Video essay breakdown - Why Do Marvel's Movies Look Kind of Ugly? (Patreon)

So, something a bit different for you today. I often talk about my process and share behind-the-scenes stuff from my own videos. But today I want to talk about someone else’s video. 

I have so much to learn about how to make good YouTube videos. And the two best ways to do that is to just keep practicing my craft, and also to watch other video essays and try and figure out why they work. 

Patrick Willems is an underrated video essay guy. He hasn’t been doing it long, but he’s already very good at it. In fact, the video I want to talk about was actually his very first video essay which makes me unreasonably angry. 

Why? Because it’s great. “Why Do Marvel’s Movies Look Kind of Ugly” is a pithy, fast-paced, and very persuasive video that quickly and effectively conveys Patrick’s points. So, I want to break it down a bit and see what he did. 

Give it a watch. It's only 7 minutes long. Then come back.

First. The title is pretty good. It’s very enticing. You either think Marvel movies look crummy and want to know why, or you think they look fine and you want to know why this guy is hating on your favourite films. Some might consider it clickbait but it passes the sniff test for me: the question posed in the title is answered in the video, and it couldn’t be completely answered in a single sentence. 

For the video itself, Patrick’s argument is basically this: Marvel’s movies look bad because they have crappy colour grading. They have a flat look, when a comic book movie should be more colourful and vibrant. 

That’s pretty much it, but it’s not a very convincing argument in of itself. So to get that point across, he needed to prove that Marvel’s movies look flat. Argue why Marvel’s decision to do crummy colour grading is bad. Pin down the source of the issue. And avoid getting murdered by Marvel fanboys. 

He also needs to explain what colour grading is, without derailing the video.

Okay, let’s break down the script.

Here’s the intro. Patrick starts by assuring his viewers that he is a Marvel fan. The internet has a hard job of understanding that someone can like something, but also want it to be better, so it’s good to be crystal clear. 

Marvel Studios is really, really good at what they do. Over the past eight years, they've created a tightly interconnected cinematic universe spanning across fourteen films and counting, which is unheard of in the history of cinema. Not only that, but the majority of the movies are actually good. Some are even genuinely great. They've consistently made really smart choices in terms of who they hire in front of and behind the camera, giving us nerds the huge, spectacular superhero movies we've dreamed of for decades.

Okay. Now it’s time to explain the point of the video. He poses it as a question, which he can then answer. And then provides his first persuasive proof: a screencap of Civil War that does indeed look pretty bland. 

I only really have 2 major issues with their approach. One-- the generic, unmemorable scores --has already been covered in some really good video essays. So I want to talk about the other one. Marvel's color grading. Or in other words: Why do Marvel's movies all look like muddy concrete? Like, look at that. It's a great scene, but that's really ugly.

We need some context to get everyone on the same page: What is colour grading? He breezes through it in just 150 words but I think everyone will get it. The images help a lot, especially the Mad Max example. Instantly obvious what colour grading is. 

Now, in case you're not a filmmaker or person who's into technical terminology, let me briefly explain what I mean. Color grading is the digital manipulation of the colors and tones of the image you see on screen. This was first used in 2000, on "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and since then has become an essential part of literally every motion picture you see.

From movies to TV to commercials to YouTube videos. The rise of color grading connects directly with the rise of digital cinematography, as in, shooting with digital cameras as opposed to traditional film cameras. High-end digital cameras shoot an extremely flat image, meaning there's very low contrast and saturation. It looks really gray and dull, but that's specifically so you have the most information there to use when color grading. So you can take footage that looks like this and make it look like this.

Okay. Back to Marvel. I think the film vs digital thing might be a bit distracting here. He brings up the point, but then say it’s not the issue at hand. I’ll come back to that. 

So, what does this have to do with Marvel? Well, Marvel's first three movies ("Iron Man" 1 & 2, and "Thor") were shot on film. After that, they switched to digital, using the Genesis on "Captain America: The First Avenger" and then the ARRI Alexa on every one of their subsequent films, from "The Avengers" up through "Doctor Strange." So, what's the issue here? Well, Marvel's best-looking movies also happen to be the ones shot on film, but there's more to it than that. My issue isn't that the other movies are shot digitally.

Here’s the real point of the video. The rest of the video will be Patrick arguing his point. 

It's that they consistently use the same style of color grading on all their digital footage, creating an image that's flat and dull when it should be vibrant and exciting. Digital cinematography can look amazing but it has to be graded properly.

