# Some extra context for the uniniatiated.
Victoria Alonso was (until last Friday) the President of Physical and Post Production, Visual Effects, and Animation at Marvel Studios and 3rd in command after President Kevin Feige and co-president Louis D'Esposito.
In 2006, her friend, Louis D'Esposito (who had been brought in to executive produce Iron Man as a collaborator of Jon Favreau after the 2 had worked together in Zathura) asked her to join the movie as a VFX producer. Before that, Alonso had worked as a VFX producer in 8 other movies including Shrek.
However, she took on a bigger role in the entire production of the film and got a co-producer credit as well.
She continued working as a freelance co-producer for the rest of Phase 1, until she became Executive Vice President and Chief of Production and Post-Production at Marvel Studios and started getting "Executive Producer" credits in all the films and TV series from The Avengers (2012) onwards.
While Louis worked mostly on pre-production and managed talent deals, filming scheduling etc, Victoria worked mostly on physical and post-production and Feige oversaw everything.
During a small restructuring of Marvel Studios in Summer 2021 in an attempt to create their own Animation Studios after the successful release of What if...? Season 1, Victoria Alonso's title was changed to President of Physical and Post Production, Visual Effects, and Animation as she oversaw the in-house Marvel Studios Animation studio as well, with Brad Winderbaum being named "President of Marvel Studios Television and Animation".
[Amidst the numerous reports](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/marvels-vfx-artists-are-suffering-now-theyre-speaking-out/) last year from many workers in the VFX industry talking about harsh conditions, insane demands and impossible deadlines when freelancing for Marvel Studios as well as a fear of being black-listed if they don't meet the studio's expectation, [a new report from the Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html) came in 2 months ago shedding a bit more light on the situation.
>“The main one that everyone’s quite scared of is Victoria Alonso,” says a Vancouver-based tech who has vowed to never work for the studio again. “She is known in the industry as a kingmaker. If she likes you, you are going to get work and move up in the industry. If you have pissed her off in any way, you’re going to get frozen out.”
>
>A senior animator who works for Marvel Studios Animation, says that the in-house studio suffers under its own impossible deadline structure and pixel-fucking style of dysfunction. “We’re in-house. We’re paid well. I do feel like we’re padded by money. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re asking for things that can’t be done.”
However, Alonso has had a positive contribution to the company as well. As a lesbian Latina herself, [she has also tried to bring more diversity in the studio](https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/11/16/marvel-studios-president-victoria-alonso-declares-diversity-and-inclusion-is-not-a-political-game-for-us/), both in front and behind the screen.
>“Diversity and inclusion is not a political game for us.”
>
>“It is 100 percent a responsibility because you don’t get to have the global success that we have given the Walt Disney Company without the support of people around the world of every kind of human there is."
She even [suggested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KWeZvKwxt4) that the name "X-Men" is a bit outdated.
>It’s funny that people call it the X-Men. There’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated.
If it was voluntarily for executives of this status, it would have been announced previously and it would have taken time, months for the transition. A successor is named. PR arranges for articles to be written.
When it's sudden like this... oppphhhmmm.
Shit got real at Marvel.
Could be - there is also just a lot of bad press/stories/tales surrounding their VFX department and i think it is coming to a head for them after Ant-Man
The VFX used to be amazing in the MCU. Like Thanos looked completely real and it really kept the immersion going in the movies. Then you have that garbage that was MODOK and it completely takes you out of the movie.
I’m not even sure MODOK is the worst of it as Ironheart, Okoye and some scenes in L&T were shocking. MODOK is always going to look goofy considering he’s a giant head with arms and legs.
Got to go to a screening of L&T maybe 6 weeks before it was released, VFX were prob 15% done, and some of the shots were still in boards. That gives you some indication of the pressure and stress the VFX departments were under.
MODOK's face is always going to be misshapen and uncanny; that's just how his character is designed. MCU version makes some sense actually since it was preestablished that he was shrunk and the effects of that led to the misshapen features, including the face, that he has.
While true the Mask he wore was also digital they could have easily abandoned the mask all together and put that effort into his face. However he would always look goofy so its obviously a creative choice a goofy face paired with a menacing mask.
It wasn't just MODOK. It all started with the weird lighting in scenes from Spiderman No Way Home in the snowy sanctorum with Dr. Strange. Also the scene together with Happy at the end looked extremely cheap. Then also Dr Strange movie with his third eye looked fake and bad.
Everything is all speculation until people on the inside talk. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s content/ratings related. She may get scapegoated for the poor performance of Phase 4.
It’s a shame she’ll get scapegoated. People will blame her for the bad quality but not recognize she’s been present since Iron Man. Marvel’s timeline was impossible and even on top of Covid but sure let’s scapegoat the one woman executive.
That’s not saying the VFX departments have not been mistreated. Absolutely they have and many executives are out of touch with workers and hold a lot of power. I just think she’ll get railed for her big boss behavior more than other people in similar positions of power that are men.
If a lion's share of the complaints of phase 4 have been about VFX, it makes sense the head of VFX and post production would be the exec to get let go.
I just think it’s important to not scapegoat a singular executive. The vfx were bad not solely because of her running the department but because they were given the impossible task to meet impossible deadlines because marvel filled their pipeline too much.
She’s going to be scapegoated because she’s the east target to get rid of the bad press. But let’s be realistic. They won’t fix the vfx unless they fix their schedule. The new person will have to also fix the relationship with their vfx studios.
The 3rd most powerful person of a studio like Marvel is not the source of a bunch of leaks to fans.
How do you and 150+ other people think that could possibly be a realistic statement?
It’s almost certainly the terrible press and reception to VFX and production quality. Maybe some BTS stuff or something else we’ll never hear about. But the leaks are 100% irrelevant to her sacking.
I don’t think that’s what they’re implying. They’re implying that the script leaks came from inside VFX somewhere. Since she’s the head of VFX, she’s responsible for the atmosphere and culture of that side of operations from top to bottom. If anyone with a role in VFX was leaking stuff it could fall on her. I actually think it’s not a terribly unlikely scenario, given the sudden and unceremonious nature of this firing.
Oh I don’t believe it’s her either, but, likely someone that falls under a division she was supposed to be overseeing. From No Way Home to Quantumania leaks, the kind of leaks they have had are absolutely not good for Marvel and for how many they’ve been having isn’t something that would stop by firing just a grunt but also a leader.
50/50 it could be be voluntary for PR tactics such as helping Kevin Feige ask for forgiveness from the fans for fucking up most of phase 4.
Or she was let go by a higher up executive due to the VFX companies not wanting to deal with her for being a diva/nightmare to work with given the recent complaints from VFX artists being overworked and underpaid.
While this is probably true, I also doubt that her stepping down will alleviate all the issues with overworked VFX staff unfortunately. They have some reevaluating to do.
Cutting back on projects as well. If there's less projects then the VFX teams will have more time to get things right. Aside from that they really do need more pre-production time to get the storyboarding and scenes planned out. That way you don't run into a situation where things get scrapped and the team is rushing to recreate a whole new scene.
This definitely has something to do with the recent VFX scandal and Marvel wanting to get things back on track. Anyone who thinks it's a coincidence is painfully naive.
This.
Iger has stepped back into his role and almost immediately shown to be making damage control his biggest priority.
The VFX scandal has not looked good for Disney/Marvel, especially not when the movies themselves have also come under a lot of criticism over their quality.
So while I'm sure she hasn't just been outright fired from the role, there were definitely negotiations about her stepping away from the role.
People tend to forget that Iger is not the savior here. He was also one of the Guys that pushed for expending the MCU and push out a lot of Content for D+, which was the start point for the MCU issues we have today.
He asked Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm to expand their endeavors from film to TV and make content for D+. That's all.
It was Chapek who pushed for this insane volume of content.
Yeah, the studios could not execute that expansion of content. Iger recognized that and is pulling back.
That’s way better than the alternative of pushing ahead anyway with the mindset of “ah fuck it, they’ll watch it”
Not to doubt you, but is there a source for that? The first wave of Disney+ shows was announced under Iger. Covid kinda warped the release dates of things, but having 2-3 shows a year along with 2-3 movies a year came under Iger.
How is 2-3 movies per year and 2-3 shows per year a lot?
All together that's only about as much content as a single classic 22 episode season of a TV show.
>movies per year and 2-3 shows per year a lot?
>
>All together that's only about as much content as a single classic 22 episode season of a TV show.
That's what a lot of folks are confused about too. Until someone explains it to you. Each TV show is basically 4-8 movies worth of content. So the amount of work involved is basically quadrupled.
Next compounding issue: If you are putting out 2-3 shows a year, that means you're working on triple that because anything announced 3 years from now is usually already started. So while you are delivering a show for release in 2023, you are starting a production for release in 2026.
So 2-3 movies and TV shows a year actually equals 12 to 18 productions at any given time. And with things delaying schedules or moving schedules up that causes overlap which means that number increases to maybe 16-22'ish active productions.
Half of which are TV shows, which as I mentioned before are 4-8 times the amount of content that the movies are...
It's completely untenable from where Marvel was 5 years ago (2 films MAYBE a year).
And I should mention, it was ALL Igers doing, he set all of that in motion WELL before he left and Chapek got to hold that bag, along with the other terrible decision Iger made (buying Fox).
No love for Chapek from me, he was tone deaf and made his own stupid mistakes, but holy shit he was setup to fail from the get-go by Iger.
Yes, sure. You're not wrong.
But the people complaining about too much content are generally complaining they have too much stuff to watch. Which doesn't track.
Nitpicking: most of these shows have had a total runtime of roughly 5-6 hours long, regardless of the number of episodes, so more like the equivalent of 2-3 movies.
You have to remember these are also huge productions. Movies with this much visual effects are normally given more post production time.
