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From the outside, Marvel can look like a machine. Announcements of movies years in advance lead to frenzied fan speculation, which lead to casting announcements that get more press than entire other movies, which lead to huge trailer drops and, eventually, lead to red carpet premieres of the finished product.
It seems finely tooled, meticulously planned – meaning the audiences in attendance surely have no idea that the movie they’re taking in may not have even been finished until that morning.
There is a very public face of Marvel. Fancy outfits, celebrity appearances, glitzy screenings. But what fans don't see is what's happening behind the scenes, as overworked visual effects artists struggle to meet the studio’s unreasonable demands to deliver the movie on time. Far away from the glamour of an event like a premiere, you can find VFX artists glued to their computer, rushing against the clock to get the movie done on time.
For those on the other side of the silver screen, their viewpoint of Marvel is more associated with prolonged periods of crunch, extremely limited resources, and a seemingly endless cycle of rewrites and reshoots that pushes outsourced VFX studios to the limit.
"Marvel tends to run all the way until the very end," one visual effects artist, who worked over 80 hours a week for months at a time during some Marvel projects, told IGN. "Like, you basically run out of time to work on these things. I had a shot that I worked on that I finished at 9 in the morning, and they had a preview in London that evening. The version that I worked on that [day] was the version they were going to see at the premiere. It's up to the wire. And not to say that every show is like that, but it does happen."
IGN reached out to Disney for comment but did not receive a response before press time.
Marvel VFX artists speak out
When the VFX artists we spoke to say "shows", they're not only referring to the Disney+ series Marvel started producing within the last couple years; it encapsulates any Marvel Studios project, from blockbuster movies like Avengers: Endgame to episodic series like WandaVision.
Stories of Marvel's VFX woes have been circulating on social media for the last few weeks, as artists with experience working on Marvel shows share their experiences. The conversation was sparked by a Reddit thread on r/VFX titled, "I am quite frankly sick and tired of working on Marvel shows!” In it, one VFX artist said, "Marvel has probably the worst methodology of production and VFX management out there."
Many others who claim to be in the industry commented on the post, sharing similar negative experiences, or saying they prefer to avoid Marvel projects altogether. One six-year veteran of the VFX industry said the one Marvel project they were a part of was, "Absolutely the worst show I’ve ever worked on…. I didn’t know how much worse it could get until that project came along."
The conversation continued over on Twitter, where one major post came from an artist who said working on Marvel shows pushed them to leave the VFX industry altogether.
Working on #Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They're a horrible client, and I've seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings. https://t.co/FacGBfnYmG
— Dhruv Govil (@DhruvGovil) July 10, 2022
In light of this discourse, IGN spoke to three VFX artists with experience across multiple studios – all of whom chose to stay anonymous to prevent harm to their careers. Each artist has worked on a variety of projects within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but regardless of their differences in employer or project, their stories about working with Marvel all hit similar story beats.
The endemic issues appear to remain the same across the VFX industry, to the point where Marvel Studios has earned itself quite the negative reputation. The studio responsible for telling the stories of superheroes like Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor has a not-so-heroic track record of offloading far too much work on its VFX partners with too little time to complete it.
"It's pretty common to have people break down from the pressure of these shows," said IGN's second source, an artist who worked seven-day weeks on a Marvel project. "Even like the calmest people, I've had them call me on the phone just having full-on anxiety attacks because it's not work they can finish, and they don't know how to get over that hump… It's not a fun thing to be at work at night and having to console people."
Marvel Studios outsources animation work on its movies to a number of VFX studios across the globe. These studios work on a variety of sequences and effects in Marvel Studios' films, from choreographing and animating full Spider-Man fight scenes, to getting just the right look for Rocket Raccoon's fur.
You'd think the largest movies in the world would be afforded the largest budgets in the VFX department, but unfortunately, that's seemingly not the case. Even though Marvel movies dominate the box office, accounting for nearly a third of the North American box office in 2021, our sources indicate the revenue isn't trickling down to the VFX houses.
Different VFX houses will enter a bidding war to win the contract with Marvel Studios to work on specific shows. This leads to struggling studios fighting to undercut one another in the hope that Marvel Studios will pick them to do work that can mean so much for a studio's portfolio. As one artist put it, everyone wants to work on Avengers.
The same process happens for the other big movie studios like Disney and Warner Bros., but the VFX artists we spoke to say that Marvel projects have been the worst in terms of remuneration, and that they usually have to work with a much smaller crew compared to other projects. One example cited a team leader asking for ten people on their team, before the VFX studio eventually afforded them just two.
It's pretty common to have people break down from the pressure of these shows
"[Studios] go in harder for Marvel shows," IGN's second source said. "Marvel sets a ceiling, and everyone's trying to get in under that ceiling while still being viable. And often, you're looking at not making much on one movie but hoping that if you get more Marvel work, you'll advertise upwards over the years."
