You Can Now Officially Blame Black Panther For Quantumania’s Failure
VFX artists for Quantumania say that a large chunk of the film's special effects budget was given to Black Panther 2, which may be why Ant-Man's CGI was criticized in reviews.
It’s Black Panther versus Ant-Man and the Wasp! No, we’re not talking about a new match-up in a Marvel movie. We’re talking about the reason that the special effects on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania were so disappointing. According to Vulture, it’s because the funding that could have been spent on the effects for Quantumania were instead spent on Black Panther 2.
Also according to Vulture, who spoke with some of the artists and VFX technicians who worked on Quantumania, “‘shortcuts’ were taken” during the creation of the visuals for the Marvel threequel. “Critical resources were diverted away to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever… which was in postproduction around the same time as Quantumania.”
So, in other words, Black Panther 2 was seemingly seen as a more important film to the franchise, and more resources were given to that production in the interest of making it the best it could be. Quantumania, on the other hand, drew the short straw and had to just accept whatever was left over, creating a film that has become one of only two MCU films to earn a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Black Panther’s sequel earned decent reviews, poor Quantumania has struggled. It did surprise everyone by becoming 2023’s first official blockbuster movie, pulling in a franchise-high $120 million at the box office in its first few days, but the film has had almost nothing but bad buzz in the meantime.
One issue was that, unlike Black Panther 2, which was meant to be poignant and somber, Quantumania was expected to be more upbeat. Instead, it lacks the “low-key breeziness” that the two previous Ant-Man films had. But this could be forgiven (saving the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, you know). The terrible visual effects and CGI, however, could not.
A particularly colorful review in the Los Angeles Times put into words the disgust viewers felt at seeing the sloppy artwork. “This isn’t world building,” wrote critic Justin Chang, “it’s more like world barfing.” Another review said that the visuals didn’t match each other or anything else, and made it look like the actors had shot their scenes and then the filmmakers decided which creature to add in to interact with them later.
Aside from apparently competing with the Black Panther film over the budget, Quantumania was also filmed and produced on an impossibly short deadline so that it could be released on Presidents’ Day weekend. The movie was shot, then studio execs and filmmakers critiqued it and revised it, but didn’t leave the VFX workers enough time to actually make the changes they ordered.
This has led to an outcry among the workers, who say that, because of understaffing and unrealistic demands, they were forced to work up to 80 hours per week. This was comparable, they said, to James Cameron’s team on Titanic, in which workers could only take naps under their desks between tasks because there wasn’t enough time to go home before they had to come back to work the next day.
Regardless of whether they are working on Black Panther 2 or Quantumania, Marvel Studios’ VFX workers are burnt out, and their films suffer because of it. In this case, more funding should have gone to Quantumania to make it as good as Black Panther 2, but that is only part of the problem. How can you expect the special effects of a movie to be good if the people making them are too tired to care what they look like in the end?