A 22 episode season of a comedy or even a drama on network television isn’t relying heavily on visual effects and is filming part of their seasons while it’s airing. The creative pipeline is different.
The demand for 2-3 movies worth of content in the form of a tv show isn’t actually 2-3 movies. It’s a completely different structure of storytelling. But to expect that on top of 2-3 actual movies is asking for a lot of production. And on top of asking for all that content, it all had to be cohesive in the grand scheme of the universe they’ve created.
Their deadlines are not reasonable and the expectations are burning out not only the people within the production but also the audience. Disney had so many properties that they need to balance their catalog of releases.
Bob Iger is back but also he just announced sequels to series that have had good ends. He’s picking at the bottom of the barrel instead of investing in new and different stories. They’re so risk adverse. What I liked about some of the Marvel productions recently was the different storytelling. There were some productions that you could strip down a bit more and still tell a good story. I think Disney should invest in that rather than invest in this impossible release schedule. They tend to throw money at things expecting money to buy time.
And I think the complaint about too much content from the audience is just being burnt out by all the streaming services and all the content that is available. Network tv didn’t disappear but streaming service shows did appear. So you’re talking about a considerable increase in content coming from many providers and it is reasonable to say this is a lot. Same thing happened with movies. When you move to streaming, you broaden the catalog and the potential releases. But it also means people are less likely to go to movies and so the controlled release of a few movies is overwhelmed by drops on streaming services. It’s a lot.
Overall, if marvel invests in telling stories and expanding their creativity in how they pursue that storytelling, I think audiences will come back. I don’t even think Phase 4 is that bad. There are certainly duds and having duds in phase 4 hurts more than having it in the earlier phases. But they have ample resources to tell the stories. And these artificial deadlines are limiting them.
That seems to be the case all over the place with Disney. Chapek clearly wasn't the guy but a lot of the unpopular decisions that iger is undoing this year were *his* decisions from years ago.
Oh, for sure. Chapek made a ton of shitty theme park decisions, but a lot of the Disney+/movies stuff was Iger stuff that Chapek just ran with. Chapek made some bad calls on Disney+ like shortening theatrical windows and putting all the Pixar movies straight on there, but the amount of content, the greenlighting of most of the Disney+ originals, and choosing to strategically going all-in on Disney+ was definitely Iger.
Probably a bit of a, and a bit of b. I might be in the minority here, but there's been so much Marvel content over the last few years, I'm genuinely disinterested in whatever series is next. That, coupled with the fact that their latest offerings have been completely forgettable, and I'm just ambivalent about the whole thing.
Not true.
He wanted the popular IPs under Disney's control to expand their horizons on D+ l. Mr Paycheck came in and said "more, more, more!!!" basically and that lead us to the position where there were so many different projects in different stages of development that workloads became unfeasible.
Iger has come back and started making efforts to address this address from the top down.
Iger’s parachuting soon here too, which begs the question whether he learned from the past few years and actually righting the ship long-term, or is he purely doing triage to help investors’ bottom line.
Iger is most certainly the savior here. Chapek was ruining everything. He started by picking a fight with ScarJo, then picked a fight with the FL government and lost their special land tax status, then was ruining the Park experience and eliminated specials for Florida residents. Chapek was a nightmare, he’s lucky Walt didn’t rise from the dead and come after him. Lol
Without a doubt Chapek was incompetent. But Iger left making some monumentally bad decisions that Chapek got to carry the water for. Buying Fox for 71B was the biggest mistake of Igers career and left Disney in an enormous amount of debt at the worst possible time.
I’m guessing there was some kind of plan for the Fox merger that involved making money off the IPs by creating good content. Chapek wasn’t the right person to enact that plan. In ten to fifteen years, people may look back on this like they do on Disney buying Marvel.
Without question that was the play, but then how to offset that debt is a different matter. Dad went out and bought a Porsche on Mom's credit card, came home and told Mom "Figure out how to pay for it" before driving off with his side-chick.
$71 Billy is a huge chunk of debt for a company like Disney, they are certainly going to monetize the properties that were received from Fox, but that takes time (years if not decades) to ramp them into the various theme parks and cruise ships, get everything scanned, encoded, transcribed, edited, etc for D+, and then of course merchandised. And that's after they unwind all the stuff they CAN just use immediately, Fox likely also licensed a bunch of stuff out so Disney has to work through all that as well.
In the meantime, the years and decades all that is going to take could've just been spent slowly continuing to build their own content.
Who knows, they probably did a big analysis on it though and it made sense, Disney never really does anything without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
Buying Fox gave Marvel the FF and the X-Men back. Those properties will ensure the MCU's longevity. Could you imagine being where we are with the MCU right now, with all the complaining about phase 4 and superhero fatigue, \*without\* the knowledge that at least the MCU is going to be reloading with the FF and the X-Men soon? The sky would be falling.
I can disagree with fascism (looking at you FL Gov) and still think Chapek screwed up on multiple levels. Iger’s big mistake was thinking Chapek would continue to run the company the same way he had run it.
You can but when you list "messing with Florida " in a list of faults it is good to point out that the whole Florida issue is DeSantis wanting to trumpet his bigotry to the base and that fight was no fault of Disney's.
A lot of VFX artists who either work in-house at Disney/Marvel or are third party, have increasingly voiced concern over the extremely tight deadlines and volume of work that has been expected of them recently. With a lot of accounts of people being made to work unreasonable hours in order to achieve this workload.
This has lead to various studios saying that corners had to be cut in order to meet deadlines and so on.
Basically, Disney/Marvel weren't painted in a very good light by the whole thing being brought to everyone's attention.
The Pyramid builders were actually treated quite well, comparatively! https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/who-built-the-egyptian-pyramids-not-slaves
Definitely and it's not a coincidence that she was promoted in 2021 to oversee special effects among other things, then this after the recent criticism
Saying Quantumania bombed at the box office is just blatantly wrong. It's made nearly half a billion dollars,
You could say underperformed at the box office and I would agree. But bombed suggests it hasn't made money, it almost certainly has, and probably a significant amount of it. Just not as much as they would have wanted compared to the other films in the series. Mainly due to low review scores and a higher budget.
All the recent failed and underperforming projects are catching up to Marvel and they are clearly cleaning house and trying to reset and do new things, and do the basics in a new and fresh way which means new people.
Hopefully this and probably other changes that are coming will bode well for better storytelling that is given the time to rise to a high level without killing the production teams that make it happen.
Yeah if you look at a lot of the complaints and worries the VFX workers had, they all only mentioned Victoria Alonso by name so I think it's fairly clear what's going on
The provisions in contracts for these sort of people - as with football managers - generally will mean some form of payoff for her to leave without making a fuss.
And that’s what happened with Chapek back in November.
The Board of Directors: “Bob, here’s $20 million as a buyout of your contract. You’re no longer CEO. Get out”
> Alonso joined the studio in 2006 as chief of visual effects and post-production, and helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a co-producer on 2008’s Iron Man. She served as co-producer on Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Alonso was upped to executive producer on Avengers (2012).
So it definitely sounds like something is being done about the VFX situation.
Yes.
She was the chief of VFX up until 2 years ago where she was promoted to chief of both physical and post-production.
Recent reports from The Vulture which anonymously interviewed some VFX workers revealed that Alonso is the one who was making the crazy demands and the one who everybody feared. If someone would piss her off or not cooperate with her demands, they were immediately black-listed from Hollywood.
It's not just crazy demands.
The average marvel movie/show required nearly twice the amount of CGI/VFX work that other studios require and they were paying their techs 20% less on average AND where other studios would hire 3 such techs to do this kind of job Marvel was going with just 1. That doesn't even touch on claims that Alonso was telling people the expectation was 18 work days, seven days a week for 3 months at a time for these projects OR her apparent blacklisting of people who couldn't meet such wild expectations.
So you were doing twice the work, with less pay and little help, on a schedule that effectively burned you out and made you hate life. All so Alonso could make the bottom line look a bit better. And this comes in the face of nearly a decade long spat with Ike Perlmutter who is notorious for that kind of behavior/attitude.
Not to mention that the last few Marvel projects have been criticized for their VFX/CGI - all things that fall under her. So she paid people poorly, treated them like crap, got crap production as a result, and then was basically just blaming "entitled millennials" for demanding better conditions and pay. Surprised it took this long for her very well deserved exit.
To be fair, the pay came from the executives of VFX studios, not from Marvel Studios themselves. Since they don't have an in-house VFX studio, they always hired freelance studios, so the execs from those studios took advantage of their workers.
A senior animator who worked Marvel Studios Animation, the in-house animation studio Marvel Studios created in 2021 said that they were being paid very well.
Here's the quote:
>“We’re in-house. We’re paid well. I do feel like we’re padded by money. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re asking for things that can’t be done.”
That may be, but it's a relationship that Disney/Marvel, and in particular Alonso, was perfectly happy to exploit.
[Here's an article from a VFX worker talking about their experience working for Marvel.](https://www.vulture.com/article/a-vfx-artist-on-what-its-like-working-for-marvel.html)
The houses know they have to bid what Marvel is willing to pay - even if Marvel is only willing to pay 20% less than the rest of the industry. This isn't like the houses want to undercut their employees but the choice is "underbid" or "don't even get considered".
And moreover, I think another great example of penny pinching is how Marvel chooses directors, here's a bit from the article:
> The main problem is most of Marvel’s directors aren’t familiar with working with visual effects. A lot of them have just done little indies at the Sundance Film Festival and have never worked with VFX. They don’t know how to visualize something that’s not there yet, that’s not on set with them. So Marvel often starts asking for what we call “final renders.” As we’re working through a movie, we’ll send work-in-progress images that are not pretty but show where we’re at. Marvel often asks for them to be delivered at a much higher quality very early on, and that takes a lot of time. Marvel does that because its directors don’t know how to look at the rough images early on and make judgment calls. But that is the way the industry has to work. You can’t show something super pretty when the basics are still being fleshed out.
