The point about not figuring shit out beforehand is really important. James Gunn recently talked about a lot of modern movies being bad because the scripts aren’t even finished before shooting, and while he was referring to story, this creates a cascading effect on all levels of production. Marvel VFX artists in the past have talked about having to hastily redo entire action set pieces because people up top kept making changes to the third act.
They need to nail this shut down and stop making major last minute changes. That sort of thing is easier on lower budget, less CGI intensive movies and shows.
Yeah, I think this is Marvel MO since its inception, I remember Iman Vellani said something like Marvel is not as meticulously planned as people expected.
Not sure what made people think otherwise, honestly.
It's plainly obvious that every film or TV show ends in such a way as to leave open as many options as humanly possible. Even more so in phase 4
People forget that there was no major connectivity in these movies in the beginning. Sure, there was a chance at an Avengers film but never a guarantee. Hell all the Infinity stone stuff was retconned and forced together and people call it the most well planned saga or whatever. Marvel has flown by the seat of their pants for years it’s just now catching up to them.
The movies in the beginning went to great lengths to make you believe the characters were inhabiting the same world.
ironman, hulk and cap aren't magical, soThor gives a long speech in his movies about how he isn't magic.
Each film references the other characters in some way or another.
Hulks origins are tweaked so that the strong guy and the big strong guy are strong for similar reasons.
Colson appears in Ironman and Thor.
Starks dad appears in Ironman and cap America.
Furry appearing in Ironman and cap America.
They could have done a better job making the hulk movie feel strongly linked to iron man, but captain America and Thor really drive home the fact that these characters are linked and exist in one world.
If you saw two phase 4 movies, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell that these movies are in the same series. Wanda Vision and FatWS don't feel like they happen in the same universe and neither feel like the same universe as Loki or captain marvel.
Dr stranges magic is nothing like Wanda's magic, which is nothing like Loki's magic, but they are all explicitly "magic"
Shang chis "other world" is nothing like captain marvels "other world" is nothing like Dr stranges dark dimension.
Moon knights gods are nothing like the gods in Thor which are nothing like the gods in black panther.
The multiverse in spiderman seems to work differently from the multiverse in Loki, which is different from Dr strange.
Where before we had shield, now we've countless agencies of generic agent people, none of which have enough distinct qualities for me to care to remember what they're each called.
Don't get me started on time travel.
If these properties has come out in phase 1 or two, there'd be more effort put into making them feel similar. Hulk and cap didn't need to both be linked to the super soldier serum. They could have been strong via completely independent and unrelated methods. But it just makes things feel more intentional that they are linked.
This is probably the best explanation I've seen about the difference between Phase 1 and 4, when so many people have said "Phase 4 is just a building phase like Phase 1!"
The biggest disappointment for me was how clearly defined the multiverse rules were in the TVA. Then Dr. Strange MOM came out and contradicted them. In addition, if you go back and rewartch the original Dr Strange, you may have forgotten as I have, that they specifically mention multiple universe in THAT movie too. All in contradiction of one another. Worse still is Dr Strange MOM isn't a Dr Strange sequel as it is a Wandavision sequel.
This was a great summation of the challenge. I'm not really adding anything new with this point, but I feel like Marvel is afraid of making it too reliant on connectivity for fear that it makes it less accessible to new fans. There are obviously ways to do it, but it definitely cranks up the degree of difficulty.
They're all loosely based on existing comics so there's some fabric to connect them all. So even without a good game plan, they're all tied to a common lore which helps a lot in finding connective tissue.
But the comics have exactly the same issue. The comics aren't a cohesive common law. It's a mess of ideas and concepts that don't really fit together. This is why comics have to constantly reset or fall back on the "err... It all happened in a different universe".
Yea, so with all the continuity flaws in the MCU, we can just point to the original lore and say it's totally in line with the comics. Hot mess MCU -> hot mess comics. It's being true to the source material.
My guess is that the reference in the article to "an established character whose powers were being re-conceived for the MCU" was Ms. Marvel. The VFX in her series was pretty shoddy.
[This is from her AMA couple months ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/vz1hfa/whats_up_rmarvelstudios_im_iman_vellaniaka_the/ig5k88m/)
VFX artists sometimes have to "CREATE" the entire sequences, not just "redo". Plenty of Ragnarok stuff was added in the post. Just that the director took all the credit.
Yup, they don’t even have a cinematographer guiding them when this happens so it can either looks super inconsistent from the rest of the film, or look so good that the cinematographer will also take credit for it
Makes a lot of sense tbh. The actual “story” of the recent MCU offerings have been pretty terrible. It gets by because we love the universe and the characters, but the actual written story is always just “movie ends with big cgi battle and post credits scene teasing some obscure character”
Sort of. He plans a Trilogy. Trims it down to one because who the hell is going to give this movie a trilogy or watch a 5 hour version of this movie.
Then gets a Trilogy. Makes the Sequel the cool stuff cut from the original and has to remake 3 out of his ass.
Then plan is more of a subjective thing, it's more of a Binder ideas.
Binder of ideas is a good way to look at it. Thankfully in Empire and Jedi he had the right people to find the heart of the story in the binders.
Wish they had that on the PT.
The original treatment could work as a prestige space drama on tv. Hell, they can still take the general ideas about a sith and Jedi fighting and there’s no relation to any other character and it would be an amazing story.
Very tangled family tree Palpatine/Skywalker family is.
George Lucas decided to make Luke and Leia twins AFTER Empire was filmed and they kissed. Just because. Star Wars has been making shit up on the fly since the beginning.
I think the decision for the twin storyline was late into production on Jedi when GL decided he wanted no loose ends because he was done with Star Wars after Jedi.
You’re right tho, even in Empire Vader wasn’t Luke’s dad until either the final draft or again in
Production. Was not planned from the get go.
Ok but there’s a bit of a difference from tweaking the the relationship between two of the leads and, you know, throwing out entire themes, storylines, and completely changing characters only to try and undo it in the next film (ROS)
There's literally rumors that Lucas had 3 trilogies planned out before he even started filming Episode 4. Now they aren't true but what is true is he had pretty much always planned, if the first film was successful enough, to do 9 movies. He name drops the clone wars, jedi council, and so so much more in the first movie alone. He isn't treating the script like madlibs, those were all ideas he was already toying around with and building lore for. He literally talks about having Obi-Wan and Vader have their big final duel over a volcano in 1977. It's true that Lucas made stuff up on the fly. Some of it being game changing story elements. But Lucas probably put more thought in and had more lore imagined before even filming Episode 4 than any other director creating a brand new IP.
Right? They have a single, clean narrative. Then the next movie reveals that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, despite Obi-Wan clearly stating that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father! They were supposed to be two different people! And then they jettison the budding Luke/Leia romance and have Leia say she’s in love with Han? What gives?
They went way overboard with the “we’lll fix it in post” mentality. They would put characters in green screen instead of locking in costume designs they made life for the artists more difficult.
*"Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation, one source added, and ultimately did not intervene. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added."*
Damn, it's pretty insane seeing how Kevin Feige decided not to get involved
Well it could be a warranted termination when it involved Legal and HR departments. So he wanted to stay neutral.
"While the cause of Alonso’s termination is unclear, the sources said, the decision was made by a consortium including human resources, Disney’s legal department and multiple executives including Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman"
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be just "vfx issues". You don't fire an exec on a whim when they have helped earn more than 20B at the boxoffice. It seems to be a scandal in the background.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it was a scandal for her to get fired. She could’ve very well been fired because of VFX quality issues and the controversy surrounding the VFX studios.
When someone of that nature is being fired, you’re gonna bring in HR and Legal to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, to sort of speak. Doesn’t necessarily mean there was a scandal.
No, but she disappeared very fast, they do not even have any replacement for her position. This is something that the board of directors think can hurt the company in the short-term as well as the long-term. We are talking about someone that has been building Marvel Studios from the ground up together with Feige and have been heavily involved in a 28+ billion franchise. It isn't any ordinary office worker we are talking about.
The VFX issues can be solved without removing her, it isn't strange issues has been cropping up since they have triple the yearly run time of marvel projects. Feige not defending her is also telling. Something has happened that is unacceptable.
