Why the MCU Turned Grey (And How They Fixed It)

A while ago, Patrick H. Willems put out a video asking why MCU movies looked so grey and desaturated. He concluded that it was because the newer marvel movies were shot digitally and not being graded properly. It was a good question, but both I and a lot of other people found his conclusion that this multi billion dollar studio just didn’t know how to properly grade LOG footage to be a little bit ludacris.
On top of the unlikelihood that a studio would just forget to color correct their multi million dollar investment, both Captain America the First Avenger and Thor the Dark World were shot on the Alexa and neither of them had the saturation or black value problems Patrick blamed on digital photography.
I don’t think the ugliness of marvel movies is a factor of which ones are shot digitally. It’s actually a factor of how many superheros have to be onscreen together. Let me explain.


The drab aesthetic of the MCU isn’t a color correction issue, it’s a production design issue. No amount of color grading is going to make that airport look pretty. And I don’t think that this grey aesthetic was a mistake. It was a deliberate if ugly attempt to solve a problem. A color theory problem.

Okay so color theory is a fancy term for the study of which colors look good together. Like most exercises in pretentiousness it was developed in Europe in the 18th century.

Its really complicated and a lot of it is controversial (did you know there are multiple competing color wheels??) but some basic rules of thumb are that fully saturated primary colors generally don’t look good together, and the more limited and carefully selected your color pallete is, the easier it will be to make your art look nice.
The more saturated two colors are, the more we can perceive the difference between them and the more they stand out from each other, which means the greater their potential for clashing. On top of this, bright colors draw attention, so if all of your colors are at full saturation, the picture becomes hard to comprehend quickly with so many aspects demanding focus. When someone describes clothing or wallpaper as “loud,” this is usually what they’re referring too: a lot of bright primary colors next to each other. As a huge aspect of composition is the art of guiding the audiences eye to the important parts of an image, having every element of a picture vying for attention at full saturation makes it very hard to “read.”

Another way to pull attention with color is difference: the further away on the color wheel two colors are from each other, the more they stand out from one another. One of the aspects of directing a viewers attention is to ensure they aren’t distracted by elements that aren’t intended to be the focus. Using a more limited color pallete makes it easier to direct the audience towards whats important, as the artist has greater control over what does and doesn’t stand out.
Another way to pull attention with color is difference: the further away on the color wheel two colors are from each other, the more they stand out from one another. One of the aspects of directing a viewers attention is to ensure they aren’t distracted by elements that aren’t intended to be the focus. Using a more limited color pallete makes it easier to direct the audience towards whats important, as the artist has greater control over what does and doesn’t stand out. Just like images at full saturation, images that use to many different distinct colors can be difficult to read quickly and might end up looking garish or tacky.

Its certainly possible to make something look good with multiple bright primary colors, Tarsem Singh pulled it off in The Fall, but it takes a lot more care and attention, it has a less realistic aesthetic, and theres a higher potential for it to look bad, so most filmmakers tend to steer clear and stick to smaller color palletes made up of similar hues, and limit high saturation to important moments.

This is part of the reason so many movies in the mid 2000s were so de-saturated and heavily tinted. If you don’t have the time or energy to work out a cohesive color scheme for the production design of your movie, dropping most of the saturation out in post so all of the colors look the same is a quick and dirty way to make your frame look less garish.

Okay so limited color palletes are easier to work with and bright primary colors are hard to deal with. Speaking of bright, primary colors, do you know who wears a lot of those? That’s right! Superheros!

Видео Why the MCU Turned Grey (And How They Fixed It) канала Keane The Bean