Okay. So do Marvel movies have dull colour grading? Prove it, Patrick! He does this immediately, and really effectively, by pointing out the lack of true black values. He doesn’t just ask you to look at a screencap and agree that it is bland, he proves it. 

The image of the two blacks: pure black and Marvel’s dark grey is a bit problematic though because on a lot of devices they are hard to tell apart. 

The root of the problem is the lack of proper black values, as in, the spots in the image that should be black, like the deepest parts of the shadows, aren't. Look: when I use the eyedropper tool in Adobe After Effects, this is what it tells me it is. Dark gray.

And looking at the shot, you would think that spot should be black. Having a pure black value in a shot makes the other colors stand out more, and since the Marvel movies don't have proper black the colors don't pop.

Now he now needs to do two things: prove that blacks can be used as a contrast to make colours pop. And argue why a muted colour scheme with wishy wasn’t blacks is the wrong choice for a super hero movie. He does both at the same time, by using super hero comic books as his argument. 

Since we're talking about superhero movies, I want to illustrate this point using superhero comics. In traditional comics artwork, there is a penciler, who draws the pictures with, y'know, a pencil, and then an inker, who uses black ink to go over the pencils and give contrast and definition to the image. Then the colorist, obviously, colors it. Superhero comics are generally pretty colorful, and a big part of what makes the colors stand out is the contrast between them and the pure black of the inks. 

He strengthens it even further(!) by looking at comics that didn’t have ink. And you’ve got two reasons to agree with him: 1) he says that comic book artists stopped doing it. 2) You can see it yourself, and it looks pretty bad. 

There was a brief fad in the early 2000s of skipping the inks and going straight from pencils to colors. The most well-known example of this would probably be Salvador Larroca's art in X-Treme X-Men. See how there are no actual blacks there, and it all looks kind of flat and washed-out? That's basically the problem with how Marvel's movies look.

Also in the comics, everyone realized this didn't look good, and stopped doing it. 

Next, he shows you what a Marvel movie would look like with different colour grading. You don’t just have to take his word that they could be improved - you can see it with your eyes.

Let's look at "Guardians of the Galaxy," which I think has the best cinematography of any of Marvel's digitally-shot movies. (although some of that gets lost in the color grading.) I'm going to do 10 seconds' worth of adjustments really just tweaking the levels and boosting the saturation a little bit, and let's look at how they fare side-by-side. I know these are aesthetics, and thus are totally subjective, but I think that's a much more vibrant image. It's more dynamic, it has more definition, and it looks like what I think a superhero movie should look like. Let's do the same thing for "Civil War," a movie I love despite the fact that it looks like an empty parking lot.

These adjustments obviously help more on scenes shot at night or inside, instead of in the middle of a sunny day, but there's still a noticeable improvement.

Okay. So this point, he’s got us pretty convinced. Now we move on to: whose fault is it. Is it a case of bad cinematographers?

It's a bummer, because Marvel hires some really good cinematographers, and then does their work a disservice with how they handle it in post-production. Here's what John Toll's work looks like in Iron Man 3, and here's what it looks like in Jupiter Ascending, which was his next film.

Okay. Bad camera?

These were even shot on the same camera. It's easy to jump straight to the camera and and blame the Alexa, but that's not really accurate.

This is the same camera that shot "Mad Max: Fury Road," and obviously that didn't have the same problem. Look at this scene in "Skyfall". The blacks are actually black and it looks AMAZING.

So, what’s the problem? (The contrast of the Skyfall footage and then whatever Marvel movie that is, hammers the point home here. Good stuff)

This is mainly a matter of color grading and Marvel setting top-down requirements on their movies that they all use the same camera and that they all go through the same post-production process with the same colorist.

He next applies some caveats. This is a breezy 7 minute video essay, so he acknowledges but doesn’t dig into the caveats. That’s smart - if you want to learn more about colour grading you can. Maybe some recommended sources would have been good here. 

The issue is way more complex than I'm making it out to be.

There's the whole matter of how different cameras interpret different types of light, and why some look better than others. For example, this is why the outdoor daylight scenes in Marvel movies look the crappiest, and the scenes lit with fluorescent lights tend to look the best.

But then comes back with his final point. It’s not that dull colour grading is bad, but it shouldn’t be used in this type of movie. 