While much of the blame certainly falls on Marvel, the artists we spoke to said the VFX studios could be handling things much better themselves. One artist said studios should stand up to Marvel, and not give into the competitive bidding war system that it currently exploits:
"I know there [are] a lot of issues at studios with lower salaries, but to me that's not a Marvel issue," said IGN's third source, an artist with experience on multiple Marvel movies. "Marvel doesn't have control of how people are paid. If they do take advantage and try to underbid, then that's an issue because that's how the budget is made. The studios should have the balls to say, 'This is our cost, and [we're sticking to it].'"
Before the bulk of the work on a project even begins, the cards are already stacked against the shorthanded team of VFX artists given more work than they can complete under normal work conditions. But that's just the beginning of the problems.
Marvel is the 'most nitpicky studio' VFX Artists work with
It's an accepted reality that when you work on a Marvel show, you're going to have a smaller staff than you'd like, but even more problems apparently come further down the line. It’s these issues that lead to movies being finished at the last minute – what one VFX artist described as being, "close to bringing a USB stick to the first premiere."
Although Marvel outsources its VFX work to visual effects houses, the studio remains involved in every single decision that's made — to the point where it can reportedly hamper the workflow of the VFX artists on the project.
"Marvel is very prone to redoing their movies very late in the game," IGN's second source said. "They are probably the most nitpicky studio. They want to art direct where every single cloud is, where every single rock is."
New ideas and implementing changes are absolutely part of the creative process, but Marvel appears to continually push the boundaries too far. The studio is seen as an eternal tinkerer, never fully satisfied with its projects.
From Marvel Studios' perspective, the creative leads simply tell the VFX studios their demands, and wait for the drafts to appear in front of them. Marvel is one degree separated from the VFX houses, so they don't see how much time and energy goes into implementing their changes, IGN’s sources say.
For non-Marvel projects, our sources say a shot may need to be reworked 15 to 30 times. In some cases, Marvel has apparently sent a single shot back for reworking upwards of 50 times. At its worst, one Marvel VFX artist said they've seen a shot with 144 different versions.
"You can get your stuff thrown away 50 times just because they are rewriting and re-recording voices and redoing the script and redoing stuff, so it's tiring in the sense where it feels like you get a lot of your work thrown [in the trash] often, so it can feel like what you're doing is kind of useless," IGN's third source said. "Or you can get lucky and be on the shot that just goes smoothly."
One artist said they had to redo the third act of a movie just a month before the project had to be delivered. In this instance, six-day working weeks with 10 hour days turned into seven-day working weeks with 12 hour days until the project was complete.
The range of demands from Marvel can change, but the common consensus among our sources is that Marvel doesn't seem to have a clear idea of what it actually wants its movies to look like. From changing how many frames are in a fight scene, to new voice lines that need to be animated, to one instance where it changed an entire scene's environment from a forest to barren wilderness, Marvel is said to routinely upend core sequences of its movies deep into post-production, which causes a logjam at the VFX houses.
While some issues, like smaller budgets and tight deadlines, can apply to the VFX industry as a whole, the artists we spoke to said Marvel is the only studio they work with that doesn't seem to have its vision finalized when the project hits post-production.
"The most important thing for me would be [for Marvel] to figure out their movie more in pre-production," IGN's third source said. "It would save everyone a ton of money and a ton of time. Because it really feels like they're writing the movie while we're making it, which is crazy because we're really, really post-production… It feels very disrespectful for the artists to throw away stuff, redo stuff, throw away stuff, redo stuff, just because they can't make up their mind or haven't thought about it. Sometimes you get notes where it's like, how did [Marvel] not think about that earlier?"
Across employees from multiple studios, the message was the same: working with Marvel is like throwing a dart at a dart board that's constantly in motion. New goals and changes don't stop until, in some cases, the day of the red carpet premiere.
The consensus among our sources is that Marvel operates this way because it works, and no project has truly failed to deliver yet. The most experienced artist IGN spoke to said it's been this way for over a decade.
'Everyone Is Sort of Scared of Pissing Them Off': What Happens When Studios Tell Marvel 'No'
Further compounding the issues raised by working with Marvel are the devastating consequences awaiting VFX studios that say no to a request – including getting blacklisted from working on Marvel projects entirely, for long periods of time. Given how prevalent Marvel is in the VFX space, getting on Marvel's bad side can leave your studio scrambling for work, with one artist saying losing steady work from Marvel is enough to see some studios go under.
"When we work on Warner Bros. or Disney shows… We have a little bit more power to push back,” IGN's second source said. “But Marvel… everyone is sort of scared of pissing them off, because if you piss them off you're not going to get any of their shows in the future. So [studios] are very scared of saying no to anything, and Marvel pushes back hard if you say no."