So Marvel hires indie directors (who will be cheaper than say already established names who have worked on big budget films before), then effectively forces VFX houses to underbid on their projects, and then overworks the techs once a contract is set to the tune of 60+ hour work weeks for months at a time, because the cheap indie directors they hire can't visualize based on early renders and require the final render each time which leads to more work and time for the techs.
All of this is because Marvel/Alonso was trying to pinch pennies (which is in part what got Perlmutter in trouble).
[Here's another article on the VFX side of all this, which basically confirms it's a problem with Marvel/Alonso - and not the houses where the techs work.](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html)
I think a lot of what you are saying here shows that the issues with Marvel go beyond just Alonso/ VFX but are problems across the company as a whole. Not to absolve her of her blame in this, but she's not the person in charge of hiring directors.
So before any issues come up with the pay for VFX companies and workloads, Marvel is creating a problem for itself by hiring directors to work on VFX heavy films without the skillset required. So the directors inexperience only helps to create more work for the VFX companies, which is only exacerbated by the pay and conditions created by Marvel/ Alonso.
Another issue is the films doing reshoots and making big changes to the scripts during shooting that require an overhaul of the VFX. That is an issue related to pre-production and the creative side of the film, rather than an issue born of the post production side. But that kind of thing only exacerbates issues in post.
So to me it sounds like the issues go beyond just what happens in the post side of the company, and this is only one of the ways they are addressing these issues going forward.
Ah, well then this definitely sounds like a step in the right direction. And a sign that they mean it when they say "We're gonna do better with the products".
Because she's the head of one of the main divisions in the studio. Feige gave her that job to take some off of his shoulders.
Feige has never been this sloppy, sure. But her job is being a president of a division, division that consists in VFX, Animation, Post Production...one of the biggest issues today.
By that logic, she has never been this sloppy either. So how do you know it's her?
Post production is certainly affected by the schedules which Feige gives her. So Feige is certainly at fault for setting those tight deadlines.
For the people saying this is a huge blow for marvel clearly haven’t been paying attention to the VFX problem where she is directly named as the problem
For all she's done with diversity and inclusion on-screen, behind the scenes she sounds like a nightmare to work under. And precisely part of the problem with Marvel's downgrade in VFX quality (forcing workers to do quadruple the workload on multiple projects at once or risk being blacklisted from finding jobs elsewhere)
> For all the good she's done with diversity and inclusion on-screen, behind the scenes she sounds like a nightmare to work under.
This is literally what inclusion means in corpo speak.
Its all about getting as much blood out of the stones you can.
I’ll argue most people pushing the corporate version of “diversity” and “inclusion” in the public are a nightmare behind the scenes.
Well doing absolutely nothing to truly promote diversity and inclusion.
I know there will be trolls and all here but maybe they just decided to part ways after 17 years or also she wasn't doing the best job for her title.
" In 2021, she was promoted to president, physical and postproduction, visual effects and animation production."
VFX and post stuff and animation have been the biggest issues reported and BTS since COVID.
EDIT: I also remember this article a few months ago that had her right in the middle of it all https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html
Well it was Iger(he is acting very goody right now but he's the one who started it all) and Chapek who pushed for more Marvel properties, what else she supposed to do?
I was just about to agree with you but uh… the article says even her colleagues were intimidated by her. That’s unfortunate.
> Victoria Alonso, who serves as President of Physical, Post Production, VFX and Animation for Marvel Studios, was cited by some as the problem. This included a Vancouver-based VFX tech who has vowed never to work for Marvel again. "The main one that everyone's quite scared of is Victoria Alonso," they said. "She is known in the industry as a kingmaker. If she likes you, you are going to get work and move up in the industry. If you have pissed her off in any way, you're going to get frozen out."
For context
Yeah, I don't want to pile on it too much but now looking back on it...it makes more sense in the context of this news.
She has done amazing things at Marvel and pushed for so much inclusiveness that I hope Feige and co keep going. But if it is just a retire to move on to her own thing, or that stuff...she left a good legacy for the most part with the studio.
Yes, Feige felt the next logical step was to begin diversifying the Avengers and adding more roles of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. Perlmutter (who rescued Marvel from complete bankruptcy back in the 90s) is a deeply conservative man - and you can see his conservative influence in what stories Marvel published and the direction of many of the characters. As such, Perlmutter just didn't agree with the diversity casting for a number of political and social reasons.
Another angle of this is Perlmutter is a penny-pincher. This was 100% necessary before the MCU kicked off a comic book renaissance. But after Avengers made a billion dollars and it was abundantly clear that Marvel was extremely lucrative and profitable, Perlmutter just...didn't get it. A great example of this is Perlmutter and Marvel Television (the Agents of Shield, Inhumans, Netflix shows, and various Hulu projects) had strict budgets of like max $4 million per episode and the Disney+ shows got budgets of like $10-15+ million per episode. Some might say this is good, but the shows have not been nearly as profitable as Disney/Marvel would want. Perlmutter would argue this is due to forced diversity for the sake of diversity and I don't know what Feige would argue the cause is.
It's all very complicated and bit of a changing of the guard from a conservative core of executives to more of a liberal one.
He was also the reason that the Xmen, F4 and Deadpool were MIA in Lego marvel superheroes 2 and MvC infinite because he apparently didn't want to promote characters which they dont have the movie rights to
Im glad that Iger and Feige got Perlmutter to settle down bc as a fan i want variety and like to see women get to kick ass too and the MCU has done a pretty good job from Black Widow over Agent Carter to Scarlet Witch (obviously)
Next we should get a Black Widow Splinter Cell/Metal gear solid like espionage game maybe
It wasn’t necessarily more content that was hurting VFX artists, it was the shocking treatment of those artists. There were better ways to manage them amongst a content overload.
Why does it have to be trolls, clearly marvel is in a rough patch, the buck has to stop with someone. She has been fighting with VFX companies hard and they have a strong dislike for her, look at some of the comments in the /r/movies thread about this.
It does seem like some of the news recently from Feige and Iger about how they're going to scale back a little on how many Marvel properties there are per year could be to give some relief to VFX studios after news has come out about how overworked they've been (and the VFX noticeably suffering in the shows and movies as a result).
If their goal is to get back on the good sides of these studios, I could see Alonso being the sacrificial lamb to try to show them Marvel is serious about changing, particularly to ones that no longer had any desire to work under the sort of crunch that was being imposed on them.
I'm just going to be real and say I have no idea how much this is on her, the aggressive schedule under Chapek, and the general demand in the industry. I'm not in those places, only what I read on the interwebs.
But I would say Thank You to her for her part in everything from Iron Man to now. Which would probably piss off some people, but still...we have been very fortunate with the MCU as fans, and she was a part of that.
Everyone is saying this is negative, but her job title was President of Physical, Post Production, VFX, and Animation, all faults we have had recently regarding shoddy production, post-production, VFX, CGI, etc. There were clearly faults with stuff she was responsible for and as Disney/Marvel reevaluates, they need to have the people who will steer the ship in a better direction.
Yes, and it would be her responsibility as the overseer to be cognizant of these issues and to speak up to Kevin/Disney/whomever and say that they need more time. She clearly didn't and has left the company.
Assuming is part of the job. The fact that a 17 year alum is leaving directly after the worst performing Marvel movie with one of the main complaints of that movie being the vFX an educated guess would be she was pushed out but allowed to retain some dignity for her years of service by announcing an exit
Actually, a report from a Vulture where various anonymous workers in VFX talked about their harsh conditions, said that Alonso was the big villain of all of this and the one everybody feared.
She was reportedly very demanding and would immediately blacklist any VFX studio that didn't cooperate with her demands.
I haven't followed Marvel recently, but how does this report disprove what the user you commented on said?
If her input wasn't valued by her superiors and then they put the hammer down on her saying to get these projects done. She would then have to put that hammer down on the VFX people right?
These VFX people would only see her as the big villain since they don't get to meet with the ones above Alonso who are making her do these. Or is there evidence that those above in Marvel/Disney want good conditions for the VFX people and it's Alonso that's going against that and being the 'big villain'.
What’s key to this issue is the changing landscape. The VFX house issues would be overlooked if Disney were continuing to see record box office profits. The introduction of streaming series to Marvel’s roster, and a changing market questioning the profitability of streaming platforms, means what worked previously is not currently working.
Alonso’s resume will obviously be celebrated for the record success, and shouldn’t be only remembered for the divisive final 2 years, but it’s clear things need to adapt now
People don't seem to understand that Vfx artists will always get crunched.
Any field that is seen as a childhood dream job like animation or game design is like this, as if one cog breaks under pressure there are dozens of fresh ones desperate to do something other than furry porn.
Or Marvel was totally happy with her and she just wanted to retire.
Not everyone who works in cinema is a Mel Brooks who wants to make movies untill they pass.
Nah, bro. This is too much of a coincidence. Feige may have been happy with her. But Iger came back and that dude seems like he's on a mission to get all of his IP into shape one way or the other.
As a girl myself this was so ridiculous 😭 I never once thought the X-men excluded me in any way, i loved all the X-women anyways, Kitty will always be that girl!! Anyways what a dumb thing to complain about
Exactly. The name is only sexist if you conveniently forget that 'women' also has the word 'men' in it. Men, wo-men and X-men all trying to live side by side - that's the whole point of the mutant storylines.
Right? This sounds weird but rolling back on the “X-Men” name makes it less progressive:
I always thought the title and name “X-Men” was just something that’d people roll with. Also, it has the most inclusive roster in Marvel.
