attractions. Films based on astounding CGI can either spend a truly astounding amount of money, time, and effort to truly innovate technologically, like Avatar: The Way of Water or try to make something that looks unique. Marvel has been pretty clear that their main goal is saving a lot of money, often to the detriment of VFX professionals, so they'll have to allow their artists to get creative.
Most of the best moments of the MCU are dependent almost entirely on CGI. Thanos is fully realized through digital effects, the big final battle at the end of Endgame might as well be a video game cutscene, and very few action scenes are free from digital interference. Even a deeply emotional scene like Steve Rogers' tearful farewell to Peggy Carter in The Winter Soldier is achieved through a digital aging process. There are exceptions, especially in the more grounded Marvel projects, but the lion's share of beloved Marvel moments wouldn't be possible without the advanced CGI of the modern day. The fact is that CGI is a tool, to be used well or poorly like any other tool. Unfortunately, Marvel has made the usage of that tool a bit too predictable to be exciting anymore.
Generally speaking, people say CGI is bad when they notice it's there. The theoretical perfect visual effect must then be the one that could never be identified. By this metric, every great use of digital art should raise genuine questions as to whether a computer was involved. And yet, the most celebrated uses of CGI tend to stand up and scream their presence as soon as they appear on-screen. For every bad visual effect, there are a few good ones that redeem the art form. CGI is a difficult and often thankless process and truly creative visionaries have found countless ways to make things look incredible. The MCU loves to run through half-a-dozen visual effects in a matter of minutes, as Quantumania clearly intends to do repeatedly, but they refuse to let any of their visuals breathe. Marvel's trouble with CGI is an issue of creativity, but they have the professional talent they need to fix it.
Ostensibly, the Quantum Realm is life at a subatomic level. Despite that explanation, so much of it still looks just like every other fantasy realm from the MCU. The brief flashes of massive tardigrades and single cells that look like mountains are the exception rather than the rule. All Marvel needs to do is realize the promises of its ideas without resorting to the same basic concepts. Marvel has countless talented VFX artists, even if they treat them like garbage. The problems are higher up. The VFX in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania isn't bad, but we've all seen what it has to offer before. Reruns are never as much fun as new premieres.
MORE: She-Hulk VFX Supervisors Reveal Secrets About Bringing K.E.V.I.N. To Life
