Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

4 comments on Hacker News

1. NeutralaltairprimeNov 17, 2025

   I think this is close, and the video touches on that as a characteristic that’s contributing to this, but there’s a motivation left unaddressed by the video that needs to be called out:

   Reducing depth of field reduces the render resolution, which reduces the costs of digital processing and generation.

   The simplest way to demonstrate this on a desktop computer is with the photography mode in games like Minecraft or Satisfactory or Elite Dangerous or No Man’s Sky, where the user can modify the Render Distance and Depth of Field at will. Load up the game viewing some planetary scene and enable the fps counter, then start changing the render distance; the closer you set it, the faster each frame will be generated. But the background will look defective and empty, so add depth of field, and now it doesn’t look so cheap — and when you take the photo, depending on the game, it may override your realtime render distance because it can take five seconds (!) rather than 1/60th of a second to generate that frame at 20 megapixels.

   I think that the shift towards low depth of field in movies is, in part, a reflection of cost pressures, especially in 99.9% CG movies like Quantumania. And I think this is where Avatar beats out the competition for pure CG worlds in this video, because it renders at full resolution. It must have cost significantly more to produce than Quantumania (yep, $250m > $180m). I wonder how much of that difference was due to rendering the entire movie with a cheapness DoF blur. If nothing else, shadow rendering is so much of the difficulty of CG, that it could plausibly alone be the reason.

   (I think that low depth of field is also currently popular because mobile phones lack it, and so producers are consciously or unconsciously selecting for an experience that is distinct from what they might film on their own. Depth of field is a very cheap form of escape.)

2. NegativewalkaboutOct 16, 2025

   I watched the first video a long time ago to see what the deal was, and reckoned it was just one of those silly, absurd videos that become well-known for whatever reason. The tradition of very stupid, absurd stuff taking off on the internet goes back to at least “Mr T Ate My Balls” and hell, I love the long-running, weird YouTube channel “How To Basic”, so, I didn’t mind it but thought that’s all there was to it.

   But no. I eventually learned it was an hours-long series and gave it another try.

   It’s a long, serialized silent film sci fi war epic told without intertitles. And damn, I was invested in it before long!

   [edit] I am not joking that I cared more about and paid more attention to the long battle and infiltration mission near the end (at the time—I understand there’s more now?) than I care about or pay attention to at least half of the 30-45 minute final battles in Marvel movies. I would defend the series as outright better than, certainly, something like Quantumania.

3. NegativemrandishApr 2, 2025

   > color grades the shit out of color

   Color grading itself isn't the problem. It's just a creative tool that can be used well or poorly. The problem is the intentional stylistic choices being made with the tool. I don't have strong opinions about TFAs arguments re: color in general but as someone deep into cinema production technology, there's a troubling lack of visual diversity in modern cinema and it's not just color, it's dynamic range and texture too.

   It's crazy because this is happening in an era when digital cinema workflows from cameras to file formats to post-production allow everyone to capture, manipulate and distribute visuals with unprecedented levels of fidelity and dynamic range. Even DSLRs down to $3000 can capture full frame 4k camera raw with >14 stops of dynamic range which is insane. The great cinematographers of the past needed incredible skill to capture dynamic range from deep shadows to punchy highlights on film and it was always a risk since they had to wait for dailies. And they had little latitude to manipulate the image captured on the camera negative in post.

   Today's imagers, formats and tools make capturing immense dynamic range not only fast and easy but cheap and virtually risk-free yet so much cinema looks flat and boring - and there's no technical reason for it. This video shows compelling examples contrasting recent movies with those shot on film in the 90s but also movies shot on much less capable digital cinema cameras in the early 2000s proving it's not digital or grading that's driving this. "Why don't movies look like movies any more?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo.

   According to Hollywood cinematographers in the video it's partly intentional artistic choices, part the impact of composing and lighting for HDR, part lack of creativity and production skill and a big part over focus on flat lighting for VFX shots (because the more expressive the digital camera negative is, the harder it is for VFX teams to match with CGI). I'd add another factor which is that younger cinematographers, LDs and camera ops who learned on high dynamic range digital cinema cameras have been trained to shoot a flat LUT. While this technically maximizes the latitude available for color grading in post (which is generally a good thing), the issue is that many extend this to composing and lighting shots that have virtually no expressive look in the captured digital negative at all. Color grading in post should be for small tweaks, conforming shot-to-shot variance, mastering and, occasionally, saving the day when something goes wrong with a shot. While modern editing and grading tools are immensely powerful, re-framing and grading in post cannot substitute for creative on-set lighting, lensing, composition and exposure choices. Great cinematographers still create their looks with lighting, lens and camera as if there were going to be no grading in post. Unfortunately, this seems to increasingly be an under-valued skill.

   The requirements of modern VFX also contribute in an indirect way as well. It takes on-set time and energy for the camera teams to capture and check the increasingly complex list of clean plates, reflection map spheres and color/contrast references with specialized LUTs and metadata at a variety of apertures for every shot. This takes time away from traditional lighting and composition and ultimately producers don't budget enough time. When something has to give - it's not going to be the VFX plates. In modern effects-heavy productions, the VFX director always has a team on-set for every shot verifying they're getting what they need. While this is necessary and understandable, unfortunately, the reverse is rarely true. The cinematographer is not supervising the lighting and composition of all the major VFX elements because they are being produced by a dozen different vendors over a year-long post-production cycle. This can still work when you have a director like a James Cameron who's hands-on throughout the process and has top-notch VFX director and cinematography skills. But that's not the norm. This creates systemic incentives for directors, cinematographers and LDs to lens flat, unexpressive shots. Because if there's not consistent, hand-on creative direction over the whole process, the editor and colorist are left trying to stitch together a bunch of shots and elements that weren't created to exist cohesively in the same frame. I suspect not managing this complexity is how visual disasters like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania happen.

   Sadly, there's no reason it has to be this way. Technically, it's entirely possible to create a VFX-heavy movie that looks like every part of every frame was lensed by a master like Bernardo Bertolucci. There's nothing required that's even that hard or expensive compared to modern VFX blockbuster complexity or budgets. I think the reason we haven't seen it yet is two-fold: today's top producers, directors and cinematographers rarely have the new and diverse skill sets required in one person and none of the few with the skills and experience has had both the creative intention and budget to do it. I'm actually hopeful that maybe in the next few years someone like a Nolan or Cameron will decide to try to take it to this level as an aspiration. Currently, many of those with the budgets and cred are choosing to address the challenge by reverting to creating effects with practical sets and in-camera techniques. This can avoid the problem but it's looking backward instead of embracing the challenge and doing the pioneering work of figuring out how to push through and solve it. Whoever does it may discover all-new creative and expressive capabilities.

4. NeutralpwinnskiFeb 21, 2023

   Most movies will have a hashtag (or more than one), which you can use to search. Full-text search isn't available without opt-in, because that's not a feature the majority of historical mastodon users have wanted, nor a feature the seeming majority of current mastodon users want. Me, I've opted in at some POC sites, but mostly you'll want to user hashtags for search. So #AntManAndTheWaspQuantumania instead of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"