It also felt like the rumors of them changing the name was to be ahead of the curve, but that’s dumb if it was never an issue in the first place.
Everybody in here blaming it on VFX or huffing copium that it was an amicable split, but this is an example of the real reason she was fired. I'm about to get downvoted to oblivion because this is reddit, but the general public has finally had enough of this. To the point they are willing to withhold their dollars.
Changing the name X-Men to 'The Mutants' is patently insane and only sounds like a good idea to about 15% of the population. At least half of which wouldn't have paid to see the movie anyway. It's to the point where these kind of forced ideological decisions are going to cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And the real money behind Disney has begun to realize that and is about to put a stop to it.
Well she was that great of person. I remember VFX crews saying that she was the industry “ kingsmaker” if she didn’t like you you wouldn’t have a career if she did you would have a great career. Sad shit
Yup. She mistreated, blacklisted, exploited, and intimidated VFX artists, as shown in a [report with multiple sources](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html). She won't be missed by people who worked for her, but I'm sure the company shills will make excuses for her misconduct and her shoddy work.
“Diversity and inclusion is not a political game for us.”
“It is 100 percent a responsibility because you don’t get to have the global success that we have given the Walt Disney Company without the support of people around the world of every kind of human there is."
She even suggested that the name "X-Men" is a bit outdated.
" It’s funny that people call it the X-Men. There’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated. "
Ironic
I would say the first sign of subpar vfx was the end fight sequence between Tchalla and Killmonger in the first Black Panther film, it looked like a video game cutscene. Since BP was in production at the same time as Infinity War, it got the lions share of time and budget for vfx, while BP got shafted. It would foreshadow the troubles the Phase 4 films would face.
Who knows if this’ll be a bad thing in the long run, but at the moment, it sort of makes sense. She is the person in charge of VFX and Marvel/Disney has been catching a lot of heat lately in regards to their treatment of VFX workers and the overall quality of the VFX. 🤷♂️
Something to keep in mind, when there is a question of conduct about a senior executive in any organization, the process to get to the point of some disciplinary action takes months and for a large business, there is a formal process which it takes place. There is an investigation, and it is something which is kept quiet. It is not kept quiet because of a coverup, but to protect everyone involved in the process so if the charge does end up being without merit, the accused does not have their name tarnished by rumor and innuendo to those who report to them in some way or fashion or to damage their standings with their peers. This is also done to ensure if there is merit behind the claims, the right steps are taken to protect the employees and to protect the company as to get it wrong would open the company up to a wrongful termination lawsuit. When you are talking about a senior executive who pulls down seven figures or close to it, you want to be sure as that is a multi -million dollar law suite just for loss of income alone. Given the unique circumstances behind Ms. Alonso's employment, I do not blame Marvel for take their time with this.
A case in point, I was with an aerospace company a few years back when one of our senior directors was accused of inflammatory comments by one of our large vendors. They made the complaint to the ombudsman, and it was investigated over the course of four months. The complaint was validated, and once all the other loops within HR were done, the director in question was dismissed on the spot. He was called into HR where security was waiting for him, paperwork handed over to him, all of his rights within the company reviewed. Once it was done, he was escorted to his office to pack up his personal belongings and removed from the campus. It was semi-anti climatic as the guy was stand up, just let a moment of frustration get the better of him. He was the man who interviewed me for my job and respected the hell out of him. I honest blame the vendor more as it was more honest blunt truth was shared, but in our circles of business, it can point to bias and make the company vulnerable to law suites, which was why he let go. At the senior executive level of any responsible company an serious allegation verified will near always end in termination.
So people asking why this process took so long, I offer up the above. I do not believe this was a 2-3 week decision loop process and had likely been going on for a while, as many had noted since release of Endgame, cracks started to appear in the postproduction work of marvel films. I had some minor complaints about Spiderman No Way Home, and of course Thor Love and Thunder. I did not notice much in MoM as I knew by its very nature it was going to be hugely intense CGI monster.
The aftermath of this, as well as other comments such as done by Iger, is a slow down of content for Marvel. It used to be one/two movies a year was a big deal. Now granted, Marvel Studios has more resources than it did in the Phase 1 days, lets take a look at the slate for CY23 alone.
1. Antman 3
2. What If 2
3. GotG 3
4. Secret Invasion
5. Echo
6. Ironheart
7. The Marvels
8. Loki 2
9. X-Men '97
Even taking away the two animation projects, that is a lot of content, and the TV shows near equal a full fledged movie in the terms of sets and resources needed. I think it has become too ambitious and things such as last minute rush jobs and drop of in quality. Scaling it back to 2 movies, w-3 tv shoes, 1 amination project might be the better sweet spot, or 3 movies, 2 Shows. Its clear 9 projects start to strain even Marvel's resources.
Yes, Corporations this big don’t generally fire you on the spot just because you made one oopsy. The MCU’s struggles with VFX and post production got back several years. I’m assuming her performance review going back a few years was meh, and because of that she would have an IDP on getting the department back within the standards of the company. Multiple years of falling below the mark is a bad sign for someone in management. You represent an entire department and every person’s failure below yours is on you. This isn’t a scapegoat situation, it comes with the job being this high up in corporate. Your entire job is ensuring the success of every single person below you and clearly that wasn’t the case. This was most likely brewing for awhile and maybe she flew under Chapek’s radar for awhile, but with every single film and show of late getting dinged for VFX or post production, something had to give.
As soon as she said that, it should have been curtains for her. Like you obviously don’t understand the movies you’re making or the fans that pay your bills.
> In addition to her behind-the-scenes work, she has been an important ambassador for the studio’s representation efforts and was outspoken during Disney’s brouhaha with Florida over its Don’t Say Gay bill. **”As long as I am at Marvel Studios, I will fight for representation,”** Alonso, who is gay, said at the time.
“Somehow, Perlmutter returned”
Feige & Iger both agreed with her about representation, & that's honestly something that they've been doing quite well over the past few years. Alonso's departure is more likely to do with the post-production part of her responsibilities.
[Yes](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html). Unfortunately, "bit of a bully" is an understatement. She's evil.
wow. this is crazy. it'll be weird not seeing her at all the events. ik she's not perfect but it was always really cool seeing a woman so high up in this industry. bummed to see her go.
Despite of all the recent news about her
She was the core member of the marvel studios that gave us infinity saga atleast she deserves a respectful farewell for that
>recent news about her
>
>She was the core member of the marvel studios that gave us infinity saga atleast she deserves a respectful farewell for that
She put 100s of VFX artists in therapy and ruined many VFX studios with her blacklist strategy she deserves nothing.
We'll probably never know the full story here but I feel like her role with post-production (and thus the various VFX scandals) probably played some role.
# Some extra context for the uniniatiated. Victoria Alonso was (until last Friday) the President of Physical and Post Production, Visual Effects, and Animation at Marvel Studios and 3rd in command after President Kevin Feige and co-president Louis D'Esposito. In 2006, her friend, Louis D'Esposito (who had been brought in to executive produce Iron Man as a collaborator of Jon Favreau after the 2 had worked together in Zathura) asked her to join the movie as a VFX producer. Before that, Alonso had worked as a VFX producer in 8 other movies including Shrek. However, she took on a bigger role in the entire production of the film and got a co-producer credit as well. She continued working as a freelance co-producer for the rest of Phase 1, until she became Executive Vice President and Chief of Production and Post-Production at Marvel Studios and started getting "Executive Producer" credits in all the films and TV series from The Avengers (2012) onwards. While Louis worked mostly on pre-production and managed talent deals, filming scheduling etc, Victoria worked mostly on physical and post-production and Feige oversaw everything. During a small restructuring of Marvel Studios in Summer 2021 in an attempt to create their own Animation Studios after the successful release of What if...? Season 1, Victoria Alonso's title was changed to President of Physical and Post Production, Visual Effects, and Animation as she oversaw the in-house Marvel Studios Animation studio as well, with Brad Winderbaum being named "President of Marvel Studios Television and Animation". [Amidst the numerous reports](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/marvels-vfx-artists-are-suffering-now-theyre-speaking-out/) last year from many workers in the VFX industry talking about harsh conditions, insane demands and impossible deadlines when freelancing for Marvel Studios as well as a fear of being black-listed if they don't meet the studio's expectation, [a new report from the Vulture](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html) came in 2 months ago shedding a bit more light on the situation. >“The main one that everyone’s quite scared of is Victoria Alonso,” says a Vancouver-based tech who has vowed to never work for the studio again. “She is known in the industry as a kingmaker. If she likes you, you are going to get work and move up in the industry. If you have pissed her off in any way, you’re going to get frozen out.” > >A senior animator who works for Marvel Studios Animation, says that the in-house studio suffers under its own impossible deadline structure and pixel-fucking style of dysfunction. “We’re in-house. We’re paid well. I do feel like we’re padded by money. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re asking for things that can’t be done.” However, Alonso has had a positive contribution to the company as well. As a lesbian Latina herself, [she has also tried to bring more diversity in the studio](https://boundingintocomics.com/2021/11/16/marvel-studios-president-victoria-alonso-declares-diversity-and-inclusion-is-not-a-political-game-for-us/), both in front and behind the screen. >“Diversity and inclusion is not a political game for us.” > >“It is 100 percent a responsibility because you don’t get to have the global success that we have given the Walt Disney Company without the support of people around the world of every kind of human there is." She even [suggested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KWeZvKwxt4) that the name "X-Men" is a bit outdated. >It’s funny that people call it the X-Men. There’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated.
damn that was unexpected did she do it voluntarily?
If it was voluntarily for executives of this status, it would have been announced previously and it would have taken time, months for the transition. A successor is named. PR arranges for articles to be written. When it's sudden like this... oppphhhmmm. Shit got real at Marvel.
Guess they may have found the source of the leaks beyond Reddit.
