Marvel movies are known for their extensive use of CGI; you need it when you’re depicting epic battles and traveling through the multivese. Characters like Groot, Hulk, and Thanos are basically made out of CGI. The next such character to appear on our screens is She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), although fans were initially disappointed with how she looked in the first trailer for her new show, which premieres on Disney+ on August 17.
That first trailer did look poorly crafted, at least compared to other MCU projects. However, the MCU team appears to have tweaked things for the latest trailer released at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend, and it looks a whole lot better:
She-Hulk is a milestone project for Marvel Studios. “This was unprecedented, you know, because never made a TV show where the lead character is completely CG when she’s the title character,” series creator Jessica Gao told IGN.
"When we first started, we really didn’t have a plan or know how we were gonna do it. We just knew we were gonna do it and I just figured ‘Look, it’s Marvel, they know what they’re doing, they’re gonna figure it out. I’ll just let them do it. I’ll just write my little scripts.’"
Knowing that, if Gao was to go back and write the show again, there are elements that she would change. “We’d probably think long and hard about how often we want a CG character on screen,” she confessed. At least things fell into place in the end. “It all worked out.”
VFX experts react to She-Hulk
After the controversy surrounding She-Hulk, there were a lot of requests for the popular YouTube channel Corridor Crew, a group of VFX experts and critics, to share their opinions on the show’s CGI. Ultimately, the experts stuck up for She-Hulk‘s use of visual effects, claiming that it’s not as bad as people on the internet make out.
They cite one of the main reasons for the poor-looking effects as the smoothness of actress Tatiana Maslany’s skin compared to Mark Ruffalo. “Typically, in pop culture, women’s faces are very smooth. Comparing her to Bruce Banner, there’s so much detail there that we can see that compression will not be able to remove,” they said.
Also, maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh on Marvel’s CGI given how Marvel Studios treats its VFX artists:
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