Marvel's Color Grading Problem 

It's kind of weird that movies are moving away from deep blacks just as TV companies have started to have a competition for who can show the deepest black.

If my Mexico isn’t orange, it ain’t my Mexico

The Batman might be the best-looking superhero movie I've ever watched. The lighting was flawless.

We also have to consider that older films were shot on film, vs the digital dynamic range we get with cameras today

Recently re-watched The Incredible Hulk, and I couldn't believe how good it looked in comparison to today's movies. Really need more films that look like that 🙌

These movies are made with HDR in mind. SDR versions of movies made with HDR in mind tend to look flat. I don't judge a movie's colors by a SDR trailer.

The Batman has the best cinematography in a comic book film. Ever. I feel like the MCU's colour grading before The Avengers was more stylistic and dynamic. Since then only James Gunn's films have actually looked great, every other film looks lifeless and grey like concrete. Exception is Dr Strange 2 and that's only because of Sam Raimi who actually cares about the film's look. I don't get when people say that a film's colour grading and cinematography don't matter, like bro, film is a VISUAL medium.

Modern Movies feels like they are shot with the same camera and edited with same colour grading level.

A lot of the reason superhero movies are going to a flatter look as of recent is to incorporate more comic book accurate designs to their characters. Having one character in a movie such as iron man makes it easier to colour grade a movie to the character's costume. The problem starts to show when you start adding different characters with contrasting suits to the film like in the avengers where Iron man's red clashed with captain America's blue. The simplest option to make both of the colours stand out was to make the movie flat and have a grey colour grading over the top of it. Almost every superhero movie uses this technique as it makes production much easier with the multitude of colours being shown on screen at a time. This is also why older movies with superheroes like the X-Men used black suits to match the colour grading of the movie much nicer. To summarize, movies are making the colour grading match the character over the characters matching the colour grading.

In the international trailer it has the finished color grading and it looks soooo much better color wise Agatha & Captain America 4 also look good visually Also i recommend watching Bumblebee it’s the best LA TF Film

I don't think it's just specific to now but every time period had a bad visual trend. Everything in the 2000's had a really annoying piss filter that we shouldn't want to emulate. Even though I had a similar thought recently about Michael Bay's transformers, the movies at some points were the weird mix of green blue and yellow that just looked like chromatic aberration or a siezure. It also needs to be scene specific, the battle scene in the trailer is meant to show a snow white landscape and all the soldiers are wearing white. I think that pops more than the blue Bourne Identity filter applied to it, and it looks better executed than a similar scene at the start of Age of Ultron. Then one of the screenshots was just of Deadpool talking and the newly filtered shot made his mask unnecessarily dark. And yeah, it is more complicated than adding a filter or turning up contrast settings. If the lighting and visual direction is lacking or there is a certain intent not being matched nothing post-filming will fix it.

If the story is good, color grading or whatever does not matter. Nobody even notices it unless you're into those things.

Finally something that talks about what I've been kind of feeling after 2010's, stripping away the deeper and darker colour grading and making everything appear like it has light right in face of it (and it looking awful af where it could have been way way better) great to see your video noticing it and not being directed towards the movie only (because it's not like it started such thing anyway)

Imagine not turning your TV's contrast up 😂

Imma be honest the first time I watched the trailer, I didn't look at the color grading lmao. Feeling like twitter as usual is looking for something to complain as usual

your vids keep getting hornier 😭😭 please make sure you dont get age restricted 🤞

The Batman 2022, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of madness and the spider-verse movies are probably the only comic book movies as of recently that look Vishnuly stunning

I wondered why Deadpool looked so weird seeing trailer but then I remembered the first two deadpool movies have a darker tint which I preferred.

a few years ago i was talking to my brother about how movies today look so cheap and boring while movies from the 2000's still look much better than today's, i honestly think disney buying everything and pumping 30 movies and series and whatever per year is destroying this industry, remember the CGI artists complaining about how everything was being rushed they were working too much and not being paid properly, meanwhile back in the day they took their time to make ONE movie

Idk why, but I feel like the actual movie looks better than the edits

The shots compared doesn't make sense. The Origins movie was indoors and had more dynamic lighting. The new one was from an outdoor scene. Also it seems like every shot that people think is "better" always just intense saturation and unrealistic lighting. The edits just look like a Zack Synder movie, which he had plenty of in the 2000s. Everyone had the templated blue and orange color grading preset. Why is the whites blue in the edit. They're literally in a desert. Yea it looks nice, but it doesn't make sense

0:32 the color grading isnt a problem. There’s no problem in color grading here. Does it have to be very vibrant or saturated to be considered good color grading?