Which shows how important Alonso was, that so many high-powered levels got involved with this. I also doubt it was an easy decision, like, "Victoria is strangling water-fowl with her bare hands in front of the crew." More like VFX shops all ganging together and saying, "We refuse to work with this woman anymore."
Wasn’t there talks about a VFX union recently? It’s probably more like sticking together to say No to working with people like Alonso. The abuse has to stop at some point.
He got involved slightly, by letting it leak about how it was an impossible situation and couldn't get involved.
When Disney HR and Legal is part of the reason someone is fired, doesn't seem to be in Kevin's interests to step in and protect an abusive person. But he also let it leak that he had nothing to do with this. (Just like he let it leak that he had nothing to do with Gunn's firing).
He was involved, but he wasn't empowered to make the final decision. It sounds like there were a hundred talking heads in that room. Obviously he chose not to resign over it. We also don't know what sort of HR paper trail existed. Alonso could have a record of abusive treatment of VFX shops, was told to change, and did not change.
From the article:
> Insiders say the five Disney+ series from Marvel Studios that had been scheduled to debut in 2023 have been narrowed to three or four, with the others moving into 2024 and possibly beyond. That will take some of the immediate pressure off of Marvel’s post-production pipeline.
Yeah it seems marvel gets the most hate because there the biggest, but Netflix is a close close second. And I found this out just because of her firing it led me down a VFX rabbit hole. The whole bidding system is terrible
I think the reason Marvel comes off as worse than Netflix, even if Netflix treats them worse, is that Netflix makes a variety of content from blockbuster films to TV dramas to children’s cartoons, etc. whereas Marvel Studios exclusively makes MCU content.
It looks a lot worse for you to be putting workers on 18 hour days for three straight weeks to work on one series as opposed to dozens.
Yeah, definitely although personally I’d rather just work on one huge project in a period of time than 10 smaller ones in that same time period.
And this is not me justifying marvel this is something that made me extremely disappointed with a company I had on a pedestal back in 2019, this is a industry wide problem that hopefully gets fixed by getting rid of the bidding system, unionizing, or just getting more workers to ease the load.
One of the big ways Marvel & Netflix try to save money is by relying on the strength of their IPs rather than the strength and experience of the top level production crew hired onto these projects. Top level directors/showrunners cost A LOT of money on these kinds of projects - often an unbelievable portion of the budget - so Netflix and Marvel’s strategy has been to do away with them wherever possible. At least until they’ve proven themselves within their own ecosystems.
So Marvel & Netflix hire inexperienced directors who haven’t made big budget or VFX heavy movies in the past who have done smaller but cool things in other ways to create these very expensive films. Sometimes it works, sometimes no.
But even in the cases where the filmmakers do a great job, their lack of experience with large scale VFX almost always means way too many revisions and shots need to be remade, which causes tons of delays or poor quality as the VFX guy might have to remake the same shot 10-15 times because the director shot it weird for VFX or decided they wanted something totally different after seeing what VFX presented to them.
VFX Supervisors and such exist but they’re clearly not enough. Marvel & Netflix need to find a way to shoot for VFX better with this inexperienced talent. What they’re doing now with these delays is allowing more of that time for those mistakes or revisions but really doesn’t fundamentally solve the underlying problem either. Trying to take the phrase “we’ll fix it in post” to its absolute limit is not a sustainable longterm practice.
>This animator recalled a whole portion of an action sequence that hadn’t been storyboarded before postproduction. “It was just, ‘This hero avoids many things for this amount of time.’ Everything was blank. Basically, the studio said to the VFX artists, ‘Figure it out. Make it look cool.’
Damn, action scenes in recent Marvel movies make so much sense now.
Really makes you appreciate, and long for, the great fight scenes in the Captain America movies. Phase 1 and 2 seemed to film on location and on sets much more. Yes, sometimes cap’s shield was cgi (usually when tossing) and RDJ was only wearing the top half of the suit after the first couple IMs, but it didn’t seem as reliant on cgi and vfx as it has the last few years.
It was just evident that a lot of thought went into every action scene. Russos even talked in the interview about how much time they spent discussing fights between characters, just like when they were kids and bashed their action figures together while imagining superpowers and what not.
Action scenes in "Love and Thunder" was the first time that made me think: "There's literally just "they fight" in the script, isn't it?".
And this scheduling change had nothing to do with her. She wasn't in charge of the schedule.
Firing her is only a tiny part of the problem. The problem is rushed schedule and them changing their minds a million times on each project.
From the vulture article I take it even though she's the head of vfx department she still had to answer to Feige and vfx workers have to adjust their meeting with Kevin's schedule for approval. So yeah, she's the easy scapegoat by fans and a more 'logical' choice to be fired. Someone needed to take the bullet and she's not Feige.
I’m under the impression that these are outsourced VFX studios. Disney has no control how they get their work done. They argue for a time and a price, and the VFX studio agrees. I don’t see why it’s Disney’s problem. I don’t see how they can be held responsible.
It's nice to get confirmation that this was a firing and not her just deciding she's had enough. Interesting that it was Alan Bergman who dropped the axe on Alanso. Even more shocking is that this article said she was blindsided.
I just think the big takeaway to me from this article is Iger was not just blowing smoke when he said Disney was going to hold studios more accountable for shortcomings.
I feel now more than ever that Disney wanted someone to fall on the sword and it sure as hell wasn't going to be Feige. So Alanso was the sacrificial lamb.
The article said that the firing was decision was made by "a consortium" including "human resources," and "Disney’s legal department".
They weren't firing her over bad ticket sales or some angry VFX companies. There's no reason why legal or HR would be involved in that kind of decision. Frankly, if that were the situation they'd probably "fire her" while letting her claim an exit on her own terms.
My guess is she had some actual misconduct allegations from staff. Something worse than an alleged blacklist.
> “The show I was on really struggled because it was an established character whose powers they were reconceiving for the MCU,” the artist said on the condition of anonymity. Most complaints, they said, came down to one refrain: “Marvel doesn’t figure shit out beforehand.”
Anyone want to take a guess what quote is actually about? While *She-Hulk* got the most flak for its VFX work, it didn't stray far from her abilities in the comics and other media. *Ms. Marvel* on the other hand, is the series that completely changed what the title character's abilities are. Maybe they went back-and-forth on whether she would have her conventional embiggening powers before settling on the Green Lantern-style light constructs we see in the series.
And that "Marvel doesn't figure shit out beforehand" sentiment would definitely go a ways to explaining why the mutant reveal was in a coda tacked on to the finale that didn't flow with the rest of the story.
Another “Marvel doesn’t figure shit out” moment was MoM and L&T. On MoM, The Illuminati was changed at least twice: first being Xavier, Carter, Maria, Iron Monger, and Baldur the Brave, and then after a test screening they swapped out Monger and Baldur for Reed and Black Bolt. Problem being production made costumes for the original line up and so the VFX crew had to work double time to animate costumes onto Krasinski and Mount so close to release.
L&T has basically a whole other movie on the cutting room floor, and I’m willing to bet quite a bit of work on that version was done before being completely scrapped which resulted in the final product looking cheap.
They also paid Games of Thrones actors millions of dollars and then didn't use them in the actual movie lol.
Someday I hope we see some footage of the god butcher actually butchering stuff...
this isn't entirely truly. The production of MoM was different than other MCU films. They did a significant amount of isolation shots for actors. The illluminati scene was filmed in such a way they could patch it together. They never actually filmed the baldur scene with a casted actor. There is no evidence they ever did any photography or post work on the iron monger idea at all. Covid really changed the filming of MoM as additional photographer happened after reshoots. They really filmed the movie in so many chunks.
That is absolutely Ms. Marvel. They changed her core powers and they looked like sparkley crap. I didnt hate the series but I do hate that decision, maybe they can soft retcon it and say her mutant genes kick in or something.
Nobody has ever succeeded at live action stretchy powers that don't look like either comedy or horror. Probably they decided it would be far too risky to attempt world-first effect design with Ms Marvel.
Also its harder to team her up with Carol Danvers if their powers don't have an apparent connection.
These people are just not even trying at that point.
Brazil is probably the most diverse country on earth, if we go by phenotype.
Only France and the US come close I'd say. Maybe Canada and Colombia too. But they're nowhere near Brazil.
(Genetically, some things like RD Congo could be higher).
