by Victoria Alonso abruptly left Marvel Studios, and fresh and Hazardous workplace allegations have surfaced.
Alonso joined Marvel Studios in 2005 as executive vice president of visual effects and postproduction and has been a member of the company since since Iron Man. Alonso received a promotion to Marvel Studios’ President of Physical and Post-Production, Visual Effects, and Animation Production in 2021.
It comes as a bit of a shock to see Alonso leave the studio where she has spent nearly 20 years working, particularly after she was recently elevated to one of its top positions. Since that one of Alonso’s key roles was working with VFX studios, many fans felt it had to do with Marvel Studios’ strained relationship with those companies.
It didn’t take long for new and old reports and responses to start surfacing, implying that this was the reason for Marvel Studios’ unannounced departure.
Are the Hazardous Workplace Allegations at Marvel Studios Valid?
Chris Lee revealed in January that Marvel Studios and Disney had established a blacklist for VFX artists who didn’t live up to their high standards.
Victoria Alonso was solely accountable for the poisonous working climate at Marvel, according to Lee, who posted on Twitter following Victoria Alonso’s abrupt resignation.
“So many VFX sources have told me Victoria Alonso was singularly responsible for Marvel’s toxic work environment: a kingmaker who rewarded unquestioning fealty with an avalanche of work, but who also maintained the blacklist that kept FX pros wild-eyed with fear.”
Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, and Victoria Alonso had extensive influence over post-production, “personally [approving] every single shot,” he underscored.
“She held a crazy amount of power, bigfooting all major creative decisions on Marvel movies and shows. ‘Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonso personally approve every single shot, all the visual effects work, which is usually the job of a director or a show runner,’ one tech told me.”
Further quotations from Lee’s article in Vulture were reprinted here, highlighting how“everyone [was] quite scared of Victoria Alonso:”
“‘The main one that everyone’s quite scared of is Victoria Alonso…if she likes you, you’re going to get work and you’re going to move up in the industry. If you have pissed her off in any way, you’re going to get frozen out’.”
One insider, according to Jeff Sneider of Beyond the Line, was simply astonished by the suddenness of Alonso’s departure. She had apparently been unhappy for a while and had recently fallen “out of sync” with other Marvel bosses.
Joanna Robinson of The Ringer, however, refuted Lee’s assertions that Alonso is a “kingmaker,” saying that they are “absolutely opposite of what I’ve heard from every person who has ever worked with her:”
“This is just the absolutely opposite of what I’ve heard from every person who has ever worked with her. I’d call it a gross mischaracterization.”
Robinson stated that “this is absolutely not who Victoria is,” without completely rejecting Lee’s sources.
“Chris has done a lot of great reporting on the state of VFX work in Hollywood and particularly Marvel and I know his anonymous sources have some very legit concerns but this is absolutely not who Victoria is.”
Although it doesn’t seem quite clear who is to responsible for this allegedly poisonous workplace, Alonso is unquestionably the target of those accusations.
Making a Scapegoat Out of Victoria Alonso?
Chris Lee simply stated that Victoria Alonso was “singularly responsible” for the toxic environment at Marvel Studios, which surely seems a bit absurd. Unfortunately, this gives the impression that she is becoming into a scapegoat for the studios’ current issues.
It’s not as if the alleged toxic environment at the studio will disappear once she leaves. However, her decision to leave might be a response to the critical and commercial failure of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which was widely panned for its VFX. Moreover, Kevin Feige was in charge of allegedly micromanaging VFX teams, just like Alonso, and he still works at the company.
Is her dismissal a show of force by Disney CEO Bob Iger or an attempt to pacify shareholders? Yet, it’s also plausible that Alonso walked away freely. After all, she is a producer for Argentina in 1985 and has a career outside of Marvel Studios.
Alonso’s departure is especially troubling because she was a leading proponent of LGBTQIA+ representation in Marvel Studios’ movies and television programmes. Hopefully, Feige and the studio won’t make any concessions as a result of her departure.
