A sudden firing over at Marvel has left many confused and wondering what on earth went down. The dismissal of Victoria Alonso has shocked many in Hollywood given her vital role as Marvel’s president of physical production, post-production, VFX, and animation. Now it turns out that due to the mire created around her dismissal, her boss Kevin Feige did not intervene to save her job.
Only a week before her dismissal, Alonso attended the Academy Awards where she took a moment to celebrate with some of the female photographers at the event (an event where the overwhelming majority of photographers are male) pulling them onto the carpet with her for photographs and stating, “We’ve worked so hard to get here and we’re not going anywhere” which was reported in Variety. Eight days later, she was gone.
The reasons behind her dismissal are still not clear, though rumors started flooding social media platforms such as Twitter with VFX artists reporting that she created a toxic work environment over at Marvel. There has already been a lot of discussion over the treatment of VFX artists at Marvel, with many saying they are forced to work untenable hours and made to rush out work that is not yet ready, as pointed out by fans when they come to watch the final product. These discussions, along with the added rumors that Alonso played favorites and could end careers if she wasn’t happy, could be one of the reasons why she has been pushed out, though we cannot say for certain that this is indeed the case at this time.
All of this is happening at a time of great unrest and unease for both Marvel and its parent company Disney, who are both undergoing massive changes. Disney has rehired Bob Iger as CEO to try to sort out the economic uncertainty at the company while Marvel has its own issues as it tries to address the problems created by phase four. Both Disney and Marvel have discussed possibly scaling back their output in order to avoid fan burnout and hopefully focus quality over quantity.
According to Variety, Alonso’s boss Feige did not intervene in her firing despite having been his right-hand woman for some time now. Sources indicate that “the decision was made by a consortium including human resources, Disney’s legal department, and multiple executives including Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman (to whom all of Marvel Studios reports).” This left Feige in an impossible situation where he was apparently unable to step in for his long-time colleague.
Alonso joined Marvel back in 2006 and has been a firm fixture at the studio for over 17 years, seeing it through the creation of the MCU and all the success that came with it. She has stood as one of the rare LGBTQ+ women of color in the industry and has been fiercely vocal about increasing diversity and women in leadership positions. So why was she fired then?
As mentioned above, VFX artists have apparently reported the ‘toxic’ environment she created, but there could be more to it than that. Marvel has been in trouble for some time now, as it attempts to work across all platforms from movies to television throwing out content left, right, and center at an unprecedented rate. This acceleration has pushed the studio to near breaking point with the quality in VFX-heavy movies taking a massive nose-dive.
The most recent example was the less-than-fantastic Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania movie which was set in a world made up almost entirely of VFX yet left audiences feeling underwhelmed and, despite being marketed as the best Ant-Man movie yet. did worse than its predecessors both critically and commercially. Whatever the reason, Alonso’s dismissal has left a huge hole at the studio, one that may take more than one person to fill given the scope of her job.