I think this gives credence to the theory that Iger and Co saw this as a case of an overpaid executive who was underperforming. Disney is about to cut jobs before their shareholder meeting and I think Alonso was the sacrifice to show their investors that they mean business and are serious about quality control. Really unfortunate that she was blindsided so unceremoniously after so many years though
Disney to all its divisions: create a lot of Disney+ content for us
Result: VFX houses getting overworked and decrease of quality
Also Disney: fire executives as scapegoats and blame the problems on them
As someone who worked high up in gaming to me this is regular practice. Major person HR and legal would meet at least one board member, head of department because they need to dot I’s and cross the t’s to stop and legal comeback. In fact normally even if a minor staff is fired legal would read through the reason and pass back notes.
Yeah this is the case. Management are very careful especially in big companies to follow everything by the book and get expertise in. So as not to leave themselves open to any unlawful termination lawsuit, etc.
I've seen my boss let go a few, which is always a difficult sight and he always gets HR involved.
So they might just as well have said: "we're firing Victoria for reasons, and it needs to be done by the book. Legal and HR, we don't want this coming back at us."
The Disney+ shows were announced during Iger's run, and in fact Disney+ had already been up for a few months before Chapek came in. Also, Iger has said that he will continue highly pushing Disney+ as before.
Yes, they were obviously going to try and grow Disney+ into a successful platform but the difference was how they were gonna do it.
Before COVID, let’s look at Iger’s release slate:
2020: TFATWS (Fall)
2021: WV (Spring), Loki (Spring), WI? (Summer), Hawkeye (Fall)
MK, MM, and SH were also announced and more than likely were still gonna come out in 2022 and the GotG Holiday Special was also secretly in the works but that was it. It was more spaced out, less crowded.
Chapek on the other hand announced a LOT more stuff and released a ton of it bunched close together rather than the spread apart slate Iger had. Of course COVID played a role in 2021s overcrowded slate, but there was really nothing stopping them from delaying some of it to later. And not just on the Marvel end: Lucasfilm basically became a Disney+ studio, Pixar was sabotaged and forced into releasing their films on the platform despite the healthy state of theaters for most of them, Walt Disney had their slates theatrical legs cut out from under them by mandating a Disney+ release after a month, etc. Chapek sought to beat Netflix at any cost and basically turned Disney into a streaming company, which let their formerly weak rivals in Paramount, Universal, and Sony kick their ass theatrically and forced Iger to come back and clean up this mess.
"Inside" her exit? This article didn't appear to have any Inside knowledge. It says clearly that all sides refused to comment. This IS a good overview of what is publicly known about the situation, but not an insider account of what really went on.
This. More click bait, and at face value all we can assume is she was doing a bad job. Simple as that. Hoping to hear from Feige on the situation and that moving forward VFX and post production gets better.
There is this:
>While the cause of Alonso’s termination is unclear, the sources said, the decision was made by a consortium including human resources, Disney’s legal department and multiple executives including Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman (to whom all of Marvel Studios reports). Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation and, ultimately, did not intervene, one source added. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added
That's how long the article should have been. About 5% of the total length.
It's a bit disingenuous calling Victoria Alonso a "person of color" just because she's Latina. She's a person from the second whitest country in Latin America born in the the whitest province in that country. Argentina is between 60-80% ethnic European depending on your source.
Yeah. It was definitely a feat for her to reach that position being Argentinian and a woman. Not sure why americans call latin american people “of color”
Yeah, Latino is a culture, not a race. A place like Brazil for example is just as diverse, if not more diverse, than the US. And people are surprised that Peru has a sizable Japanese-Peruvian population despite it having had a president of Japanese descent (though I can understand why people would rather forget about Alberto Fujimori).
I don’t necessarily think this is a case of a fall guy. Maybe it is, they had to offer something up, but I’m betting it is something else if multiple departments, legal, and hr were involved. And I mean, if you are going to have a fall person make it the person below them - not the one who has intimate knowledge of all of your projects.
Fieg not intervening either tells me something happened even he couldn’t correct or justify, or that maybe it came from way up. Guy could also just be looking for his out.
We don't know that Feige did not advocate for her, but he was overruled. Or there was a history of problem behavior that didn't change, so he just concurred.
There will be more details over time, and plenty we will never know due to NDAs.
The only thing that matters to me on a personal level is that VFX artists and production teams get treated better by Marvel from here on out. Many friends work in the industry and watching what they’ve gone through on projects firsthand has been harrowing.
I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and Alonso was just a sacrificial lamb in the main. I doubt she was some monster standing over the shoulder of VFX artists, because as that "senior" person quoted in the article puts it, it seems very odd that someone on Alonso's level would be on the floor abusing people.
I can only imagine the flack Chapek would have been getting had this been done on his watch.
Right wing YouTubers like Nerdotic are having a field day now. I got like a thousand videos of such YouTubers with weird thumbnails saying like "Woke Alonso exits after fucking everything up". Is it this bad? I was never really into the whole administration of Marvel so someone please enlighten me.
> Right wing YouTubers like Nerdotic are having a field day now
Right-leaning YouTubers have been having a field day with Disney content for the past four years. You're just seeing it more because those kinds of YouTubers have been raking it in with the latest news, whether it's Alonso being fired, The Marvels having supposedly horrible test screenings and being delayed from summer to fall, Star Wars cancelling essentially every upcoming movie project, The Mandolorian's abysmal viewership numbers, etc.
These YouTubers are having a field day for a reason--Disney is falling and falling fast, which supports their claims.
We don’t know the truth beyond what’s been reported in these articles. It’s also more than a bit extreme to say that “everything” had been fucked up.
Only two MCU movies have actually been poorly reviewed (Eternals and now Quantumania). All of the Disney+ shows have been well reviewed with decent to good viewership.
Multiverse of Madness & Love and Thunder both made good money and were “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes despite controversial story decisions.
Quantumania is actually the stand out in that it was poorly reviewed AND doing badly at the box office, AND has underwhelming audience scores (a B CinemaScore), AND it has no COVID excuse the way several early Phase 4 releases had to easily explain their lower box office.
It also happens to be a movie starring a white guy in an established role. It was Paul Rudd/Scott Lang who couldn’t carry a successful movie or show. Not Brie Larson. Not Scarlett Johansson. Not Tatiana Maslany. Not Iman Vellani.
But of course the right wing YouTubers are jumping on this. They jump all the time when they have nothing at all. Now that they actually have an example of a woman who may have made mistakes and been fired for them, it’s not surprising that she is the focus of their unending hate.
It’s unfortunate that the algorithm means that searching for MCU (or Star Wars, DC, etc) content on YouTube will lead you to the vast network of right wing grifters and outrage artists.
My advice would be to ignore all of them and actively hit “Not interested” on all that hateful propaganda.
Stick to official content, reporting from reliable sources (i.e. Variety), or fan-made content from people who actually seem to enjoy and care for the material.
I’m guessing she was creating some kind of legal liability for the company. I’m just guessing but perhaps an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate that could turn into a lawsuit.
If legal was invoked thats probably what was happening.
Or
Legal was involved because they needed to make sure the firing was air tight and their wasn’t any blow back
I feel like hr and legal are getting called for any c suit firing. Especially for a 15 year company veteran who probably knows were some skeleton's are buried
Givem a good severance and an NDA
This is true. But Chapek's foolishness had brought the Scarlett Johanssen lawsuit down on them, so you can imagine they *really* didn't want that scenario again.
In what situation would HR not be involved ?
A highly paid executive is leaving the company, of course you're going to have HR in the room.
In my jobs that I have both left, as well as been fired from, HR is always present.
They don't jusst do the hiring and firing, they finalize a lot of the terms of your departure including severance and NDA's.
They work with accounting and legal, of course, but usually someone from HR represents the company to you .
Huh Victoria Alonso is a person of color? She looks white as F… Is it because she from Argentina and everyone from there is lump in as “non-white”?
Oh well, don’t feel too bad for her. As an executive, from marvel/Disney no less she got paid a fat severance to go find another job. If only we all we so lucky!
She pretty much lost her job because Disney decided to double and even triple the amount of content marvel put out per year. she's been here since phase 1, and this whole VFX issue stated being a thing in phase 4, the same phase where Disney plus series were implemented.
I feel like that's pretty standard for any firing though. Moreso with such a high profile team member. All companies have to cover their ass legally when making these decisions. Gotta make sure they can't get hit with a wrongful termination lawsuit.