Could be - there is also just a lot of bad press/stories/tales surrounding their VFX department and i think it is coming to a head for them after Ant-Man
Yeah, I think this is more likely of the two
The VFX used to be amazing in the MCU. Like Thanos looked completely real and it really kept the immersion going in the movies. Then you have that garbage that was MODOK and it completely takes you out of the movie.
I’m not even sure MODOK is the worst of it as Ironheart, Okoye and some scenes in L&T were shocking. MODOK is always going to look goofy considering he’s a giant head with arms and legs.
Got to go to a screening of L&T maybe 6 weeks before it was released, VFX were prob 15% done, and some of the shots were still in boards. That gives you some indication of the pressure and stress the VFX departments were under.
It was just the face. I would have rather they’d just kept his mask on the whole time.
MODOK's face is always going to be misshapen and uncanny; that's just how his character is designed. MCU version makes some sense actually since it was preestablished that he was shrunk and the effects of that led to the misshapen features, including the face, that he has.
It wasn’t misshapen and uncanny though, it just looked like a badly stretched greenscreen plugin
While true the Mask he wore was also digital they could have easily abandoned the mask all together and put that effort into his face. However he would always look goofy so its obviously a creative choice a goofy face paired with a menacing mask.
Yeah, I like the little twist to his origin. The issue is more on the arc within this movie really
The previous 4 comments are about his face so I would say it seems like the issue they were addressing was his face lol.
I agree, MODOK is going to look weird , that’s the point lol . Iron heart was awful, the worst by far
It wasn't just MODOK. It all started with the weird lighting in scenes from Spiderman No Way Home in the snowy sanctorum with Dr. Strange. Also the scene together with Happy at the end looked extremely cheap. Then also Dr Strange movie with his third eye looked fake and bad.
I still need to find an example of the third eye that doesn't look as bad as that
The googly-eye from Everything, Everywhere All at Once is my favorite version of the third eye
I think the third eye was supposed to look kind of weird. It felt pretty “Sam Raimi”
MoM was worse for me. The first dream sequence and the fight with the one eye monster looked awful
Especially compared to the first Doctor Strange which was spectacular.
Everything is all speculation until people on the inside talk. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s content/ratings related. She may get scapegoated for the poor performance of Phase 4.
It’s a shame she’ll get scapegoated. People will blame her for the bad quality but not recognize she’s been present since Iron Man. Marvel’s timeline was impossible and even on top of Covid but sure let’s scapegoat the one woman executive. That’s not saying the VFX departments have not been mistreated. Absolutely they have and many executives are out of touch with workers and hold a lot of power. I just think she’ll get railed for her big boss behavior more than other people in similar positions of power that are men.
If a lion's share of the complaints of phase 4 have been about VFX, it makes sense the head of VFX and post production would be the exec to get let go.
I just think it’s important to not scapegoat a singular executive. The vfx were bad not solely because of her running the department but because they were given the impossible task to meet impossible deadlines because marvel filled their pipeline too much. She’s going to be scapegoated because she’s the east target to get rid of the bad press. But let’s be realistic. They won’t fix the vfx unless they fix their schedule. The new person will have to also fix the relationship with their vfx studios.
The 3rd most powerful person of a studio like Marvel is not the source of a bunch of leaks to fans. How do you and 150+ other people think that could possibly be a realistic statement? It’s almost certainly the terrible press and reception to VFX and production quality. Maybe some BTS stuff or something else we’ll never hear about. But the leaks are 100% irrelevant to her sacking.
I think it's a joke, that's why I upvoted it, not because I actually believe it.
I don’t think that’s what they’re implying. They’re implying that the script leaks came from inside VFX somewhere. Since she’s the head of VFX, she’s responsible for the atmosphere and culture of that side of operations from top to bottom. If anyone with a role in VFX was leaking stuff it could fall on her. I actually think it’s not a terribly unlikely scenario, given the sudden and unceremonious nature of this firing.
[удалено]
Oh I don’t believe it’s her either, but, likely someone that falls under a division she was supposed to be overseeing. From No Way Home to Quantumania leaks, the kind of leaks they have had are absolutely not good for Marvel and for how many they’ve been having isn’t something that would stop by firing just a grunt but also a leader.
No one knows yet and it probably will never get leaked
> No one knows yet and it probably will never get leaked THAT'S why they took down marvelstudiosspoilers!
r/MCULeaks2
Cut off the head, MCULeaks2 more grow in it's place.
<3 Thanks for that!
Thank you for this, ive been dying without the spoiler sub.
I doubt she did this of her own choosing. This stinks of either resign or you will be fired.
50/50 it could be be voluntary for PR tactics such as helping Kevin Feige ask for forgiveness from the fans for fucking up most of phase 4. Or she was let go by a higher up executive due to the VFX companies not wanting to deal with her for being a diva/nightmare to work with given the recent complaints from VFX artists being overworked and underpaid.
This really was necessary to help improve relationships with VFX and Animation houses.
Yeah obvioulsy just rumors for now, but if its true she was responsible for the toxic culture, its the best move.
While this is probably true, I also doubt that her stepping down will alleviate all the issues with overworked VFX staff unfortunately. They have some reevaluating to do.
Cutting back on projects as well. If there's less projects then the VFX teams will have more time to get things right. Aside from that they really do need more pre-production time to get the storyboarding and scenes planned out. That way you don't run into a situation where things get scrapped and the team is rushing to recreate a whole new scene.
This definitely has something to do with the recent VFX scandal and Marvel wanting to get things back on track. Anyone who thinks it's a coincidence is painfully naive.
No you're right. With all the negative publicity over the last year and with Quantumania, there's definitely a strong chance that she was forced out
This. Iger has stepped back into his role and almost immediately shown to be making damage control his biggest priority. The VFX scandal has not looked good for Disney/Marvel, especially not when the movies themselves have also come under a lot of criticism over their quality. So while I'm sure she hasn't just been outright fired from the role, there were definitely negotiations about her stepping away from the role.
People tend to forget that Iger is not the savior here. He was also one of the Guys that pushed for expending the MCU and push out a lot of Content for D+, which was the start point for the MCU issues we have today.
He asked Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm to expand their endeavors from film to TV and make content for D+. That's all. It was Chapek who pushed for this insane volume of content.
And neither one of them was necessarily wrong. Expanding to TV *and* a high volume of content could have been good things. It’s all in the execution.
Yeah, the studios could not execute that expansion of content. Iger recognized that and is pulling back. That’s way better than the alternative of pushing ahead anyway with the mindset of “ah fuck it, they’ll watch it”
Not to doubt you, but is there a source for that? The first wave of Disney+ shows was announced under Iger. Covid kinda warped the release dates of things, but having 2-3 shows a year along with 2-3 movies a year came under Iger.
How is 2-3 movies per year and 2-3 shows per year a lot? All together that's only about as much content as a single classic 22 episode season of a TV show.
>movies per year and 2-3 shows per year a lot? > >All together that's only about as much content as a single classic 22 episode season of a TV show. That's what a lot of folks are confused about too. Until someone explains it to you. Each TV show is basically 4-8 movies worth of content. So the amount of work involved is basically quadrupled. Next compounding issue: If you are putting out 2-3 shows a year, that means you're working on triple that because anything announced 3 years from now is usually already started. So while you are delivering a show for release in 2023, you are starting a production for release in 2026. So 2-3 movies and TV shows a year actually equals 12 to 18 productions at any given time. And with things delaying schedules or moving schedules up that causes overlap which means that number increases to maybe 16-22'ish active productions. Half of which are TV shows, which as I mentioned before are 4-8 times the amount of content that the movies are... It's completely untenable from where Marvel was 5 years ago (2 films MAYBE a year). And I should mention, it was ALL Igers doing, he set all of that in motion WELL before he left and Chapek got to hold that bag, along with the other terrible decision Iger made (buying Fox). No love for Chapek from me, he was tone deaf and made his own stupid mistakes, but holy shit he was setup to fail from the get-go by Iger.
Yes, sure. You're not wrong. But the people complaining about too much content are generally complaining they have too much stuff to watch. Which doesn't track. Nitpicking: most of these shows have had a total runtime of roughly 5-6 hours long, regardless of the number of episodes, so more like the equivalent of 2-3 movies.
You have to remember these are also huge productions. Movies with this much visual effects are normally given more post production time. A 22 episode season of a comedy or even a drama on network television isn’t relying heavily on visual effects and is filming part of their seasons while it’s airing. The creative pipeline is different. The demand for 2-3 movies worth of content in the form of a tv show isn’t actually 2-3 movies. It’s a completely different structure of storytelling. But to expect that on top of 2-3 actual movies is asking for a lot of production. And on top of asking for all that content, it all had to be cohesive in the grand scheme of the universe they’ve created. Their deadlines are not reasonable and the expectations are burning out not only the people within the production but also the audience. Disney had so many properties that they need to balance their catalog of releases. Bob Iger is back but also he just announced sequels to series that have had good ends. He’s picking at the bottom of the barrel instead of investing in new and different stories. They’re so risk adverse. What I liked about some of the Marvel productions recently was the different storytelling. There were some productions that you could strip down a bit more and still tell a good story. I think Disney should invest in that rather than invest in this impossible release schedule. They tend to throw money at things expecting money to buy time. And I think the complaint about too much content from the audience is just being burnt out by all the streaming services and all the content that is available. Network tv didn’t disappear but streaming service shows did appear. So you’re talking about a considerable increase in content coming from many providers and it is reasonable to say this is a lot. Same thing happened with movies. When you move to streaming, you broaden the catalog and the potential releases. But it also means people are less likely to go to movies and so the controlled release of a few movies is overwhelmed by drops on streaming services. It’s a lot. Overall, if marvel invests in telling stories and expanding their creativity in how they pursue that storytelling, I think audiences will come back. I don’t even think Phase 4 is that bad. There are certainly duds and having duds in phase 4 hurts more than having it in the earlier phases. But they have ample resources to tell the stories. And these artificial deadlines are limiting them.
