Credit: Marvel Studios/Sony PicturesOne teenager was able to work on a highly anticipated Spider-Man sequel and revealed what Marvel Studios needs to do for the MCU.
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Anyone who has been watching MCU movies and Disney+ series knows that Marvel’s greatest weakness at the moment is quality. Each series is inconsistent on what to expect from the CGI. It’s expected when different teams work on MCU projects, but Marvel’s gold standard was lost. Infamous moments like Axl’s floating head in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) still scar some fans, while others can’t stand the final battle in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Qunatumania (2023).
Marvel Studios vowed to work on their quality control, but not everything has gone according to plan. Some series needed extra time to work on their projects, and Marvel still hasn’t gained back fans’ trust. One thing Sony did was show one way Marvel Studios could easily have better quality. Surprisingly, it involved 14-year-old Preston Mutanga working on the LEGO scenes in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023).
14-Year-Old Made ‘Spider-Verse’ Scene
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Preston Mutanga told The New York Times how he worked on the scene with Lego Spider-Man and would spend time during Spring Break and after his homework to finish the scene. He learned everything from YouTube tutorials going over Blender.
This wasn’t planned to have LEGO Spider-Man in the movie, but after seeing some of Mutanga’s work, Phil Lord and Chris Miller knew they needed him in the series:
Preston Mutanga worked on the LEGO #AcrossTheSpiderVerse sequence during Spring Break and then after finishing his homework on school nights His dad showed him Blender and then he kept learning how to use it from watching YouTube videos
Preston Mutanga worked on the LEGO #AcrossTheSpiderVerse sequence during Spring Break and then after finishing his homework on school nights
His dad showed him Blender and then he kept learning how to use it from watching YouTube videos
(via @nytimes) pic.twitter.com/clbBf9h54D
— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) June 8, 2023
Marvel Crisis Solved?
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Marvel Studios can learn one thing from this. It’s best to give the people working on the CGI more control. At the moment, the biggest reason why certain movies have lackluster CGI is because of deadlines and micromanagement. Hurting VFX artists’ timetables and disrupting their work will never guarantee solid work.
CGI scenes require much attention to detail and work to make things feel natural. It’s tough to make a scene feel authentic if the artist has to rush their process or redo the scene several times due to rewrites. If Marvel can give more space for their artists to work freely, MCU movies might actually receive some praise. The biggest problem is how the scenes are handled, not the actual artists. Time will tell if Marvel Studios has learned its lesson and can do consistent projects again.
Do you think Marvel will be able to have better CGI? Let Inside the Magic know what you think!