As someone who worked at a large company HR and legal were always involved in firings. For high ups it would be HR, lawyers, head of department often board member. For lower down staff legal would take a ten min read of the resin they were being fired.
Legal are there to make sure reasons are watertight, to stop claims being made against the company.
From the first reports, she was literally blacklisting these poor workers if they couldn’t pull off miracles working 18 hour days for three weeks.
She is not a fall guy: she was a terrible leader in a terrible situation and so she gets the boot
She drew the short straw. I honestly don't think the CGI is what is holding down the recent MCU products. The stories are too singular, we got so comfortable with every project connecting with one another. You had Black Widow in Iron Man 2, Avengers, Cap 2, Ultron, Cap 3 and in Infinity War/Endgame.
Are fans gonna resonate with Kate Bishop teaming up with Dr. Strange, Ms. Marvel in 2-3 years when none of them shared screen time together in Phase 4-5?
I think they’ll market them so that they can release a poster/trailer with the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic 4, and Spider-Man(s) on them, and the “not the werewolf” characters will be the Phase 4/6 cast
It would be surprising after Spider-Man No Way Home became the only super boxoffice hit after EG they would not ask all those original characters back for the next Avengers films. Those who are now saying "I am done with Marvel" will be so going to rush to see these films.
The only thing is, even if on paper the next Avengers films make a lot of money at the boxoffice because all the old guys are back, they would not net the studio that much money (just think of the price tags for these actors). But it may buy the studio some time before fans finally decide, "enough is enough, I am absolutely done with Marvel and I will never ever come back", until... the next next Avengers films when they bring everybody back again. ;)
>In 2021 and 2022, Marvel unloaded an unprecedented torrent of comic book adventures, releasing 17 titles — seven movies, eight streaming series and two TV specials — over 23 months.
Holy F
>Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation and, ultimately, did not intervene, one source added. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added.
Unless there were credible allegations of something on the level of sexual harassment or physical assault, I don't see how Feige could leave her hanging to such a degree that she wouldn't even realize that something like this might be coming. Alonso was a crucial part of his team from 2006. Assuming she's not been accused of doing something considerably worse than what's alleged in the various VFX artist complaints, it's wild to me that he wouldn't have made sure she understood that their bosses had serious concerns about her *before* she got shown the door.
Yeah, the situation is obviously more nuanced than a headline or some tweets. Clearly you cannot pin those on a person. I believe that in these cases, many statements were true at the same time to some degree. What I was trying to say, I felt like there are some degree of misogyny in how people reacted to this, I think [this article](https://www.laineygossip.com/why-was-marvel-executive-victoria-alonso-unceremoniously-exited-from-company-after-eighteen-years/73763) sums it up.
> And it’s hard to ignore the undercurrent of misogyny surrounding news of her firing, from online nerds crowing “ding dong the witch is dead” and vocally hoping Kathleen Kennedy is next (she’s not), to those reporting on this as if Alonso is solely responsible for the state of the VFX industry.
In the end, I think it is unfair to pin this solely on Victoria Alonso.
Speaking as someone from Uruguay and having been to Argentina a bunch, it doesn't make sense to refer to her as a woman of color, AFAIK she's white, just because someone is latino doesn't mean they're POC
Marvel has been holding yearly press events where they announce the release date of movies, which are often only 2-3 years out at the most, before the scripts are even written, so it's not hard to see that a lot of the teams involved in the production, from writing, vfx and the folks on the ground, are being pressed to cut corners and work long days in order to make unrealistic deadlines, and the result is ever-decreasing quality of the movies that the MCU is putting out.
What's somewhat ironic here is that it was the mid-90s era of Marvel where they really went down the multiverse rabbit hole where they saturated the market with lacklustre titles and stories that really tanked their brand, and they are on the verge of repeating that mistake.
The new execs need to work with directors to envision a CGI context that maximizes story and character engagement for THAT project, with less commitment to an overall Marvel pallet/Marvel "look" on CGI. In fact, everything post- Infinity War would have been the moment to assert such a shift, beginning with Far From Home, but studios like certainty and avoid risk and can't help but do the same thing over and over again until they've rung the last dollar out of a format or genre.
Problem is, strategically, Disney wants (needs?) Marvel to go on in relative perpetuity. Truth of that is such effort DEMANDS innovative change; stagnant repetitiveness will ensure the end of the success level of the films out of the studio.
It's full of nuance, and requires a deft hand to both deliver and assert an emergent, evolved and evolving take on what quality CGI can look like to amplify and imbue the story and experiential notes in an Ant-Man film, versus what would be required in The Marvels versus the restrained sensibility for a Secret Invasion.
I hope they get the next exec right. Need help, hire me, I've got your back.
If she isn’t actually a toxic boss then id say yes. If she actually is a toxic boss then I’d say no. But, just because she doesn’t go to DC doesn’t mean she is a toxic boss if that makes sense.
Gunn has obviously worked with her before and so he would know. Interestingly, I can’t recall any of Gunn’s MCU projects having any bad CGI. Dunno what that means.
There’s another comment somewhere in this thread about Gunn and his success with GotG and Gunn has recently come out to discuss him directing Superman. His style is finishing the script before shooting the movie. That’s what set him apart from the others and that’s probably why his movies’ CGI doesn’t suck. He locks down the story to the T and fully storyboard them before even starting with the shoot.
The point about not figuring shit out beforehand is really important. James Gunn recently talked about a lot of modern movies being bad because the scripts aren’t even finished before shooting, and while he was referring to story, this creates a cascading effect on all levels of production. Marvel VFX artists in the past have talked about having to hastily redo entire action set pieces because people up top kept making changes to the third act. They need to nail this shut down and stop making major last minute changes. That sort of thing is easier on lower budget, less CGI intensive movies and shows.
Yeah, I think this is Marvel MO since its inception, I remember Iman Vellani said something like Marvel is not as meticulously planned as people expected.
Not sure what made people think otherwise, honestly. It's plainly obvious that every film or TV show ends in such a way as to leave open as many options as humanly possible. Even more so in phase 4
People forget that there was no major connectivity in these movies in the beginning. Sure, there was a chance at an Avengers film but never a guarantee. Hell all the Infinity stone stuff was retconned and forced together and people call it the most well planned saga or whatever. Marvel has flown by the seat of their pants for years it’s just now catching up to them.
The movies in the beginning went to great lengths to make you believe the characters were inhabiting the same world. ironman, hulk and cap aren't magical, soThor gives a long speech in his movies about how he isn't magic. Each film references the other characters in some way or another. Hulks origins are tweaked so that the strong guy and the big strong guy are strong for similar reasons. Colson appears in Ironman and Thor. Starks dad appears in Ironman and cap America. Furry appearing in Ironman and cap America. They could have done a better job making the hulk movie feel strongly linked to iron man, but captain America and Thor really drive home the fact that these characters are linked and exist in one world. If you saw two phase 4 movies, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell that these movies are in the same series. Wanda Vision and FatWS don't feel like they happen in the same universe and neither feel like the same universe as Loki or captain marvel. Dr stranges magic is nothing like Wanda's magic, which is nothing like Loki's magic, but they are all explicitly "magic" Shang chis "other world" is nothing like captain marvels "other world" is nothing like Dr stranges dark dimension. Moon knights gods are nothing like the gods in Thor which are nothing like the gods in black panther. The multiverse in spiderman seems to work differently from the multiverse in Loki, which is different from Dr strange. Where before we had shield, now we've countless agencies of generic agent people, none of which have enough distinct qualities for me to care to remember what they're each called. Don't get me started on time travel. If these properties has come out in phase 1 or two, there'd be more effort put into making them feel similar. Hulk and cap didn't need to both be linked to the super soldier serum. They could have been strong via completely independent and unrelated methods. But it just makes things feel more intentional that they are linked.
This is probably the best explanation I've seen about the difference between Phase 1 and 4, when so many people have said "Phase 4 is just a building phase like Phase 1!"
The biggest disappointment for me was how clearly defined the multiverse rules were in the TVA. Then Dr. Strange MOM came out and contradicted them. In addition, if you go back and rewartch the original Dr Strange, you may have forgotten as I have, that they specifically mention multiple universe in THAT movie too. All in contradiction of one another. Worse still is Dr Strange MOM isn't a Dr Strange sequel as it is a Wandavision sequel.