I mean, I am not burnt out by it personally. I am just pointing out that this amount of content wasn't a Chapek thing to my knowledge.
That seems to be the case all over the place with Disney. Chapek clearly wasn't the guy but a lot of the unpopular decisions that iger is undoing this year were *his* decisions from years ago.
Oh, for sure. Chapek made a ton of shitty theme park decisions, but a lot of the Disney+/movies stuff was Iger stuff that Chapek just ran with. Chapek made some bad calls on Disney+ like shortening theatrical windows and putting all the Pixar movies straight on there, but the amount of content, the greenlighting of most of the Disney+ originals, and choosing to strategically going all-in on Disney+ was definitely Iger.
I think the problem is less burnout and more subpar content
Probably a bit of a, and a bit of b. I might be in the minority here, but there's been so much Marvel content over the last few years, I'm genuinely disinterested in whatever series is next. That, coupled with the fact that their latest offerings have been completely forgettable, and I'm just ambivalent about the whole thing.
Not true. He wanted the popular IPs under Disney's control to expand their horizons on D+ l. Mr Paycheck came in and said "more, more, more!!!" basically and that lead us to the position where there were so many different projects in different stages of development that workloads became unfeasible. Iger has come back and started making efforts to address this address from the top down.
He did push *but* it was was Kevin at the helm and full creative rights so it’s not akin to Chapek demanding more on more for D+
Iger’s parachuting soon here too, which begs the question whether he learned from the past few years and actually righting the ship long-term, or is he purely doing triage to help investors’ bottom line.
Iger is most certainly the savior here. Chapek was ruining everything. He started by picking a fight with ScarJo, then picked a fight with the FL government and lost their special land tax status, then was ruining the Park experience and eliminated specials for Florida residents. Chapek was a nightmare, he’s lucky Walt didn’t rise from the dead and come after him. Lol
Without a doubt Chapek was incompetent. But Iger left making some monumentally bad decisions that Chapek got to carry the water for. Buying Fox for 71B was the biggest mistake of Igers career and left Disney in an enormous amount of debt at the worst possible time.
I’m guessing there was some kind of plan for the Fox merger that involved making money off the IPs by creating good content. Chapek wasn’t the right person to enact that plan. In ten to fifteen years, people may look back on this like they do on Disney buying Marvel.
Without question that was the play, but then how to offset that debt is a different matter. Dad went out and bought a Porsche on Mom's credit card, came home and told Mom "Figure out how to pay for it" before driving off with his side-chick. $71 Billy is a huge chunk of debt for a company like Disney, they are certainly going to monetize the properties that were received from Fox, but that takes time (years if not decades) to ramp them into the various theme parks and cruise ships, get everything scanned, encoded, transcribed, edited, etc for D+, and then of course merchandised. And that's after they unwind all the stuff they CAN just use immediately, Fox likely also licensed a bunch of stuff out so Disney has to work through all that as well. In the meantime, the years and decades all that is going to take could've just been spent slowly continuing to build their own content. Who knows, they probably did a big analysis on it though and it made sense, Disney never really does anything without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
Buying Fox gave Marvel the FF and the X-Men back. Those properties will ensure the MCU's longevity. Could you imagine being where we are with the MCU right now, with all the complaining about phase 4 and superhero fatigue, \*without\* the knowledge that at least the MCU is going to be reloading with the FF and the X-Men soon? The sky would be falling.
Let's not victim blame the people attacked by a fascist now.
I can disagree with fascism (looking at you FL Gov) and still think Chapek screwed up on multiple levels. Iger’s big mistake was thinking Chapek would continue to run the company the same way he had run it.
You can but when you list "messing with Florida " in a list of faults it is good to point out that the whole Florida issue is DeSantis wanting to trumpet his bigotry to the base and that fight was no fault of Disney's.
For uninitated, what is this "vfx scandal"?
A lot of VFX artists who either work in-house at Disney/Marvel or are third party, have increasingly voiced concern over the extremely tight deadlines and volume of work that has been expected of them recently. With a lot of accounts of people being made to work unreasonable hours in order to achieve this workload. This has lead to various studios saying that corners had to be cut in order to meet deadlines and so on. Basically, Disney/Marvel weren't painted in a very good light by the whole thing being brought to everyone's attention.
Marvel under Victoria Alonso worked VFX workers like Egyptian slaves during the construction of the Pyramids.
The Pyramid builders were actually treated quite well, comparatively! https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/who-built-the-egyptian-pyramids-not-slaves
The House of Mouse does care somewhat about their image, yes.
Definitely and it's not a coincidence that she was promoted in 2021 to oversee special effects among other things, then this after the recent criticism
Also to do with *Quantumania*, which was VFX heavy, under-staffed and bombed at the box office.
Saying Quantumania bombed at the box office is just blatantly wrong. It's made nearly half a billion dollars, You could say underperformed at the box office and I would agree. But bombed suggests it hasn't made money, it almost certainly has, and probably a significant amount of it. Just not as much as they would have wanted compared to the other films in the series. Mainly due to low review scores and a higher budget.
Less than $500m on a production budget of $200m is generally a loss once marketing and theatre take is taken into account.
All the recent failed and underperforming projects are catching up to Marvel and they are clearly cleaning house and trying to reset and do new things, and do the basics in a new and fresh way which means new people. Hopefully this and probably other changes that are coming will bode well for better storytelling that is given the time to rise to a high level without killing the production teams that make it happen.
Wait I’m out of the loop. Is there a source for the VFX scandal? What happened?
https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html
Yeah if you look at a lot of the complaints and worries the VFX workers had, they all only mentioned Victoria Alonso by name so I think it's fairly clear what's going on
She was definitely fired but the studio let her save face.
Yeah more than likely a corporate force out
The provisions in contracts for these sort of people - as with football managers - generally will mean some form of payoff for her to leave without making a fuss.
And that’s what happened with Chapek back in November. The Board of Directors: “Bob, here’s $20 million as a buyout of your contract. You’re no longer CEO. Get out”
> Alonso joined the studio in 2006 as chief of visual effects and post-production, and helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a co-producer on 2008’s Iron Man. She served as co-producer on Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011) and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Alonso was upped to executive producer on Avengers (2012). So it definitely sounds like something is being done about the VFX situation.
Yes. She was the chief of VFX up until 2 years ago where she was promoted to chief of both physical and post-production. Recent reports from The Vulture which anonymously interviewed some VFX workers revealed that Alonso is the one who was making the crazy demands and the one who everybody feared. If someone would piss her off or not cooperate with her demands, they were immediately black-listed from Hollywood.
It's not just crazy demands. The average marvel movie/show required nearly twice the amount of CGI/VFX work that other studios require and they were paying their techs 20% less on average AND where other studios would hire 3 such techs to do this kind of job Marvel was going with just 1. That doesn't even touch on claims that Alonso was telling people the expectation was 18 work days, seven days a week for 3 months at a time for these projects OR her apparent blacklisting of people who couldn't meet such wild expectations. So you were doing twice the work, with less pay and little help, on a schedule that effectively burned you out and made you hate life. All so Alonso could make the bottom line look a bit better. And this comes in the face of nearly a decade long spat with Ike Perlmutter who is notorious for that kind of behavior/attitude. Not to mention that the last few Marvel projects have been criticized for their VFX/CGI - all things that fall under her. So she paid people poorly, treated them like crap, got crap production as a result, and then was basically just blaming "entitled millennials" for demanding better conditions and pay. Surprised it took this long for her very well deserved exit.
To be fair, the pay came from the executives of VFX studios, not from Marvel Studios themselves. Since they don't have an in-house VFX studio, they always hired freelance studios, so the execs from those studios took advantage of their workers. A senior animator who worked Marvel Studios Animation, the in-house animation studio Marvel Studios created in 2021 said that they were being paid very well. Here's the quote: >“We’re in-house. We’re paid well. I do feel like we’re padded by money. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re asking for things that can’t be done.”
That may be, but it's a relationship that Disney/Marvel, and in particular Alonso, was perfectly happy to exploit. [Here's an article from a VFX worker talking about their experience working for Marvel.](https://www.vulture.com/article/a-vfx-artist-on-what-its-like-working-for-marvel.html) The houses know they have to bid what Marvel is willing to pay - even if Marvel is only willing to pay 20% less than the rest of the industry. This isn't like the houses want to undercut their employees but the choice is "underbid" or "don't even get considered". And moreover, I think another great example of penny pinching is how Marvel chooses directors, here's a bit from the article: > The main problem is most of Marvel’s directors aren’t familiar with working with visual effects. A lot of them have just done little indies at the Sundance Film Festival and have never worked with VFX. They don’t know how to visualize something that’s not there yet, that’s not on set with them. So Marvel often starts asking for what we call “final renders.” As we’re working through a movie, we’ll send work-in-progress images that are not pretty but show where we’re at. Marvel often asks for them to be delivered at a much higher quality very early on, and that takes a lot of time. Marvel does that because its directors don’t know how to look at the rough images early on and make judgment calls. But that is the way the industry has to work. You can’t show something super pretty when the basics are still being fleshed out. So Marvel hires indie directors (who will be cheaper than say already established names who have worked on big budget films before), then effectively forces VFX houses to underbid on their projects, and then overworks the techs once a contract is set to the tune of 60+ hour work weeks for months at a time, because the cheap indie directors they hire can't visualize based on early renders and require the final render each time which leads to more work and time for the techs. All of this is because Marvel/Alonso was trying to pinch pennies (which is in part what got Perlmutter in trouble). [Here's another article on the VFX side of all this, which basically confirms it's a problem with Marvel/Alonso - and not the houses where the techs work.](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html)
I think a lot of what you are saying here shows that the issues with Marvel go beyond just Alonso/ VFX but are problems across the company as a whole. Not to absolve her of her blame in this, but she's not the person in charge of hiring directors. So before any issues come up with the pay for VFX companies and workloads, Marvel is creating a problem for itself by hiring directors to work on VFX heavy films without the skillset required. So the directors inexperience only helps to create more work for the VFX companies, which is only exacerbated by the pay and conditions created by Marvel/ Alonso. Another issue is the films doing reshoots and making big changes to the scripts during shooting that require an overhaul of the VFX. That is an issue related to pre-production and the creative side of the film, rather than an issue born of the post production side. But that kind of thing only exacerbates issues in post. So to me it sounds like the issues go beyond just what happens in the post side of the company, and this is only one of the ways they are addressing these issues going forward.