Since the image that gets recorded into the Alexa is so flat, with so much to work with, it takes a ton of skill and work to get the perfect look. It's often easier to stick with the flat style and just embrace it, which is why every music video these days looks like this. (When they used to look like this.)

But you have to consider what works best for your movie. That flatter look makes sense for, say, "Spotlight" or "Sicario", where you might want the visuals more muted and closer to reality.

But when you're dealing with a big, bombastic superhero movie, don't you want the images to be bright, to pop off the screen? Not to be a bunch of muddy gray tones? The recent DC movies, for all their problems, at least have this figured out.

Note: I think it would have been good if Patrick did some colour adjustments on this Marvel fight scene and then switched from Marvel’s muted to colours, to his improved colours. Preferably timed to the word pop :P

Look, Marvel is a billion-dollar company with an insane record of success, and I'm sure they've focus-group tested this to gain empirical evidence that audiences like flat, dull-looking superhero movies. So this is just my opinion.

But looking across all their movies, there's the appearance that they copied and pasted the same color grading with the same levels and same color palette on every one.

But he then wraps it up on a more hopeful note, by looking to the future. More evidence (he doesn’t just say the Weapon 8K is good, he shows you with examples of Pacific Rim and all, and shows you Guardians of the Galaxy 2 footage that looks good).

Personally I would have liked to have seen a side-by-side comparison of Guardians 1 and 2 to really the nail the point. 

Now, is there hope for the future? Actually, yes, there is. There's some change coming. The upcoming "Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2" is the first Marvel Studios film to switch from the ARRI Alexa to the new RED Weapon 8K camera (Which is a really cool name.) I'm excited about this move, because from what I've seen, RED cameras are the way to go if you're shooting a blockbuster on digital.

That's what Ridley Scott used for "The Martian," what Michael Bay used on the last few "Transformers" movies, and what Guillermo del Toro used for "Pacific Rim," the movie I would consider the gold standard for what digitally-shot blockbusters can look like. Across the board, these had the vibrant colors and deep black values that Marvel's movies have lacked. We recently saw the first footage, and in my opinion it looks like a definite improvement over the first film. The colors are more vibrant, the blacks are deeper, and it just looks less... flat.

And finished it up by once again assuring the internet that he does indeed like these movies. 

So I'm crossing my fingers that this isn't an outlier and more Marvel movies follow its lead. I wanted to make this video because I genuinely really like the movies that Marvel makes, and every time they make a new one, I hope that they'll fix this problem. It's small, but it matters. But if we're being honest, Marvel-- just go back to shooting your movies on film. You're making enough money.

You can afford it. 

And there we have it. Patrick asks a question (why do Marvel movies look bad?), provides a simple answer (because of colour grading), proves it (eyedropper), shows how it could look better (Galaxy adjustments), explains where the problem lies (not cinematographer, not camera, Marvel), and wraps it up on a hopeful note.

He uses proof on top of proof to bring you over to his side. By the end it is hard to disagree with him, and if you have any lingering questions or “ah, but what about...!” type concerns, he generally answers them.

The average viewer will walk away with a better understanding of colour grading, and it will make them think about their own feelings on the Marvel movies. 

The video is also really well paced, because he doesn't linger on anything for too long. There are lots of ways to break up the video but I'd do it like this, and look at the consistency:

• Set up video - 150 words
• Explain colour grading - 150 words
• Provide preliminary answer - 140 words
• Explaining pure black issue - 260 words
• Showing Guardians proof - 150 words
• Answers questions - 150 words
• Caveats - 120 words
• Wrap-up - 150 words
• Look to the future - 160 words
• Ending - 70 words

The pure black section, the longest part, is also broken up visually between movies and comic books, which again helps the video keep a steady pace.

The video essay is not perfect.

He brings up the film versus digital thing, but hand waves it away. It’s not the type of camera, it’s the colour grading, he says. 

And then at the end comes back and says they should make the movies on film. He didn’t build up a body of evidence and proof that film is superior to digital, so unless you already know about the merits of film v digital, the viewer may not be convinced. 

There are also some missing things. Incredible Hulk. The impact of 3D. And I think he could have strengthened his arguments even further through the actual images on screen (using the suggestions I have above).

He also got 5,000 dislikes but it’s the internet, and that's a tiny fraction of his nearly 2 million views. 

But overall, it's really good. It's a similar way to how I approach making videos, but has given some helpful ideas too.

Let me know what you thought in the comments.