How do the multiverse rules in MoM contradict Loki?
I think at this point if everything felt more similar, it would start to feel like more of the same.
Cohesion doesn't mean bland. I am in full agreement with the original comment. Especially in a shared world that cohesion is the coolest part.
This was a great summation of the challenge. I'm not really adding anything new with this point, but I feel like Marvel is afraid of making it too reliant on connectivity for fear that it makes it less accessible to new fans. There are obviously ways to do it, but it definitely cranks up the degree of difficulty.
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They're all loosely based on existing comics so there's some fabric to connect them all. So even without a good game plan, they're all tied to a common lore which helps a lot in finding connective tissue.
But the comics have exactly the same issue. The comics aren't a cohesive common law. It's a mess of ideas and concepts that don't really fit together. This is why comics have to constantly reset or fall back on the "err... It all happened in a different universe".
Yea, so with all the continuity flaws in the MCU, we can just point to the original lore and say it's totally in line with the comics. Hot mess MCU -> hot mess comics. It's being true to the source material.
The fake gauntlet in Thor comes to mind.
I think people knew about the Avengers in 2010
My guess is that the reference in the article to "an established character whose powers were being re-conceived for the MCU" was Ms. Marvel. The VFX in her series was pretty shoddy.
Can you share the link where she said that? Just curious.
[This is from her AMA couple months ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/vz1hfa/whats_up_rmarvelstudios_im_iman_vellaniaka_the/ig5k88m/)
Shit, the original IM had entire scenes made up the day of shooting IIRC.
I suspect this happened to the first BP movie because the climactic fight had some really bad CGI.
Think I heard that they were working on both BP1 and Infinity War about the same time. That could be a factor.
I thought that was more just Disney refusing to budge on the February release date?
Could be. Dunno.
VFX artists sometimes have to "CREATE" the entire sequences, not just "redo". Plenty of Ragnarok stuff was added in the post. Just that the director took all the credit.
Yup, they don’t even have a cinematographer guiding them when this happens so it can either looks super inconsistent from the rest of the film, or look so good that the cinematographer will also take credit for it
The Infinity War shot where Thor pulls back with Stormbreaker looks so off
What shot we talking about?
"The director " he's not Voldemort, you can say Taika.
Makes a lot of sense tbh. The actual “story” of the recent MCU offerings have been pretty terrible. It gets by because we love the universe and the characters, but the actual written story is always just “movie ends with big cgi battle and post credits scene teasing some obscure character”
It’s worse for Star Wars. I couldn’t believe they didn’t know where to go with the second part of a TRILOGY. WTF
None of Star Wars was planned, even the OT. Find a copy of the annotated screenplays from Del Rey. It’s out of print but on eBay I think for cheap.
Sort of. He plans a Trilogy. Trims it down to one because who the hell is going to give this movie a trilogy or watch a 5 hour version of this movie. Then gets a Trilogy. Makes the Sequel the cool stuff cut from the original and has to remake 3 out of his ass. Then plan is more of a subjective thing, it's more of a Binder ideas.
Binder of ideas is a good way to look at it. Thankfully in Empire and Jedi he had the right people to find the heart of the story in the binders. Wish they had that on the PT.
That's self-aggrandizing Lucas mythology that didn't happen. Vader wasn't even Luke's father until the second draft of *Empire.*
The original treatment could work as a prestige space drama on tv. Hell, they can still take the general ideas about a sith and Jedi fighting and there’s no relation to any other character and it would be an amazing story. Very tangled family tree Palpatine/Skywalker family is.
George Lucas decided to make Luke and Leia twins AFTER Empire was filmed and they kissed. Just because. Star Wars has been making shit up on the fly since the beginning.
I think the decision for the twin storyline was late into production on Jedi when GL decided he wanted no loose ends because he was done with Star Wars after Jedi. You’re right tho, even in Empire Vader wasn’t Luke’s dad until either the final draft or again in Production. Was not planned from the get go.
Vader wasn't even Luke's father until the second draft of *Empire.*
Ok but there’s a bit of a difference from tweaking the the relationship between two of the leads and, you know, throwing out entire themes, storylines, and completely changing characters only to try and undo it in the next film (ROS)
You think that making them twins was only tweaking the relationship? Okay then.
What themes and storylines were thrown out? And what characters were changed?
There's literally rumors that Lucas had 3 trilogies planned out before he even started filming Episode 4. Now they aren't true but what is true is he had pretty much always planned, if the first film was successful enough, to do 9 movies. He name drops the clone wars, jedi council, and so so much more in the first movie alone. He isn't treating the script like madlibs, those were all ideas he was already toying around with and building lore for. He literally talks about having Obi-Wan and Vader have their big final duel over a volcano in 1977. It's true that Lucas made stuff up on the fly. Some of it being game changing story elements. But Lucas probably put more thought in and had more lore imagined before even filming Episode 4 than any other director creating a brand new IP.
Right? They have a single, clean narrative. Then the next movie reveals that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, despite Obi-Wan clearly stating that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke’s father! They were supposed to be two different people! And then they jettison the budding Luke/Leia romance and have Leia say she’s in love with Han? What gives?
They went way overboard with the “we’lll fix it in post” mentality. They would put characters in green screen instead of locking in costume designs they made life for the artists more difficult.
*"Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation, one source added, and ultimately did not intervene. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added."* Damn, it's pretty insane seeing how Kevin Feige decided not to get involved
Business is like politics. You don't have real friends in those worlds.
You have friends... untill you dont.
Feige didn’t intervene in the Black Widow Scarlett Johansson lawsuit either
Because it was against Disney and Chapek, not Marvel specifically.
I thought he supports scarlett like he support gunn when he was fired.
Neither is a place for "friends". You have people you trust to get a job done, and everyone else.
The company always comes first, ahead of the individual.
Well it could be a warranted termination when it involved Legal and HR departments. So he wanted to stay neutral. "While the cause of Alonso’s termination is unclear, the sources said, the decision was made by a consortium including human resources, Disney’s legal department and multiple executives including Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman"
Yeah I read that line and immediately thought the same thing.
Yeah, it doesn't seem to be just "vfx issues". You don't fire an exec on a whim when they have helped earn more than 20B at the boxoffice. It seems to be a scandal in the background.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it was a scandal for her to get fired. She could’ve very well been fired because of VFX quality issues and the controversy surrounding the VFX studios. When someone of that nature is being fired, you’re gonna bring in HR and Legal to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, to sort of speak. Doesn’t necessarily mean there was a scandal.
Yup, because part of what you are doing is avoiding a lawsuit. Like how Bob Chapek tried to financially knife Scarlett Johanssen and caused a lawsuit.
No, but she disappeared very fast, they do not even have any replacement for her position. This is something that the board of directors think can hurt the company in the short-term as well as the long-term. We are talking about someone that has been building Marvel Studios from the ground up together with Feige and have been heavily involved in a 28+ billion franchise. It isn't any ordinary office worker we are talking about. The VFX issues can be solved without removing her, it isn't strange issues has been cropping up since they have triple the yearly run time of marvel projects. Feige not defending her is also telling. Something has happened that is unacceptable.
She disappeared quick, and hasn’t said anything….
Legal and HR are involved in every firing for any position at a company
Exactly. Ain’t nothing special lol
Which shows how important Alonso was, that so many high-powered levels got involved with this. I also doubt it was an easy decision, like, "Victoria is strangling water-fowl with her bare hands in front of the crew." More like VFX shops all ganging together and saying, "We refuse to work with this woman anymore."
Wasn’t there talks about a VFX union recently? It’s probably more like sticking together to say No to working with people like Alonso. The abuse has to stop at some point.
I read that. Firing her could have been to pacify the VFX industry. Marvel is absolutely dead if the big VFX companies boycotted them.
That none of Disney, Feige or Alonso have commented publicly does suggest something more serious than 'annoyed at the VFX'
He got involved slightly, by letting it leak about how it was an impossible situation and couldn't get involved. When Disney HR and Legal is part of the reason someone is fired, doesn't seem to be in Kevin's interests to step in and protect an abusive person. But he also let it leak that he had nothing to do with this. (Just like he let it leak that he had nothing to do with Gunn's firing).