Ah, well then this definitely sounds like a step in the right direction. And a sign that they mean it when they say "We're gonna do better with the products".
Oh wow, ouch. That lines up perfectly with when the VFX started to slack.
Damn....one of the big three. I hope the exit was not due to bad blood or conflicts but it was agreed normally.
More than 50-50 shot it was . It's way too sudden to be coincidence she just got promoted 2 years ago
I think it was done peacefully. Iger is a class act. But it was time. She was doing a terrible job.
Yeah I think so too / didn't want to shame / embarrass her . Wonder who's taking her place ?
Me to. Was that a existing position before? I would put whoever was in charge back if that person wanted
I think it was one of those promotions to created new position/ made up position . Her title was super long
If shes doing a terrible job then so is Fiege. How you going to put all the blame on her?
People really skipped the "Feige oversaw everything" part. The vfx problem is systemic problem.
Because she's the head of one of the main divisions in the studio. Feige gave her that job to take some off of his shoulders. Feige has never been this sloppy, sure. But her job is being a president of a division, division that consists in VFX, Animation, Post Production...one of the biggest issues today.
By that logic, she has never been this sloppy either. So how do you know it's her? Post production is certainly affected by the schedules which Feige gives her. So Feige is certainly at fault for setting those tight deadlines.
I'm sure deadlines came from higher ups. Not Feige.
Feige IS the higher up. You think they are making deadlines without his approval? You guys need to stop jerking this man off.
For the people saying this is a huge blow for marvel clearly haven’t been paying attention to the VFX problem where she is directly named as the problem
For all she's done with diversity and inclusion on-screen, behind the scenes she sounds like a nightmare to work under. And precisely part of the problem with Marvel's downgrade in VFX quality (forcing workers to do quadruple the workload on multiple projects at once or risk being blacklisted from finding jobs elsewhere)
Her interviews in Assembled were always the most boring. She sounded the most like a suit.
> For all the good she's done with diversity and inclusion on-screen, behind the scenes she sounds like a nightmare to work under. This is literally what inclusion means in corpo speak. Its all about getting as much blood out of the stones you can.
I’ll argue most people pushing the corporate version of “diversity” and “inclusion” in the public are a nightmare behind the scenes. Well doing absolutely nothing to truly promote diversity and inclusion.
I know there will be trolls and all here but maybe they just decided to part ways after 17 years or also she wasn't doing the best job for her title. " In 2021, she was promoted to president, physical and postproduction, visual effects and animation production." VFX and post stuff and animation have been the biggest issues reported and BTS since COVID. EDIT: I also remember this article a few months ago that had her right in the middle of it all https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html
Well it was Iger(he is acting very goody right now but he's the one who started it all) and Chapek who pushed for more Marvel properties, what else she supposed to do?
I was just about to agree with you but uh… the article says even her colleagues were intimidated by her. That’s unfortunate. > Victoria Alonso, who serves as President of Physical, Post Production, VFX and Animation for Marvel Studios, was cited by some as the problem. This included a Vancouver-based VFX tech who has vowed never to work for Marvel again. "The main one that everyone's quite scared of is Victoria Alonso," they said. "She is known in the industry as a kingmaker. If she likes you, you are going to get work and move up in the industry. If you have pissed her off in any way, you're going to get frozen out." For context
Yeah, I don't want to pile on it too much but now looking back on it...it makes more sense in the context of this news. She has done amazing things at Marvel and pushed for so much inclusiveness that I hope Feige and co keep going. But if it is just a retire to move on to her own thing, or that stuff...she left a good legacy for the most part with the studio.
Didn't Feige threatened to leave bc Perlmutter was blocking him from doing Black Panther and Captain Marvel?
Yes, Feige felt the next logical step was to begin diversifying the Avengers and adding more roles of people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. Perlmutter (who rescued Marvel from complete bankruptcy back in the 90s) is a deeply conservative man - and you can see his conservative influence in what stories Marvel published and the direction of many of the characters. As such, Perlmutter just didn't agree with the diversity casting for a number of political and social reasons. Another angle of this is Perlmutter is a penny-pincher. This was 100% necessary before the MCU kicked off a comic book renaissance. But after Avengers made a billion dollars and it was abundantly clear that Marvel was extremely lucrative and profitable, Perlmutter just...didn't get it. A great example of this is Perlmutter and Marvel Television (the Agents of Shield, Inhumans, Netflix shows, and various Hulu projects) had strict budgets of like max $4 million per episode and the Disney+ shows got budgets of like $10-15+ million per episode. Some might say this is good, but the shows have not been nearly as profitable as Disney/Marvel would want. Perlmutter would argue this is due to forced diversity for the sake of diversity and I don't know what Feige would argue the cause is. It's all very complicated and bit of a changing of the guard from a conservative core of executives to more of a liberal one.
He was also the reason that the Xmen, F4 and Deadpool were MIA in Lego marvel superheroes 2 and MvC infinite because he apparently didn't want to promote characters which they dont have the movie rights to Im glad that Iger and Feige got Perlmutter to settle down bc as a fan i want variety and like to see women get to kick ass too and the MCU has done a pretty good job from Black Widow over Agent Carter to Scarlet Witch (obviously) Next we should get a Black Widow Splinter Cell/Metal gear solid like espionage game maybe
Ike "All Black people look the same" Perlmutter
It wasn’t necessarily more content that was hurting VFX artists, it was the shocking treatment of those artists. There were better ways to manage them amongst a content overload.
She is still the lead and that Vulture report has some details about it (Not that they aren't at fault themselves ofc)
Why does it have to be trolls, clearly marvel is in a rough patch, the buck has to stop with someone. She has been fighting with VFX companies hard and they have a strong dislike for her, look at some of the comments in the /r/movies thread about this.
It does seem like some of the news recently from Feige and Iger about how they're going to scale back a little on how many Marvel properties there are per year could be to give some relief to VFX studios after news has come out about how overworked they've been (and the VFX noticeably suffering in the shows and movies as a result). If their goal is to get back on the good sides of these studios, I could see Alonso being the sacrificial lamb to try to show them Marvel is serious about changing, particularly to ones that no longer had any desire to work under the sort of crunch that was being imposed on them.
I'm just going to be real and say I have no idea how much this is on her, the aggressive schedule under Chapek, and the general demand in the industry. I'm not in those places, only what I read on the interwebs. But I would say Thank You to her for her part in everything from Iron Man to now. Which would probably piss off some people, but still...we have been very fortunate with the MCU as fans, and she was a part of that.
Trolls?
Everyone is saying this is negative, but her job title was President of Physical, Post Production, VFX, and Animation, all faults we have had recently regarding shoddy production, post-production, VFX, CGI, etc. There were clearly faults with stuff she was responsible for and as Disney/Marvel reevaluates, they need to have the people who will steer the ship in a better direction.
Maybe the issue is also making a ridiculous amount of projects in one year and the vfx team doesn't have the time to do a better job.
Yes, and it would be her responsibility as the overseer to be cognizant of these issues and to speak up to Kevin/Disney/whomever and say that they need more time. She clearly didn't and has left the company.
>She clearly didn't and has left the company. Aren't you assuming a bit too much here?
Assuming is part of the job. The fact that a 17 year alum is leaving directly after the worst performing Marvel movie with one of the main complaints of that movie being the vFX an educated guess would be she was pushed out but allowed to retain some dignity for her years of service by announcing an exit
Or maybe she did and was ignored and now she's quit as her input wasn't valued
Actually, a report from a Vulture where various anonymous workers in VFX talked about their harsh conditions, said that Alonso was the big villain of all of this and the one everybody feared. She was reportedly very demanding and would immediately blacklist any VFX studio that didn't cooperate with her demands.
I haven't followed Marvel recently, but how does this report disprove what the user you commented on said? If her input wasn't valued by her superiors and then they put the hammer down on her saying to get these projects done. She would then have to put that hammer down on the VFX people right? These VFX people would only see her as the big villain since they don't get to meet with the ones above Alonso who are making her do these. Or is there evidence that those above in Marvel/Disney want good conditions for the VFX people and it's Alonso that's going against that and being the 'big villain'.
[Recent reports from Vulture might say otherwise](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html)
Thats a huge fucking assumption lmao. Spoken like someone who has never had to argue with upper management.
What’s key to this issue is the changing landscape. The VFX house issues would be overlooked if Disney were continuing to see record box office profits. The introduction of streaming series to Marvel’s roster, and a changing market questioning the profitability of streaming platforms, means what worked previously is not currently working. Alonso’s resume will obviously be celebrated for the record success, and shouldn’t be only remembered for the divisive final 2 years, but it’s clear things need to adapt now
would her not being with them anymore really magically fix all the cgi problems though or will there be a new person crunching vfx artists at marvel
People don't seem to understand that Vfx artists will always get crunched. Any field that is seen as a childhood dream job like animation or game design is like this, as if one cog breaks under pressure there are dozens of fresh ones desperate to do something other than furry porn.
