Comment by joshvm
2 days ago
It's fun watching Marvel's catalogue from start to current. They really went all-in early on, then the mode-du-jour changed and it's almost obvious how hard they avoid it (a lot of red and green lights for example). Interfaces, weaponry and engines are always egregious in that franchise.
I remember Midsommar being another particularly bad example - the entire apartment set in the opening scenes is dressed in orange/teal. Down to book spines, vases and light fittings.
It's interesting to see films that don't use strong grading at all. I think Star Wars wasn't too bad here because the whole visual language was set up in the 70s and everything now tries to reflect it (lots of primaries in control panels because those were the lamps they could use back then). They do have "planet" grades but it's not too bad.
I enjoyed Midsommar's overuse of orange/teal because it really led to the feeling that the viewer was on a psychedelic trip (which usually comes with oversaturating of reds and orange.) Agree that Marvel is doing a lot of trend chasing in its color grading.
I think the Marvel example is interesting as much because it doesn't seem to just be trend chasing, but also one axis to view Marvel's internal struggles between homogeneity and experimentation/directorial control/capturing the joy of the art of the comics themselves. You can almost directly tell if it was a year that Marvel studio choices were more dominant or if the film's director and editor had more control that year based on the color grading alone.