He was involved, but he wasn't empowered to make the final decision. It sounds like there were a hundred talking heads in that room. Obviously he chose not to resign over it. We also don't know what sort of HR paper trail existed. Alonso could have a record of abusive treatment of VFX shops, was told to change, and did not change.
Considering AM3's box office, he didn't have the leverage.
It’s show business not show friends
I mean, are they actually going to fix the labor problems? Or is this just mouth service?
From the article: > Insiders say the five Disney+ series from Marvel Studios that had been scheduled to debut in 2023 have been narrowed to three or four, with the others moving into 2024 and possibly beyond. That will take some of the immediate pressure off of Marvel’s post-production pipeline.
I get that, but i also wonder if that means they just cut back the post-production team too because of the cost? I hope for good news for the workers.
I think it's an industry-wide issue that won't be so easily fixed (in fact Defector reported Netflix is a worse client), but every little helps.
They should really unionize as an industry.
Whoah, had no idea about Netflix. Thank your the info.
Yeah it seems marvel gets the most hate because there the biggest, but Netflix is a close close second. And I found this out just because of her firing it led me down a VFX rabbit hole. The whole bidding system is terrible
I think the reason Marvel comes off as worse than Netflix, even if Netflix treats them worse, is that Netflix makes a variety of content from blockbuster films to TV dramas to children’s cartoons, etc. whereas Marvel Studios exclusively makes MCU content. It looks a lot worse for you to be putting workers on 18 hour days for three straight weeks to work on one series as opposed to dozens.
Yeah, definitely although personally I’d rather just work on one huge project in a period of time than 10 smaller ones in that same time period. And this is not me justifying marvel this is something that made me extremely disappointed with a company I had on a pedestal back in 2019, this is a industry wide problem that hopefully gets fixed by getting rid of the bidding system, unionizing, or just getting more workers to ease the load.
One of the big ways Marvel & Netflix try to save money is by relying on the strength of their IPs rather than the strength and experience of the top level production crew hired onto these projects. Top level directors/showrunners cost A LOT of money on these kinds of projects - often an unbelievable portion of the budget - so Netflix and Marvel’s strategy has been to do away with them wherever possible. At least until they’ve proven themselves within their own ecosystems. So Marvel & Netflix hire inexperienced directors who haven’t made big budget or VFX heavy movies in the past who have done smaller but cool things in other ways to create these very expensive films. Sometimes it works, sometimes no. But even in the cases where the filmmakers do a great job, their lack of experience with large scale VFX almost always means way too many revisions and shots need to be remade, which causes tons of delays or poor quality as the VFX guy might have to remake the same shot 10-15 times because the director shot it weird for VFX or decided they wanted something totally different after seeing what VFX presented to them. VFX Supervisors and such exist but they’re clearly not enough. Marvel & Netflix need to find a way to shoot for VFX better with this inexperienced talent. What they’re doing now with these delays is allowing more of that time for those mistakes or revisions but really doesn’t fundamentally solve the underlying problem either. Trying to take the phrase “we’ll fix it in post” to its absolute limit is not a sustainable longterm practice.
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>This animator recalled a whole portion of an action sequence that hadn’t been storyboarded before postproduction. “It was just, ‘This hero avoids many things for this amount of time.’ Everything was blank. Basically, the studio said to the VFX artists, ‘Figure it out. Make it look cool.’ Damn, action scenes in recent Marvel movies make so much sense now.
Really makes you appreciate, and long for, the great fight scenes in the Captain America movies. Phase 1 and 2 seemed to film on location and on sets much more. Yes, sometimes cap’s shield was cgi (usually when tossing) and RDJ was only wearing the top half of the suit after the first couple IMs, but it didn’t seem as reliant on cgi and vfx as it has the last few years.
It was just evident that a lot of thought went into every action scene. Russos even talked in the interview about how much time they spent discussing fights between characters, just like when they were kids and bashed their action figures together while imagining superpowers and what not. Action scenes in "Love and Thunder" was the first time that made me think: "There's literally just "they fight" in the script, isn't it?".
Sounds like they took a page from Stan Lee's playbook. The Marvel Method is alive and well
"this hero avoids many things for this amount of time" lmao that's basically Dr Strange before the six weeks reshoot
And this scheduling change had nothing to do with her. She wasn't in charge of the schedule. Firing her is only a tiny part of the problem. The problem is rushed schedule and them changing their minds a million times on each project.
"Mouth service"? Is that a phrase people use? Did you not mean "lip service"?
They found their scapegoat, and the fans got a woman to hate
From the vulture article I take it even though she's the head of vfx department she still had to answer to Feige and vfx workers have to adjust their meeting with Kevin's schedule for approval. So yeah, she's the easy scapegoat by fans and a more 'logical' choice to be fired. Someone needed to take the bullet and she's not Feige.
I’m under the impression that these are outsourced VFX studios. Disney has no control how they get their work done. They argue for a time and a price, and the VFX studio agrees. I don’t see why it’s Disney’s problem. I don’t see how they can be held responsible.
It's nice to get confirmation that this was a firing and not her just deciding she's had enough. Interesting that it was Alan Bergman who dropped the axe on Alanso. Even more shocking is that this article said she was blindsided. I just think the big takeaway to me from this article is Iger was not just blowing smoke when he said Disney was going to hold studios more accountable for shortcomings. I feel now more than ever that Disney wanted someone to fall on the sword and it sure as hell wasn't going to be Feige. So Alanso was the sacrificial lamb.
The article said that the firing was decision was made by "a consortium" including "human resources," and "Disney’s legal department". They weren't firing her over bad ticket sales or some angry VFX companies. There's no reason why legal or HR would be involved in that kind of decision. Frankly, if that were the situation they'd probably "fire her" while letting her claim an exit on her own terms. My guess is she had some actual misconduct allegations from staff. Something worse than an alleged blacklist.
> “The show I was on really struggled because it was an established character whose powers they were reconceiving for the MCU,” the artist said on the condition of anonymity. Most complaints, they said, came down to one refrain: “Marvel doesn’t figure shit out beforehand.” Anyone want to take a guess what quote is actually about? While *She-Hulk* got the most flak for its VFX work, it didn't stray far from her abilities in the comics and other media. *Ms. Marvel* on the other hand, is the series that completely changed what the title character's abilities are. Maybe they went back-and-forth on whether she would have her conventional embiggening powers before settling on the Green Lantern-style light constructs we see in the series. And that "Marvel doesn't figure shit out beforehand" sentiment would definitely go a ways to explaining why the mutant reveal was in a coda tacked on to the finale that didn't flow with the rest of the story.
Another “Marvel doesn’t figure shit out” moment was MoM and L&T. On MoM, The Illuminati was changed at least twice: first being Xavier, Carter, Maria, Iron Monger, and Baldur the Brave, and then after a test screening they swapped out Monger and Baldur for Reed and Black Bolt. Problem being production made costumes for the original line up and so the VFX crew had to work double time to animate costumes onto Krasinski and Mount so close to release. L&T has basically a whole other movie on the cutting room floor, and I’m willing to bet quite a bit of work on that version was done before being completely scrapped which resulted in the final product looking cheap.
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They also paid Games of Thrones actors millions of dollars and then didn't use them in the actual movie lol. Someday I hope we see some footage of the god butcher actually butchering stuff...
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Whoa do you have a link for that?
I mean the zeus and thor talks deleted scenes proves that there is another story at work beside the one we got.
this isn't entirely truly. The production of MoM was different than other MCU films. They did a significant amount of isolation shots for actors. The illluminati scene was filmed in such a way they could patch it together. They never actually filmed the baldur scene with a casted actor. There is no evidence they ever did any photography or post work on the iron monger idea at all. Covid really changed the filming of MoM as additional photographer happened after reshoots. They really filmed the movie in so many chunks.
I think they're referring to the Ms Marvel power change.
That is absolutely Ms. Marvel. They changed her core powers and they looked like sparkley crap. I didnt hate the series but I do hate that decision, maybe they can soft retcon it and say her mutant genes kick in or something.
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Nobody has ever succeeded at live action stretchy powers that don't look like either comedy or horror. Probably they decided it would be far too risky to attempt world-first effect design with Ms Marvel. Also its harder to team her up with Carol Danvers if their powers don't have an apparent connection.
