One of the most jarring aspects of the uneven new Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, are its visual effects. While there have been plenty of clunky CGI constructions in other superhero stories in the franchise that have raised eyebrows, this film has emerged as one of its most poorly constructed to date. It is an element that had set the Internet on fire when the trailer first dropped as viewers clearly noticed something was off in many of the visuals. Specifically, the look and appearance of the helmet worn by Natalie Portman’s Jane stood out as being undeniably artificial. While she wasn’t the only one to don a poorly made piece of CGI costuming, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor also appears to wear a faux helmet of his own for a fight scene at New Asgard, hers was the most persistently and prevalently out of place.

It raises the question of how, in a massive moneymaking franchise with some of the biggest budgets out there, can this seem to not only keep happening but be getting worse? Well, the answer is both specific to Marvel and to movies more broadly. There is an industry-wide issue when it comes to overworking CGI artists on tighter and tighter deadlines. This is what is known as “crunch,” a term that refers to when workers are given a crushing amount of work with minimal time to get everything done before a film is released in theaters. Stories of workers pulling grueling 17-hour days that then bleed into the weekend have become commonplace. In addition to being brutal to the workers, it produces work that is noticeably rushed. There is also no guarantee that their job will be still around at the end as there have been closures following the release of award-winning films, leaving workers out in the cold.

RELATED: VFX Community Slams Marvel Studios Over Working Conditions

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When it comes to Marvel in particular, there have been long brewing conversations and concerns being raised about their management. It has reportedly reached a point where some VFX artists say they no longer want to work with the company. Over the weekend many took to social media to decry Marvel, criticizing them for putting unrealistic pressure and deadlines on workers. Not sure what I mean? It has become common practice for superhero films to often have characters not actually be wearing their costumes only to later have them created or altered later in post. Remember the scene from Avengers: Endgame where our heroes donned special suits to travel through time? The costumes were created entirely digitally as the designs weren’t actually completed on the day of shooting and it then fell to VFX artists to create them for the final product. When given time to do this, it can be nigh impossible to notice that they aren’t real. When placed under unrealistic deadlines, it can be less so.

This means when we see Jane wearing a helmet that looks more like a Snapchat filter than a believable effect, it is because somewhere in production a worker was doing the best they could in a limited amount of time. So when criticism is levied at these films and how their effects are subpar, the fault typically lies at the feet of those at the top for how little time they left to the artists themselves. In his insightful piece “Bad Special Effects Are A Choice,” Defector writer Drew Magary also points out that this is a problem that comes down to scale. More and more films are requiring special effects shots that used to be a rarity. When you require more of them but don’t plan to give more time to those creating them, you end up with whatever they could finish under the pressure and constraints of a looming deadline. While miracles happen and workers can create some stunning creations under tough circumstances that blow us away when we see them, this isn’t always the case. It is tough going when there is not enough time to, say, create a helmet on a character’s head that will show up throughout an entire film. This is what creates odd moments as we saw in Thor: Love and Thunder.

It isn’t just Jane’s helmet either, there are many moments throughout the film that look rushed. It ends up taking you out of the film, breaking the immersion of the experience. This is something that the film’s director Taika Waititi oddly joked about in a video from the Vanity Fair "Notes on a Scene" series that was ostensibly about highlighting the craft of all who worked on it. Instead, it was a conversation where the glaring issues were made apparent. A clip of that circulated online, further fueling conversations about how undervalued the work of VFX workers is when they can be turned into a punchline later. This is nothing against Waititii, he seems to be just having a laugh, but instead speaks to the prevailing problem studios writ large will have to address. If they want to continue to put out films with noticeably poor special effects, then the current status quo of the industry is the way to go. It will succeed at pushing talented people out and wearing down all those who stay with increasingly strenuous working conditions. The work we see on screen will continue to suffer as a result.

What Marvel needs to realize is that art is at its best when people have room to create without being ground down. Yes, this includes VFX artists who are integral to the process of bringing the films we love to life. Treating them as cogs in a machine, able to just do whatever you tell them no matter the time constraints and toll it takes on them, will mean you get continually rushed work. There is no person in the world who can create good work in the harsh conditions currently being inflicted on VFX artists and it is unreasonable to expect that of them. Faster and cheaper will mean workers are without the room to create vibrant works of art that give their films the necessary layers to draw us in. Jane’s helmet is just one example, though it is instructive for the current state of the industry. There needs to be an industry-wide reckoning about what is being demanded of VFX artists. Absent that, the machine of moviemaking will continue to grind them into dust and push them until they break. That is not a good working environment in any circumstances and that is being seen in the end product. If there isn’t some serious soul-searching not only will nothing change, it will likely get worse.

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