Thor: Love And Thunder Got VFX Flack From Director Taika Waititi
In Taika Waititi's 2022 film "Thor: Love and Thunder," an emotionally wounded man named Gorr (Christian Bale) has learned that the very real gods of the Marvel universe are selfish, uncaring, and are more interested in cavorting with nymphs and naiads than answering prayers. By happenstance, he comes into possession of a magical sword specifically designed for killing gods and takes on a quest to rid the universe of its living deities. "Love and Thunder" could have brought up some tantalizingly difficult questions about atheism, or the role of faith in the modern world. It could have mentioned the dubious function of gods in a universe that regularly produces superpowered uber-beings. It didn't. Instead, it was a whimsical slapstick comedy starring a hero who, like Homer Simpson, became dumber and dumber as the series progressed.
Partway through "Love and Thunder," Gorr kidnaps the children of Asgard and imprisons them in the Shadow Realm, a black-and-white dimension full of, well, shadows. Luckily, one of the children, Axl (Kieron L. Dyer), can communicate telepathically with Thor (Chris Hemsworth), telling him where the children are being kept.
The effect used to visualize Axl's telepathy has been roundly mocked for its cheapness. Axl's head appears in midair, surrounded by a cheap, rainbow-like "fuzz," while the shot is largely out-of-focus. Waititi himself mocked the effect in a 2023 Vanity Fair video analysis he engaged in with actress Tessa Thompson. The budget for "Love and Thunder" was $250 million, and Waititi seemed just as baffled as audiences that such an expensive movie should look so bad. Waititi seemed to blame the "underpaid VFX artists" for the shot's shoddiness.
Waititi's complaints, however, invited counter-complaints from SFX technicians, and many revealed the underbidding wars and horrible working conditions dictated by Marvel productions.
VFX artists under the hammer
In a July 2022 article for Newsweek, a VFX artist named Dhruv Govil revealed how terrible Marvel Studios had been to the VFX industry. In a Tweet, quoted by Newsweek, Govil said that the studio is a horrible client, and tried constantly to spend less and less money while overworking the effects houses into the ground. The Newsweek article was accompanied by an expose in Vulture wherein a different VFX artist (who wished to remain anonymous) detailed the painstaking and unfair process VX houses underwent.
Because so much money was going into so few Hollywood movies, VFX houses had to make decreasingly large bids for the few large-scale jobs that would come their way. This led to a vicious bidding war wherein the winner would often end up charging Marvel far less than they were worth. The Vulture article pointed out that Marvel would then ask for multiple changes to the VFX throughout production, forcing the VFX houses to scrap completed sequences and start from scratch, all under increasingly tight deadlines. Large-scale studio films have traditionally made big changes during production, but nowhere near the volume that Marvel did.
Marvel would nitpick, ask for multiple versions of a sequence, and try to micromanage as much as possible. In the VFX industry, the workers began referring to this micromanagement as being "pixel-f***ed." Waititi had already directed "Thor: Ragnarok," so his flippant comments in the Vanity Fair video particularly stung. He commented that the CGI character Korg, whom he played, changed hues and looked unrealistic. Given that he knew the cutthroat VFX process on a film like "Love and Thunder," it was an insensitive thing to say.
Also, it's YOUR movie, Taika!
It's also galling that Waititi would make such disparaging comments about his own film. One might hope that he would have the authority and the wherewithal to confront Marvel about his tight deadlines and ensure that the VFX teams working on his picture would have ample time to complete the effects he wants. The fact remains that "Love and Thunder" doesn't look very good, and it seems the Waititi threw the VFX people under the bus.
An article in the Independent noted how many viewers were miffed by Waititi's comments, even finding a (now deleted) Reddit thread wherein VFX technicians could anonymously air their grievances about Marvel shows in particular. One user said "Marvel has probably the worst methodology of production and VFX management out there. They can never fix the look for the show before more than half the allocated time for the show is over. The artists working on Marvel shows are definitely not paid equivalent to the amount of work they put in."
These criticisms of Waititi and of Marvel became widespread. Similar complaints arose over the work on "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law." The following year, in the midst of the DGA and WGA strikes, a unionization effort began among Marvel VFX artists. The unionization efforts were successful the following September.
Waititi's next film after "Thor" was a lightweight sports comedy called "Next Goal Wins." Marvel, meanwhile, has been contracting in popularity for years and will begin scaling back production on their marketplace-flooding titles. Indeed, the only MCU title to be released in theaters in the year 2024 will be "Deadpool & Wolverine." Marvel, it seems ran out of steam.