The bizarre creatures and immeasurable cityscapes featured inside the world of “Quantumania” are hallucinatory and undeniably weird, almost to the point where it’s too much of a good thing. Without the use of the Volume, the realism of the Quantum Realm could have been significantly compromised, even though the technology wasn’t always the perfect fit for what Peyton Reed wanted to accomplish. The director told Collider:
“We ended up using the volume technology, it was great for certain environments, but not necessarily right for other ones. There’s also just size and shape. Sometimes our sets are too big for the volume, so we would use partial sets.”
The Volume was still a great asset to help bring the Quantum Realm to life, mainly because of how grounded the actors felt. “It was definitely one of the tools we used in our toolkit, and the actors love it because they get to see a version of what they’re [going to] see in the movie,” Reed said. “The interactive lighting is obviously great, but it’s great, the actors love it. It’s not always the right tool, but I liked it because we wanted to create all these different parts of the Quantum Realm that had to look and feel differently.”
The world building that’s required for something akin to the Quantum Realm makes the locations of “The Mandalorian” seem much more intimate in comparison. It’s an invaluable new tool, but Reed recognizes that it’s not necessarily going to be a total game-changer in the future.