Thor: Love and Thunder arrived on Disney+ following a turbulent theatrical run that divided Marvel fans, particularly over its use of CGI. Taika Waititi, the film’s director, has even addressed some of the more contentious scenes, which began early in the film with the debut of a new character.
This was followed by Kieron L. Dyer’s MCU debut as Axl, Heimdall’s never-before-seen son, who utilized his newfound talents to reach Thor after Gorr the God Butcher kidnapped Asgard’s children. Unfortunately, this scene turned out to be one of Thor 4‘s visual lowlights, prompting Disney to modify the CGI when it was released on Disney+. This has somewhat backfired, as many fans believe the scene is still as awful as ever.
Thor 4 star addresses the controversy
Now, a few weeks after the film’s release, the actor who played that scene has spoken out about how things went down with Thor: Love and Thunder‘s most controversial VFX shot.
When asked about the process of filming the scene, Dyer mentioned that he and Taika were the only ones on set at the time, as he sat in a chair. His scenes were shot separately from those with Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, and Tessa Thompson:
“Yeah, so it was funny how they did it actually because I thought I was going to be with the other actors when I did it but… so what happened was I came to set and I was the only person there. Because how they filmed it was, I was kind of sitting in this chair and the camera was like here, on my face, and it was just focusing on me. And Taika was there saying the other lines, as I say my lines. And so then he showed me the shot after of how they filmed that because I wasn’t there when they filmed. They filmed it separately and kind of put my face in the scene.”
Dyer stated that he spoke with Heimdall star Idris Elba about working on the film, despite having assumed they wouldn’t meet due to the lack of scenes together. While he was at school, his father received a call from the team asking them to meet Elba, which was a memorable event for the young actor.
Marvel did try to fix the floating head CGI for the Disney+ version
Marvel appears to have agreed with the criticism and worked to improve the VFX for the Disney Plus version. This has somewhat backfired, as many fans believe the scene is still as awful as ever.
Axl’s head is now much sharper in the scenario, many people don’t seem to believe that makes it better. This has soon resulted in alternate videos with different people’s heads in place of Axl’s, with the best of the bunch so far including one that replaces the Asgardian infant with the floating Mario head from the Super Mario 64 opening screen.
Only a few fans have attempted to defend the terrible effects. One defense is that Axl is still learning how to use his abilities, which is why it appears so horrible. However, Marvel’s CGI troubles go beyond Thor: Love And Thunder. She-Hulk‘s appearance was highly criticized when it was originally revealed, and early this year reports stated that VFX artists were refusing to work on Marvel projects owing to the excessive expectations.
Thor: Love and Thunder is now streaming on Disney+.
Source: TheDirect
