You know when we thought Captain Marvel had a tough time of it? Well, its direct sequel The Marvels has apparently said “hold my beer” and done its best to have the most tempestuous road to release of any Marvel movie yet. And, somehow, it’s still enduring fresh punches.
After losing its trio of leads on the press tour thanks to the strike, facing lackluster box office projections, and a general apathy from the fandom, The Marvels is now finding itself on the receiving end of new negativity. This time it’s getting blamed for the flaws of a whole other MCU release, this past February’s infamous flop Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
As part of Variety‘s fascinating deep-dive into what’s gone wrong at Marvel during Phase Five so far, Quantumania‘s poorly received visuals are blamed on its truncated post-production schedule. As per the original line-up, The Marvels was slated to come before Ant-Man 3, but when the former required much more work to get it up to scratch, the Paul Rudd vehicle was bumped forward by four and a half months.
The result was that its world premiere at Westwood’s Regency Village Theatre was a truly shocking affair for those in attendance, due to its poor CGI. “There were at least 10 scenes where the visual effects had been added at the last minute and were out of focus,” is the recollection of one “veteran power broker” who witnessed the screening. “It was insane. I’ve never seen something like that in my entire career. Everyone was talking about it. Even the kids of executives were talking about it.”
We all know by now that the members of Quantumania‘s VFX team are certainly not the villains of the story here, as the egregious working conditions they were faced with on this project absolve them of all crimes. Unfortunately, the blame’s got to lie somewhere, and it looks like it’s falling on The Marvels to be the scapegoat yet again.
Let’s just hope that The Marvels itself doesn’t turn out to be Quantumania 2.0 once the dust settles.
