Ever since former President of Physical, Post Production, VFX and Animation Victoria Alonso had been fired from Marvel Studios, numerous reports have been circulating on the reason behind her sudden ousting after years of executive work long into the making of the first Iron Man film. One of those reports happens to be her distressing management on VFX workers when creating MCU films accordingly.
However, this report sheds light on the darker side of things on Marvel Studios behind-the-scenes. Apparently, Alonso has been accused of not only having a domineering behavior when it comes to stealing the creative autonomy of MCU film directors from their own film, but in ensuring that directors are inexperienced in their own line of work (most prominent example is the inexperience while working on VFX).
In a recent talk with The Town with Matthew Belloni (via The Direct), New York Magazine and Vulture reporter Chris Lee detailed in on Marvel Studios’ tendency to hire inexperienced directors in the visual effects department, in which this is being willfully implemented to maintain overall creative control on the studios’ projects.
“Marvel, systemically… They harvest directors from the Sundance Film Festival, somebody who has directed some cheapo movie that got a lot of buzz, that has a lot of heart, a lot of originality, and then [Marvel Studios] suddenly prop them up with a nine-figure budget for the first time.” The reporter explained, “[Taika Waititi, Chloé Zhao, Ryan Coogler, etc.] These people, by and large, do not have any experience with VFX.”
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“Around the time of Victoria Alonso’s dismissal, I was DM’ing with an extremely well-known director who had worked on a Marvel film, and she was relating some remarks that Victoria had said to her about another filmmaker who directed, let’s just say, one of the biggest movies Marvel’s ever put out,”
Lee continued, adding that this had come straight from Alonso’s mouth when it comes to creating MCU films, “[Alonso] was talking about this guy, and she said, ‘They don’t direct the movies. We direct the movies.’ Meaning that the filmmakers don’t have creative control over the look of the films that Marvel does.”
Marvel Phase 5's continuous and questionable delay had been previously debunked to be some sort of strategy by Marvel Studios (for their main goal of producing higher quality films) and by Disney CEO Bob Iger (to take part in cost-cutting budget funds amid its 7000 employee layoffs from the company).
However, this little strategy on limiting the potential of their director will only continue to hurt Marvel and the Multiverse altogether if they don’t start reworking the way they run things at the studio.
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