As the recent discourse surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Thor: Love and Thunder has shown, fans are more than happy to call out shoddy visual effects, especially if they appear in a movie carrying a production budget that runs to hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s been well-documented that VFX artists are among the most overworked, overlooked, and underpaid creatives in the industry, but that hasn’t stopped cinephiles from naming and shaming some of the worst offenders on Reddit. The discussion kicked off with the entirely valid criticisms of Rob Zombie’s shoddy-looking The Munsters costing almost three times as much as The Green Knight, and things took off from there.
Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern was one of the costliest motion pictures of all-time when it landed with a thud back in 2011, with the decision to digitally animate the title hero’s costume turning out to be a disastrous call. Netflix juggernaut Red Notice is also mentioned, which is a completely fair assessment to make when the multitude of backdrops and locations looked largely terrible, although you expect most of the budget in that case was spent on the aforementioned Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Gal Gadot.
The $25 million Everything Everywhere All at Once and $40 million Ambulance being compared to Adam Sandler’s $79 million Jack and Jill, the $100 million Cats, and the third act of $200 million Black Panther really puts things into perspective, showing how a little very often goes an exceedingly long way without breaking the bank, something major franchises should take note of.