One artist told IGN a studio they were aware of was blacklisted after one project went wrong. After three years of a successful working relationship with Marvel, this studio was suddenly out of work. Competing VFX studios don't really protect one another, giving Marvel no incentive to ease up on its demands when there's always someone else who'd jump at the opportunity to secure a Marvel project for their studio.
"Right now there's no leverage," IGN's second source said. "You just do whatever the client says because if you piss them off or if the relationships strain, you're out multiple projects. The studios have no way of reining them in. As far as the power dynamic, they have all of the control, they have all of the power. Anybody will do it. There [are] plenty of other companies that will gladly take the work, or will undercut you to get the work, and then they'll be suffering and they'll be working just as many hours if not more… I've seen companies bend over backwards to do stuff for them."
The MCU has only been increasing its content output in recent years, with Phase 4 already totaling about 50 hours of content. For comparison, the first 8 years of the MCU only totaled around 27 hours of screen time. This uptick comes down to the new MCU series on Disney+, which have so far included WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If...?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel. In effect, Marvel’s Disney+ series are making the problems worse.
The line between television series and movies is practically nonexistent in 2022, with many series matching or exceeding expectations of the quality found in feature films. However, that expectation of quality doesn't always translate to more resources. On the VFX side, Marvel demands the same quality for its series, but without a commensurate amount of time compared to its movies. The VFX artists we spoke to say studios are given less time and lower budgets for episodic series, but that the work isn't any less difficult.
She-Hulk, the MCU series currently airing on Disney+, is a prime example of this. The first trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney At Law received significant backlash for the visual effects. This isn't due to a lack of effort though – artists point out that if you aren't giving people the time to do good work, you aren't going to get good work out of it.
For example, one artist said the VFX team took a year to work on Thanos’ textures alone, which is only one step of the VFX process. For She-Hulk, the VFX team simply cannot have been given nearly the same luxury.
"You have even less time and even less money to accomplish the same look because now people want Infinity War and Endgame-level quality, but you don't have a year to do it, you have three months or five months,” said one source. “When She-Hulk's trailer came out and everybody was kind of bashing it… I instantly thought, 'I guarantee you they didn't have any time. I guarantee it.'"
What Needs to Change: Unionization, Technology, and Workflow
Working with Marvel has been difficult for years, but multiple VFX artists still expressed hope to us that changes could come. According to our sources, Marvel has already started dividing the work more fairly among different studios.
"It's famously the third act in most Marvel movies. If you have the third act, you are in for the most pain. Everything will change in a very drastic way, which means the most amount of work. And if one studio had more than just the third act, you're in for it. Now, it seems like they've kind of split things up in a more logical way… Divvying up the work that way gives people a better chance to succeed. That's one thing that's been positive."
It's famously the third act in most Marvel movies. If you have the third act, you are in for the most pain.
In some cases, our sources say the studio working on the third act of a movie isn't given any additional responsibilities from Marvel, where in the past the third act could just be one item in a long list of one VFX studios' assigned sequences.
But our sources also raised a more meaningful way for things to change: unionization.
"If artists were to unionize, that would give the artists more power to say, 'These are our terms', and it would force Marvel and the VFX houses to change their bidding practices, change how hard they're pushing things… It's just capitalism, right? All these studios want the work, Marvel wants it for as cheap as possible, so I don't think that will really change."
As for what unionization could actually mean for the VFX workers, one source we spoke to laid out their specific vision.
"[Unionization] would ideally mean that it allows setting floors on artist compensation, and artists would have more recourse when it comes to things like how much overtime they do. That would mean the VFX houses will also have to take on that floor of costs and bid according to the amount of overtime they can max out with. In turn that means Marvel and other clients would then have to accept more realistic bids, and have more financial incentive to be more judicious with the amount of rework notes, and have to plan out their projects better from the get go."
Jessica Gao, the head writer and Executive Producer on She-Hulk, said she supports the artists banding together to unionize while speaking at a Television Critics Association press tour.
"This is a massive undertaking. To have a show of this scale where the main character is CG is a very overwhelming and ginormous thing to take on and it's terrible that a lot of artists feel rushed and feel that the workload is too massive," Gao said, "I think everyone on this panel stands in solidarity with all workers and is very pro-union and good working conditions."
But as VFX artists work to make their voices heard, the Marvel machine keeps on chugging. From Disney+ shows, to a newly revealed movie schedule that includes two new Avengers films among many other titles, one thing that's not changing is the MCU's perennial presence at the box office. What VFX artists hope can change is the hours, communication, and unreasonable expectations from one of Hollywood's biggest filmmakers, so Marvel's operations behind the scenes can inch a little closer to the ideals their heroes continue to represent on the big screen.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
