She-Hulk is great, but it’s the worst example of Marvel’s CGI mess yet

There have been complaints about bad special effects for as long as blockbuster cinema itself. After all, the job of animation technology is to create a dense illusion on the screen. CGI is usually only talked about when it is particularly underground, i.e. it tears gaps in the illusion. So now let’s talk about She-Hulk: The Lawyer, a new Disney+ series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

She-Hulk is better than most Marvel series, even the CGI doesn’t change that

The Disney+ MCU series started with two promises. (1) You should use the usual Effects and production level of cinema films are transferred to the streaming level. (2) They should also interact narratively with the movies. Cameos, references, whole story overlaps, that sort of thing. She-Hulk only keeps one promise, but with a grade of 1.

A typical MCU series, She-Hulk is better than most because it has a clear vision of how to weave the MCU environment into its storyline without sacrificing its own focus (does anyone here have “Hawkeye” said?). We experience the now 14-year-old Marvel cosmos from the perspective of a lawyer who does stuff in her mid-thirties: dates, career, friends, search for meaning. Then she becomes of hers Cousin Bruce Banner infected with the Hulk DNA strand and also has to deal with her new superhero identity.

She-Hulk tells the story of Jennifer Walters in one go relaxed Monster of the Week mode. A new case every week and a delicate main arc in the background. How liberating! How uncomplicated! And yet full of MCU love. Plus some meta-gags, man-stress and cameos that are really funny because a hitherto wasted character like Wong (Benedict Wong) really comes into its own in this comedy setting.

It’s definitely more enjoyable than the unbearably dry blockbuster plot of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which has been reduced to 6 hours. A twerk performance by Megan Thee Stallion would have done the Captain America spin-off very well. While the MCU admired America’s ace, it never used him. Think about it.

21 years after Gollum, the She Hulk CGI is just plain terrifying

Now on a series called She-Hulk, this Hulk thing. Lead actress Tatiana Maslany has to walk around in a performance capture suit most of the time so that she can appear as a green and muscular heroine in the final product. And that looks, well, pretty awful.

It’s even frightening to us 21 years after Gollum and 13 years after Avatar the currently largest and supposedly most resource-rich entertainment company has one ongoing CGI glitch pretends. Especially in daylight scenes (as included above), She-Hulk-Jennifer resembles those green-suited characters who typically hold tennis balls as proxies for talking raccoons in MCU making-of videos in front of the green screens.

Mean, but that’s the way it is. And that She-Hulk now has to suffer is particularly bitter. Because with that obvious CGI residue makes this great series an easy target for many fans who generally struggle with Marvel stories from a female perspective.

That’s unfair because She-Hulk: The Lawyer is one of the few MCU productions where bad CGI doesn’t bother. I can overlook that in a legal sitcom produced for a streaming service that emphasizes dialogue and comedy moments.

With superhero films that are produced for the cinema and that place a lot of value on action with elaborate battle and fight scenes, things are a little different.

And that brings us to true problem this Marvel era.

Marvel’s CGI crisis runs much deeper

We’ve been talking about She-Hulk so far because the series simply offers the most conspicuous example of CGI sloppiness. Jennifer Walters’ twitchy gait just catches your eye. A decline in CGI in the MCU can be observed at least since phase 3 with the two Avengers films, Black Panther and Captain Marvel. In previous years, the CGI share in MCU productions had steadily increased, just like the output in general.

And the dents piled up. It starts with lovelessly designed backgrounds like in the Shang Chi finale, which is as dreary as a rainy sky in German November – and ends with that irritating faux pas in Thor 4, where you wonder how someone in a position of responsibility just waved it through could.

In the context of the theatrical release of Thor 4 in July, some topics came up that had previously been simmering in the background for a long time. The occasion: Thor director Taika Waititi made fun of the “unbelievable” effects of his own film in front of the camera.

VFX artists who had worked for Disney and the MCU then shared their stories on Reddit and Twitter: a devastating verdict about handling an industry without which this franchise could not exist.

The allegations at a glance

Disney pays too little to the companies that still accept the orders because the MCU occupies a large part of the blockbuster segment. Anyone who messes with Marvel can basically shut it down, explained an anonymous VFX artist in an article at Vulture. (Title: I’m a VFX Artist, and I’m Tired of Getting ‘Pixel-F–ked’ by Marvel)

The companies, in turn, keep their costs within limits by putting as few employees as possible on a Marvel CGI project. Who is actually surprised by anything?

Why this isn’t just a Marvel issue, it’s a cinema issue

The results of these working conditions and marrow ratios are a She-Hulk with a smooth clay mask for the face, fight scenes where movements don’t match, and muddy battle scenes. The current situation is unreasonable for the artists Nor can it be the claim of Marvel and Disney.

The CGI development was never linear, there were and are always swings up and down until the quality of the computer animation technology leveled off at a constantly increased level and the next step forward took place. But in recent years the quality seems to be steadily declining. How did we actually get from “getting better and better” to “it’ll work out somehow”?

Marvel and Disney are dominating cinema more than ever. This will make the CGI mess of the MCU a problem for all (blockbuster) cinema. Currently, the largest franchise is drying up a sector that made quantum leaps in the ’90s and 2000s. So the MCU not only makes blockbuster cinema more uniform, it also makes it uglier. You have to get excited about that. But please not (only) with She-Hulk.

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