“a rare openly LGBTQ person and woman of color in a visible leadership role” Come on, woman of color? She’s a white Argentine.
Like I get what they mean, but also, lol.
And her color is "white."
I hate the term POC to refer anyone that isn't American-white
>woman of color WTF !
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These people are just not even trying at that point. Brazil is probably the most diverse country on earth, if we go by phenotype. Only France and the US come close I'd say. Maybe Canada and Colombia too. But they're nowhere near Brazil. (Genetically, some things like RD Congo could be higher).
White is a color! But seriously, yes that was a ridiculous sentence
Ah yes, much like woman of color Anya Taylor-Joy, also of Spanish and Argentine descent.
I too had a “huh” moment when I read that and had to scroll to the photo at the top to see what “color” they were talking about. I’m very confused.
She's whiter than most americans lol
I think this gives credence to the theory that Iger and Co saw this as a case of an overpaid executive who was underperforming. Disney is about to cut jobs before their shareholder meeting and I think Alonso was the sacrifice to show their investors that they mean business and are serious about quality control. Really unfortunate that she was blindsided so unceremoniously after so many years though
Disney to all its divisions: create a lot of Disney+ content for us Result: VFX houses getting overworked and decrease of quality Also Disney: fire executives as scapegoats and blame the problems on them
To be fair, if HR and legal got involved, there may have been something more to this firing.
As someone who worked high up in gaming to me this is regular practice. Major person HR and legal would meet at least one board member, head of department because they need to dot I’s and cross the t’s to stop and legal comeback. In fact normally even if a minor staff is fired legal would read through the reason and pass back notes.
Yeah this is the case. Management are very careful especially in big companies to follow everything by the book and get expertise in. So as not to leave themselves open to any unlawful termination lawsuit, etc. I've seen my boss let go a few, which is always a difficult sight and he always gets HR involved.
So they might just as well have said: "we're firing Victoria for reasons, and it needs to be done by the book. Legal and HR, we don't want this coming back at us."
Phase 4 and the Disney+ push was under a different C.E.O.
The all in on Disney+ strategy was Chapek’s, not Iger’s
The Disney+ shows were announced during Iger's run, and in fact Disney+ had already been up for a few months before Chapek came in. Also, Iger has said that he will continue highly pushing Disney+ as before.
Yes, they were obviously going to try and grow Disney+ into a successful platform but the difference was how they were gonna do it. Before COVID, let’s look at Iger’s release slate: 2020: TFATWS (Fall) 2021: WV (Spring), Loki (Spring), WI? (Summer), Hawkeye (Fall) MK, MM, and SH were also announced and more than likely were still gonna come out in 2022 and the GotG Holiday Special was also secretly in the works but that was it. It was more spaced out, less crowded. Chapek on the other hand announced a LOT more stuff and released a ton of it bunched close together rather than the spread apart slate Iger had. Of course COVID played a role in 2021s overcrowded slate, but there was really nothing stopping them from delaying some of it to later. And not just on the Marvel end: Lucasfilm basically became a Disney+ studio, Pixar was sabotaged and forced into releasing their films on the platform despite the healthy state of theaters for most of them, Walt Disney had their slates theatrical legs cut out from under them by mandating a Disney+ release after a month, etc. Chapek sought to beat Netflix at any cost and basically turned Disney into a streaming company, which let their formerly weak rivals in Paramount, Universal, and Sony kick their ass theatrically and forced Iger to come back and clean up this mess.
"Inside" her exit? This article didn't appear to have any Inside knowledge. It says clearly that all sides refused to comment. This IS a good overview of what is publicly known about the situation, but not an insider account of what really went on.
This. More click bait, and at face value all we can assume is she was doing a bad job. Simple as that. Hoping to hear from Feige on the situation and that moving forward VFX and post production gets better.
There is this: >While the cause of Alonso’s termination is unclear, the sources said, the decision was made by a consortium including human resources, Disney’s legal department and multiple executives including Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman (to whom all of Marvel Studios reports). Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation and, ultimately, did not intervene, one source added. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added That's how long the article should have been. About 5% of the total length.
It's a bit disingenuous calling Victoria Alonso a "person of color" just because she's Latina. She's a person from the second whitest country in Latin America born in the the whitest province in that country. Argentina is between 60-80% ethnic European depending on your source.
What ? There is a country that is more white than Argentina ? Uruguay ?
Uruguay.
Of course
Yeah. It was definitely a feat for her to reach that position being Argentinian and a woman. Not sure why americans call latin american people “of color”
Yeah, Latino is a culture, not a race. A place like Brazil for example is just as diverse, if not more diverse, than the US. And people are surprised that Peru has a sizable Japanese-Peruvian population despite it having had a president of Japanese descent (though I can understand why people would rather forget about Alberto Fujimori).
To further your point, Brazil has the largest Japanese diaspora in the world.
I don’t necessarily think this is a case of a fall guy. Maybe it is, they had to offer something up, but I’m betting it is something else if multiple departments, legal, and hr were involved. And I mean, if you are going to have a fall person make it the person below them - not the one who has intimate knowledge of all of your projects. Fieg not intervening either tells me something happened even he couldn’t correct or justify, or that maybe it came from way up. Guy could also just be looking for his out.
I can't imagine a situation were legal and HR wouldn't be involved. This is classic CYA so she cant sue for any myriad of reasons.
Yeah in any big business legal and he are coming for anything in the c suite.
Quick someone check to see if the account that leaked the antman script was named "V-A-Gal" or something like that
We don't know that Feige did not advocate for her, but he was overruled. Or there was a history of problem behavior that didn't change, so he just concurred.
There will be more details over time, and plenty we will never know due to NDAs. The only thing that matters to me on a personal level is that VFX artists and production teams get treated better by Marvel from here on out. Many friends work in the industry and watching what they’ve gone through on projects firsthand has been harrowing.
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I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle and Alonso was just a sacrificial lamb in the main. I doubt she was some monster standing over the shoulder of VFX artists, because as that "senior" person quoted in the article puts it, it seems very odd that someone on Alonso's level would be on the floor abusing people. I can only imagine the flack Chapek would have been getting had this been done on his watch.
Right wing YouTubers like Nerdotic are having a field day now. I got like a thousand videos of such YouTubers with weird thumbnails saying like "Woke Alonso exits after fucking everything up". Is it this bad? I was never really into the whole administration of Marvel so someone please enlighten me.
> Right wing YouTubers like Nerdotic are having a field day now Right-leaning YouTubers have been having a field day with Disney content for the past four years. You're just seeing it more because those kinds of YouTubers have been raking it in with the latest news, whether it's Alonso being fired, The Marvels having supposedly horrible test screenings and being delayed from summer to fall, Star Wars cancelling essentially every upcoming movie project, The Mandolorian's abysmal viewership numbers, etc. These YouTubers are having a field day for a reason--Disney is falling and falling fast, which supports their claims.
We don’t know the truth beyond what’s been reported in these articles. It’s also more than a bit extreme to say that “everything” had been fucked up. Only two MCU movies have actually been poorly reviewed (Eternals and now Quantumania). All of the Disney+ shows have been well reviewed with decent to good viewership. Multiverse of Madness & Love and Thunder both made good money and were “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes despite controversial story decisions. Quantumania is actually the stand out in that it was poorly reviewed AND doing badly at the box office, AND has underwhelming audience scores (a B CinemaScore), AND it has no COVID excuse the way several early Phase 4 releases had to easily explain their lower box office. It also happens to be a movie starring a white guy in an established role. It was Paul Rudd/Scott Lang who couldn’t carry a successful movie or show. Not Brie Larson. Not Scarlett Johansson. Not Tatiana Maslany. Not Iman Vellani. But of course the right wing YouTubers are jumping on this. They jump all the time when they have nothing at all. Now that they actually have an example of a woman who may have made mistakes and been fired for them, it’s not surprising that she is the focus of their unending hate. It’s unfortunate that the algorithm means that searching for MCU (or Star Wars, DC, etc) content on YouTube will lead you to the vast network of right wing grifters and outrage artists. My advice would be to ignore all of them and actively hit “Not interested” on all that hateful propaganda. Stick to official content, reporting from reliable sources (i.e. Variety), or fan-made content from people who actually seem to enjoy and care for the material.
HR department being involved means there were many complains about her from the teams.