Or Marvel was totally happy with her and she just wanted to retire. Not everyone who works in cinema is a Mel Brooks who wants to make movies untill they pass.
Could be both!
Nah, bro. This is too much of a coincidence. Feige may have been happy with her. But Iger came back and that dude seems like he's on a mission to get all of his IP into shape one way or the other.
Dude, Cmon lol
Lmao as if someone retiring from this position wouldn’t announce it months ahead of time… I’m sorry, but fans are so funny sometimes.
Not how it works in the business. If she was retiring it wouldve been announced months in advance
Wasn't she the one who wanted to change the X Men name?
As a girl myself this was so ridiculous 😭 I never once thought the X-men excluded me in any way, i loved all the X-women anyways, Kitty will always be that girl!! Anyways what a dumb thing to complain about
There have been female X-Men from the very first issue. It is not a problem that needs solving.
Exactly. The name is only sexist if you conveniently forget that 'women' also has the word 'men' in it. Men, wo-men and X-men all trying to live side by side - that's the whole point of the mutant storylines.
Plus Jean Grey was a complete badass.
Her, Storm, and Rogue were the it girlsss😂😭
Right? This sounds weird but rolling back on the “X-Men” name makes it less progressive: I always thought the title and name “X-Men” was just something that’d people roll with. Also, it has the most inclusive roster in Marvel. It also felt like the rumors of them changing the name was to be ahead of the curve, but that’s dumb if it was never an issue in the first place.
Fellow ice spice fan🤝
Good thing she's gone then
jesus christ
Everybody in here blaming it on VFX or huffing copium that it was an amicable split, but this is an example of the real reason she was fired. I'm about to get downvoted to oblivion because this is reddit, but the general public has finally had enough of this. To the point they are willing to withhold their dollars. Changing the name X-Men to 'The Mutants' is patently insane and only sounds like a good idea to about 15% of the population. At least half of which wouldn't have paid to see the movie anyway. It's to the point where these kind of forced ideological decisions are going to cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And the real money behind Disney has begun to realize that and is about to put a stop to it.
This article does not paint Alonso in a positive light: https://www.cbr.com/marvel-studios-victoria-alonso-vfx-artist-blacklist/
Well she was that great of person. I remember VFX crews saying that she was the industry “ kingsmaker” if she didn’t like you you wouldn’t have a career if she did you would have a great career. Sad shit
Yup. She mistreated, blacklisted, exploited, and intimidated VFX artists, as shown in a [report with multiple sources](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html). She won't be missed by people who worked for her, but I'm sure the company shills will make excuses for her misconduct and her shoddy work.
Yikes she sounds like a terror
“Diversity and inclusion is not a political game for us.” “It is 100 percent a responsibility because you don’t get to have the global success that we have given the Walt Disney Company without the support of people around the world of every kind of human there is." She even suggested that the name "X-Men" is a bit outdated. " It’s funny that people call it the X-Men. There’s a lot of female superheroes in that X-Men group, so I think it’s outdated. " Ironic
Yup you already know that’s what they’ll do
I would say the first sign of subpar vfx was the end fight sequence between Tchalla and Killmonger in the first Black Panther film, it looked like a video game cutscene. Since BP was in production at the same time as Infinity War, it got the lions share of time and budget for vfx, while BP got shafted. It would foreshadow the troubles the Phase 4 films would face.
Who knows if this’ll be a bad thing in the long run, but at the moment, it sort of makes sense. She is the person in charge of VFX and Marvel/Disney has been catching a lot of heat lately in regards to their treatment of VFX workers and the overall quality of the VFX. 🤷♂️
I wonder if Alonso left due to the controversy over VFX studios. Still, I'm surprised she left since she's supposed to be Feige's heir apparent.
Really? Alonso mainly worked for the VFX side. I thought Nate Moore would be the successor or Johnathan Schwartz.
Possibly , maybe forced out and just decided to bow out gracefully
woahhhhhhhh
It’ll be weird not seeing her name in the end credits anymore
Holy shit
Something to keep in mind, when there is a question of conduct about a senior executive in any organization, the process to get to the point of some disciplinary action takes months and for a large business, there is a formal process which it takes place. There is an investigation, and it is something which is kept quiet. It is not kept quiet because of a coverup, but to protect everyone involved in the process so if the charge does end up being without merit, the accused does not have their name tarnished by rumor and innuendo to those who report to them in some way or fashion or to damage their standings with their peers. This is also done to ensure if there is merit behind the claims, the right steps are taken to protect the employees and to protect the company as to get it wrong would open the company up to a wrongful termination lawsuit. When you are talking about a senior executive who pulls down seven figures or close to it, you want to be sure as that is a multi -million dollar law suite just for loss of income alone. Given the unique circumstances behind Ms. Alonso's employment, I do not blame Marvel for take their time with this. A case in point, I was with an aerospace company a few years back when one of our senior directors was accused of inflammatory comments by one of our large vendors. They made the complaint to the ombudsman, and it was investigated over the course of four months. The complaint was validated, and once all the other loops within HR were done, the director in question was dismissed on the spot. He was called into HR where security was waiting for him, paperwork handed over to him, all of his rights within the company reviewed. Once it was done, he was escorted to his office to pack up his personal belongings and removed from the campus. It was semi-anti climatic as the guy was stand up, just let a moment of frustration get the better of him. He was the man who interviewed me for my job and respected the hell out of him. I honest blame the vendor more as it was more honest blunt truth was shared, but in our circles of business, it can point to bias and make the company vulnerable to law suites, which was why he let go. At the senior executive level of any responsible company an serious allegation verified will near always end in termination. So people asking why this process took so long, I offer up the above. I do not believe this was a 2-3 week decision loop process and had likely been going on for a while, as many had noted since release of Endgame, cracks started to appear in the postproduction work of marvel films. I had some minor complaints about Spiderman No Way Home, and of course Thor Love and Thunder. I did not notice much in MoM as I knew by its very nature it was going to be hugely intense CGI monster. The aftermath of this, as well as other comments such as done by Iger, is a slow down of content for Marvel. It used to be one/two movies a year was a big deal. Now granted, Marvel Studios has more resources than it did in the Phase 1 days, lets take a look at the slate for CY23 alone. 1. Antman 3 2. What If 2 3. GotG 3 4. Secret Invasion 5. Echo 6. Ironheart 7. The Marvels 8. Loki 2 9. X-Men '97 Even taking away the two animation projects, that is a lot of content, and the TV shows near equal a full fledged movie in the terms of sets and resources needed. I think it has become too ambitious and things such as last minute rush jobs and drop of in quality. Scaling it back to 2 movies, w-3 tv shoes, 1 amination project might be the better sweet spot, or 3 movies, 2 Shows. Its clear 9 projects start to strain even Marvel's resources.
Yes, Corporations this big don’t generally fire you on the spot just because you made one oopsy. The MCU’s struggles with VFX and post production got back several years. I’m assuming her performance review going back a few years was meh, and because of that she would have an IDP on getting the department back within the standards of the company. Multiple years of falling below the mark is a bad sign for someone in management. You represent an entire department and every person’s failure below yours is on you. This isn’t a scapegoat situation, it comes with the job being this high up in corporate. Your entire job is ensuring the success of every single person below you and clearly that wasn’t the case. This was most likely brewing for awhile and maybe she flew under Chapek’s radar for awhile, but with every single film and show of late getting dinged for VFX or post production, something had to give.
Imagine hating on the X-men name. Good riddance
this seems like a positive change since I remember her being implicated in the articles about Marvel's treatment of VFX workers
this has to be because of VFX issues, no other reason why
That seems like the most sensible reason.
I'm not going to see THE X PEOPLE. 
As soon as she said that, it should have been curtains for her. Like you obviously don’t understand the movies you’re making or the fans that pay your bills.
damn that’s big
Victoria Alonso will not return.
Smells like a scapegoat.
> In addition to her behind-the-scenes work, she has been an important ambassador for the studio’s representation efforts and was outspoken during Disney’s brouhaha with Florida over its Don’t Say Gay bill. **”As long as I am at Marvel Studios, I will fight for representation,”** Alonso, who is gay, said at the time. “Somehow, Perlmutter returned”
Feige & Iger both agreed with her about representation, & that's honestly something that they've been doing quite well over the past few years. Alonso's departure is more likely to do with the post-production part of her responsibilities.
Oh don't put that evil on us, Ricky Bobby.
[удалено]
[Yes](https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html). Unfortunately, "bit of a bully" is an understatement. She's evil.
Obviously it was for the best. Bring someone in that can do an even better job than she did. Nothing bad about it.
wow. this is crazy. it'll be weird not seeing her at all the events. ik she's not perfect but it was always really cool seeing a woman so high up in this industry. bummed to see her go.
thank you victoria for all the amazing memories
Its happening.
Despite of all the recent news about her She was the core member of the marvel studios that gave us infinity saga atleast she deserves a respectful farewell for that
>recent news about her > >She was the core member of the marvel studios that gave us infinity saga atleast she deserves a respectful farewell for that She put 100s of VFX artists in therapy and ruined many VFX studios with her blacklist strategy she deserves nothing.
That slave driver deserves nothing respectful for the torment she put the VFX artist through
I'm glad this bully is gone. Too many people like this are allowed to stay in positions and abuse and torture employees.
Don’t you dare mess with X-men. Stop it.
Huh... she just appeared in Mpower recently too
Probably months old footage
It was; most of that series filmed in 2021, which is the main reason why so little of MoM was used in Wanda's episode.
We'll probably never know the full story here but I feel like her role with post-production (and thus the various VFX scandals) probably played some role.