As worse dceu was it atleast had great cinematography & creator vison in it.

I watched the entire video and I couldn't agree more with Ryan Gosling

What is Joe Biden’s plan to return us back to colour grading?

That’s simply the look of Deadpool movies since the first one. They go for “realistic” grey lighting to make it a bit grittier and less flashy. Having said that, you’re not wrong that maybe too many movies use a similar look. I think specifically for Marvel it’s the Joss Whedon effect who made that look popular with the first Avengers. Flat contrast with a saturated colors reminiscent of sitcom.

People who saw DP3 early said the color grading looks much better on film

I’ve heard from people who saw the first 30 minutes of the movie saying it looks better on screen. Hope they’re right

Option C: The whole color grading is focused around making Deadpool and blood pop more so ..🤷🏻‍♂️

I'm glad I wasn't the only one to notice the hair lol

I am still gonna watch this movie Wolverine and Deadpool are the best comic book bromance

Sam raimi did wery great with color grading

The edit just looked kinda green, us that really a good thing?

It’s all factors: lighting, camera choice, lenses and grading. X-Men Origins Wolverine was shot on film, which more or less has a baked in look straight out of camera and graded in an era before HDR screens. Deadpool and Wolverine is shot on Alexa LF in raw digital and probably graded for a HDR finish. HDR is much flatter than SDR (Rec709) and raw digital video from an Alexa camera has extensive flexibility to set a “look” chosen by the DP, director and colourist. In a HDR workflow most filmmakers can get carried away with preserving black detail and highlight rather than committing to a high contrast look, such as Kodak negative film stock. Older is better in my opinion, but digital can look awesome if you forget technical requirements and just go for pure aggressive creativity

It's kinda like with video games in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Every game either had a yellow piss filter or a grey filter. Compared to then, colours are much more dynamic in games now.

DP+W also looks like that deliberately because they are in a lifeless location. It isnt supposed to be rich and colourful there

you're absolutely 💯 right about all of them. had these same thoughts since Avengers 1

Bro just watch bumblebee and rise of the beats their not even connected to bayverse it’s completely it’s own thing I’m starting to hate it when people compare those

I got a Wolverine ad before this video with the same clip in the thumbnail 😭

i think the first deadpool looks amazing. something about that realistic lighting and colour palette looks really good

I still don’t see the problem and I don’t care.

This color grading thing is way overblown I watched Deadpool & Wolverine and it looked great had no problem with its colors marvel’s colors just look realistic and that’s fine

Marvel's always had this issue with their cinematography/colour grading. Apart from Guardians of the Galaxy and maybe a couple of others they all have that flat, slightly colourless look to them. It's not that it's inherently bad colour grading. I think the issue is in a lot of these instances the look of the film isn't matching the story/tone.

I think it's just the current aesthetics of commercial movies and it will change in a couple of years

Started to see the video and thought you had a loooot of subs 😅. Keep going mate, great video and personality

It’s shot on film vs digital as well. Film has a more real natural look to it, and using it requires pre-production planning that leads to more interesting shots as well. Not to mention that most high budget movies like DP are mostly shot in green screen.

A great recent marvel's color grading example is Loki, which honestly had great visual art and contrast and great grading. Proving they can infact do it if they wanted to. They for some reason just don't. unfortunate..

Man, all my life I thought that The Avengers looks like a tv show and finally I now why.

Thing is if it’s in a cold environment, shouldn’t the color grading look like that in DP&W? Cuz the first is sweaty and hot but the next is cold. Idk maybe they either are trying to be realistic even tho it’s duller or it’s just another part of VFX teams getting like no time way too often, especially for big block busters. As for the hair he also has to wear a cowl so I kinda get it. Also did we just forget about spiderverse, John wick, bad boys, furiosa, dune, ect. Cuz they got color. Why do people seem to have forgotten we still got recent movies with vibrant colors

love the Ryan Gosling cut out is loveable

You’re RIGHT. Omg, no wonder the movie felt bland. (The villain was not impactful but ok)

the companies who have been trying to make things dark and edgy realise that the people want whimsy but haven't realised the people also want dynamic lighting. All the lighting is either pitch black you can only see your face reflected in the screen or dull and lacking shadows 😭

I want a color grading is base on environment temp and emotion. it help to improve the scene to the highest level.