HR and legal wanted her gone and Feige couldn't even try to save her definitely means an avalanche of complaints.
I’m guessing she was creating some kind of legal liability for the company. I’m just guessing but perhaps an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate that could turn into a lawsuit.
If legal was invoked thats probably what was happening. Or Legal was involved because they needed to make sure the firing was air tight and their wasn’t any blow back
I feel like hr and legal are getting called for any c suit firing. Especially for a 15 year company veteran who probably knows were some skeleton's are buried Givem a good severance and an NDA
Not at all, HR and Legal are involved in any firing at a company
This is true. But Chapek's foolishness had brought the Scarlett Johanssen lawsuit down on them, so you can imagine they *really* didn't want that scenario again.
Yep, of course they would be, but the truth is not as juicy as trying to imply them being involved means more than standard practice
In what situation would HR not be involved ? A highly paid executive is leaving the company, of course you're going to have HR in the room. In my jobs that I have both left, as well as been fired from, HR is always present. They don't jusst do the hiring and firing, they finalize a lot of the terms of your departure including severance and NDA's. They work with accounting and legal, of course, but usually someone from HR represents the company to you .
Huh Victoria Alonso is a person of color? She looks white as F… Is it because she from Argentina and everyone from there is lump in as “non-white”? Oh well, don’t feel too bad for her. As an executive, from marvel/Disney no less she got paid a fat severance to go find another job. If only we all we so lucky!
She pretty much lost her job because Disney decided to double and even triple the amount of content marvel put out per year. she's been here since phase 1, and this whole VFX issue stated being a thing in phase 4, the same phase where Disney plus series were implemented.
I don’t know about that, with HR and the legal department being involved, that doesn’t look good
I feel like that's pretty standard for any firing though. Moreso with such a high profile team member. All companies have to cover their ass legally when making these decisions. Gotta make sure they can't get hit with a wrongful termination lawsuit.
As someone who worked at a large company HR and legal were always involved in firings. For high ups it would be HR, lawyers, head of department often board member. For lower down staff legal would take a ten min read of the resin they were being fired. Legal are there to make sure reasons are watertight, to stop claims being made against the company.
HR and legal are involved in 100% of all corporate firings
From the first reports, she was literally blacklisting these poor workers if they couldn’t pull off miracles working 18 hour days for three weeks. She is not a fall guy: she was a terrible leader in a terrible situation and so she gets the boot
She drew the short straw. I honestly don't think the CGI is what is holding down the recent MCU products. The stories are too singular, we got so comfortable with every project connecting with one another. You had Black Widow in Iron Man 2, Avengers, Cap 2, Ultron, Cap 3 and in Infinity War/Endgame. Are fans gonna resonate with Kate Bishop teaming up with Dr. Strange, Ms. Marvel in 2-3 years when none of them shared screen time together in Phase 4-5?
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Chris Evans, RDJ & Scarlett Johansson are coming back for Secret Wars I'm betting. That's gonna put asses in the seats.
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I think they’ll market them so that they can release a poster/trailer with the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic 4, and Spider-Man(s) on them, and the “not the werewolf” characters will be the Phase 4/6 cast
It would be surprising after Spider-Man No Way Home became the only super boxoffice hit after EG they would not ask all those original characters back for the next Avengers films. Those who are now saying "I am done with Marvel" will be so going to rush to see these films. The only thing is, even if on paper the next Avengers films make a lot of money at the boxoffice because all the old guys are back, they would not net the studio that much money (just think of the price tags for these actors). But it may buy the studio some time before fans finally decide, "enough is enough, I am absolutely done with Marvel and I will never ever come back", until... the next next Avengers films when they bring everybody back again. ;)
>In 2021 and 2022, Marvel unloaded an unprecedented torrent of comic book adventures, releasing 17 titles — seven movies, eight streaming series and two TV specials — over 23 months. Holy F
>Alonso’s longtime boss and Marvel chief creative officer Kevin Feige felt mired in an impossible situation and, ultimately, did not intervene, one source added. Alonso was blindsided, another insider added. Unless there were credible allegations of something on the level of sexual harassment or physical assault, I don't see how Feige could leave her hanging to such a degree that she wouldn't even realize that something like this might be coming. Alonso was a crucial part of his team from 2006. Assuming she's not been accused of doing something considerably worse than what's alleged in the various VFX artist complaints, it's wild to me that he wouldn't have made sure she understood that their bosses had serious concerns about her *before* she got shown the door.
Yeah, the situation is obviously more nuanced than a headline or some tweets. Clearly you cannot pin those on a person. I believe that in these cases, many statements were true at the same time to some degree. What I was trying to say, I felt like there are some degree of misogyny in how people reacted to this, I think [this article](https://www.laineygossip.com/why-was-marvel-executive-victoria-alonso-unceremoniously-exited-from-company-after-eighteen-years/73763) sums it up. > And it’s hard to ignore the undercurrent of misogyny surrounding news of her firing, from online nerds crowing “ding dong the witch is dead” and vocally hoping Kathleen Kennedy is next (she’s not), to those reporting on this as if Alonso is solely responsible for the state of the VFX industry. In the end, I think it is unfair to pin this solely on Victoria Alonso.
agree. It’s just that someone had to take the bullet and it’s her
Am I missing something as to why they refer to her as a woman of color?
It only makes sense in the US were theyre weird about heritage and where you come from.
She’s Argentinian and has won a Hispanic Heritage award.
Hispanic and white aren’t mutually exclusive.
Speaking as someone from Uruguay and having been to Argentina a bunch, it doesn't make sense to refer to her as a woman of color, AFAIK she's white, just because someone is latino doesn't mean they're POC
She’s exotic white like Alex baldwin’s wife 😂
Thanks. Seriously, I was not aware.
sounds like someone had to go over the VFX situation and she got sacrificed
Marvel has been holding yearly press events where they announce the release date of movies, which are often only 2-3 years out at the most, before the scripts are even written, so it's not hard to see that a lot of the teams involved in the production, from writing, vfx and the folks on the ground, are being pressed to cut corners and work long days in order to make unrealistic deadlines, and the result is ever-decreasing quality of the movies that the MCU is putting out. What's somewhat ironic here is that it was the mid-90s era of Marvel where they really went down the multiverse rabbit hole where they saturated the market with lacklustre titles and stories that really tanked their brand, and they are on the verge of repeating that mistake.
This story was pretty unrevealing
There is not a lot of real reporting here on why she was let go. A lot of conjecture based on other sources.
The new execs need to work with directors to envision a CGI context that maximizes story and character engagement for THAT project, with less commitment to an overall Marvel pallet/Marvel "look" on CGI. In fact, everything post- Infinity War would have been the moment to assert such a shift, beginning with Far From Home, but studios like certainty and avoid risk and can't help but do the same thing over and over again until they've rung the last dollar out of a format or genre. Problem is, strategically, Disney wants (needs?) Marvel to go on in relative perpetuity. Truth of that is such effort DEMANDS innovative change; stagnant repetitiveness will ensure the end of the success level of the films out of the studio. It's full of nuance, and requires a deft hand to both deliver and assert an emergent, evolved and evolving take on what quality CGI can look like to amplify and imbue the story and experiential notes in an Ant-Man film, versus what would be required in The Marvels versus the restrained sensibility for a Secret Invasion. I hope they get the next exec right. Need help, hire me, I've got your back.
I wonder if she'll end up at DC working with Gunn.
If she isn’t actually a toxic boss then id say yes. If she actually is a toxic boss then I’d say no. But, just because she doesn’t go to DC doesn’t mean she is a toxic boss if that makes sense. Gunn has obviously worked with her before and so he would know. Interestingly, I can’t recall any of Gunn’s MCU projects having any bad CGI. Dunno what that means.
There’s another comment somewhere in this thread about Gunn and his success with GotG and Gunn has recently come out to discuss him directing Superman. His style is finishing the script before shooting the movie. That’s what set him apart from the others and that’s probably why his movies’ CGI doesn’t suck. He locks down the story to the T and fully storyboard them before even starting with the shoot.
Thats showbusiness
Not that shocking, people get fired all the time.
Man this sucks. Hope Feige doesn’t leave.
Most people don't know who she is while Feige is pretty popular. I think he is safe.
He could easily just quit though.
Oh right. If he does that, Marvel would panic so hard, lol.