As Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters this week, celebrating the 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I went back in time to remember some of the best visual effects sequences of this franchise that changed the VFX industry forever. After a first article featuring the movies of the Phase 1 of the MCU, let’s continue with the ones of Phase 2, from Iron Man 3 to Ant-Man.
Iron Man 3 (2013)
In the aftermath of the Battle of New-York Iron Man had to deal with a new menace.
This third installment featured some impressive visual effects such as the Malibu Villa attack (Scanline VFX).
The epic final battle sequence handheld by Weta Digital featured 30 Iron Man suits fighting in a full CG environment across +500 shots..
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Blur studio – the L.A. based studio responsible for some of the very best game cinematics – was in charge of the 3 minute prologue for the Thor’s sequel. An epic sequence featuring some impressive full CG shots.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
The MCU took a big turn in The Winter Soldier with Hydra’s coup d’etat. The movie featured some impressive visual effect work by Industrial Light & Magic who recreated a full CG Washington DC and managed some heavy asset destruction with the Helicarriers.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
After the acclaimed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel took another trip in space to introduce us to a less known bunch of superheroes: The Guardians of the Galaxy! This movie felt like a wind of fresh air in the Marvel Universe, by bringing us instant classic characters such as Rocket Raccoon and Groot.
Framestore was in charge of Rocket while MPC was taking care of building Groot.
In the middle of the movie the Guardians also visits the impressive environments of knowhere, done once again by Framestore.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Back to Earth where the Avengers needs to fight against a new enemy: Ultron.
Among some other big-scale battle sequences, such as the Sokovia Battle or the Hulkbuster/IronMan versus Hulk fight done by ILM, the movie also introduced us to 2 new characters: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Trixter was in charge of creating the speed effect for Quicksilver.
Ant-Man (2015)
At the end of the Phase 2 of the MCU Marvel finally got to introduce us to the long awaited Ant-Man – which had been in development for several years prior to the movie release.
Once again Marvel brought us some never seen before action sequences, sending us to a series macro environments such as the one done by Luma Pictures bellow.