Hello from India 🇮🇳, In my opinion one reasone why they have contrast film to zero is now a day movie release in theater in 3D format. and it is realy hard to watch dark scenes in 3D glass.

I first noticed this problem on Spiderman no way home. The andrew and tobey suit really are downgrade from their og movies. Idk. Everything seems off. The detail, the color, the lighting...like where's the money go actually?

It's funny that you mention that you think the Transformers movies had "good" color grading when it was oversaturated piss. Every single actor looked like they had Donald Trump's orange man tan, and the colors were way too poppy. But you do you.

I honestly don’t care about any of this, because at the end of the day it’s a Deadpool movie, it doesn’t have to have good lighting to make people watch the movie, the reason why people watch the movie is for entertainment not other stupid reasons like lighting or gradient, this isn’t a painting or comic cover, it’s an action comedy blockbuster, be grateful that the movie is happening

Yeah the Marvel (and general Disney) grading has been ass since they resorted to usi G The Void or green screen. Everything looks like a TV show set

YES THE FUCKING HAIR!! LIKE, WHY NO ONE MENTION IT???? They make Logan looks like he's balding. Or they want to give him Naruto dad haircut? If they don't want to wait for the hair grow longer, can't they just use wig?

This has been a problem that i dont see going away anytime soon, endgame was just a bore to watch at some points because the whole movie was just so dull and lifeless

I have been feeling this with games and anime. I see less contrast and deep shadows overall. This doesn't apply to everything though. I have seen some really jaw dropping cinematography in the past several years. Anime and gaming included.

2:23 hey don’t crap on Alex Ross’s work like that bro

What's funny is the movie does take inspiration from Mad Max to the point of joking about it, but it somehow looks dryer and despite being a barren wasteland manages to have less color. You're also right about the 2000's look. Sony's marvel movies are criticized for looking dated because they use the color grading from 2000 emo/goth movies. Deadpool is also super low-budgetted. It's almost like Ryan had his friends make a movie with him. In many ways the first movie was an expansion of the CGI leaked test footage, which may explain the style and look of the Deadpool movies. A side theory is: based on the existence of Hellicarriers in the first movie's third act and the fact there's a PG-13 version of the 2nd movie with the intention making the movie "disney safe," Ryan may have always planned to maybe get DP in to the MCU

"MCU Color Grading" 😂

3:51 Trypophobia trigger warning ⚠️

Marvel directors have to follow certain guidelines when making a movie. While DC directors can do whatever they like. That is why both of them have different tones etc.

One thing to note. Lighting is one of the 3 most important part of a scene and proper lighting (not necessarily good lighting a lot of things can be improved with poor lighting. What is proper depends on the scene). Lighting can hide things you shouldn't see. Highlight things you should notice. And change the mood of something overall. So it is almost as important as placement of scenery and roughly tied with the audio side (dialogue and music).

It could be caused the modern digital cameras having no natural film grain

I like the more natural looking colors for a comedy, high contrast with lots of shadows fits better for a serious tone. Marvel movies are generally very lighthearted so it makes sense that they go for sitcom-esque lighting.

As a illustrator myself let me give you the most logical answer i can think of prob because its comedy show at its core , its not a serious movies like Xmen so the director want to approach all the scene with bit colorful and light tones, i mean sure there are action scenes here and there in the movies, but all in all at its core it's a comedy show so they want to capitalize on that imagine how tired your eyes will be if the tones of film gets darker and grittier like the dark knight for example

I think this is the first time I see literally any thing that has a pulse actually praising X-Men Origins AND Micheal Bay. Gotta love revisionist history!

Movies nowaday have bland color grading but then when it comes to night scene they make it too dark.

Fun fact: he has different hair styles in the movie when deadpool tries finding different wolverines

In my honest opinion, I believe the filmmakers color grade a little more flat so that people could adjust the colors and contrast to their liking on their own personal 4K/8K TVs because I personally enjoy customizing the colors and all that on my TV, which is a 72 inch 4K televisioneven the avengers avengers was absolutely stunning with my ability to adjust those settings. I know that’s not everyone’s preference but definitely get into like customizing the settings on your television pretty cool.

about the hair, it was done on purpose. true to the comic

Color grading sucks, you shouldn’t depend on an Instagram filter to convey mood, movies did fine until the ring came out, “Look bow green our movie is, it’s so futuristic” “the scene is blue, you should feel sad now”

I typically agree marvel coloring is safe and boring however these are totally different environments right? The final scene (no spoilers) I felt had an incredibly dynamic color grade. It’s a choice to streamline production. I love dynamic and moody color grading and I was happy they included a bit of that towards the end

I read it's because flat lighting allows marvel to be really flexible and change effects and direction very late. If you have harsh shadows on half of someone's face, you can't later as easily change how you want the shot to look

People take criticism of things they like as personal insults it’s exhausting, the average movie these days looks like it was filmed by the same cameras as the office. I hate it

someone should correct the colours and release it

While there are many reasons for why they'd have their films pretty desaturated, the most reasonable is an avoidance of having hyper-saturated primary-colored superhero suits on screen visually clashing against each other. I have worked in color grading before, and one of the biggest challenges has always been retaining a focus on the characters while separating them from the background AND making sure there is a clear focal point. Many people think it's laziness or a lack of care for presentation, but it's more likely a limitation based on the limits of human eyesight. When you have one main character in a suit (such as each Phase 1 film) you can get away with building the visual language around that one design, but you don't get that luxury in crossover films.

7:16 the worst part is that it was a WIG dude. like why are you gonna put a wig on this man to make him look BALDER smh

In my honest opinion, I’d much rather have a bright and colourful R-rated movie that is actually really good than a darker and ‘edgier’ colour graded R-rated movie that is pretty trash in every other sense. I know that’s not the whole issue but this movie will at least fit in well with the colourful spandex-filled comic accurate MCU we’re seeing nowadays, which is by no means a bad thing.

Finally somebody talked about it, also one more problem to talk is the makeup, and costumes, they aren't what normal folks would wear, I mean superhero costumes now look like just freshly stitched, washed and made, not battle scars, also they got clean faces, like even at midnight scenes they got this clean skin, it kills relatability especially if there's no stylization in that

Oh god his hair 😭😭😭

Guardian of the galaxy trilogy the only Marvel movies that have beautiful visual

It's the mood of the film not that deep deadpools world isn't colorful cause he's constantly suffering of course he makes quirky jokes but the essence of his character is the constant voices in his head he sees the world in a blank state.

I noticed the same with the legendary Godzilla movies, the 2014 one looks so much better than the others

Bro, I just clicked on your thumbnail to tell you I immediately agree

That wasnt the case once they left the void i think it was a choice to represent the void as a wasteland

I don’t think it’s a widespread problem if barely anybody cares or even notices. Sure, you film analyzers will see it as an issue, but the average person just doesn’t care. Your thumbnail says “lifeless” on one of the shots, but it just looks fine to me. An attempt to say a different set of colored pixels on a screen is “lifeless” just looks so funny to me.

Personally,I like how movies looked like in the 70s, 80s, 90s and up to around early to maybe mid 2000s,they usually looked more natural. The ones from late 2000s looked like they were filmed through some blue filter,while the ones from 2010s to present often look too pale like they were filmed through a grey filter.

Wicked is another example. It looks so grey and bland it's horrible

I’m sure that Ryan has some good input to give.

Always good to see you upload man keep p the good work! 🔥

The hair can be explained a bit. The previous movies had a different wolverine from a different multiverse. The filmmakers also didn’t want to use his mask so they compensated with that hairstyle.

I respect your honesty and transparency sir 👏🏽

Blade cameo just caused so much hype and revived so much interest in the franchise, i wonder if they will actually finally release the Mahershala Ali’s Blade

First iron man movie is a great example of proper shadows in scenes making things pop. But nowadays marvel movies feels like they are always shot on cloudy days😂

Age of 4k, crunchign contrast loses detail. Before at 1080p and moreso 720p that detail wasnt even there to begin with.