The VFX artist for ‘Interview with the Vampire’ isn’t happy with this one scene despite it being one of the most iconic scenes in the movie.

Tom Cruise may have donned a majority of his roles in the action genre to the point where he is renowned for the same, but his one other classic masterpiece from the initial decade of his career literally sets the bar much higher. This movie is none other than the 1994 horror-fantasy film where he played Lestat de Lioncourt alongside Brad Pitt: Interview with the Vampire.

Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire.
If anything, what went into the making and the final result was so incredible that the film even scored two Oscar nods. But despite being such an epic piece of work, the movie’s VFX Artist Robert Legato still holds some regrets about one of the most iconic scenes in the film. Why? Well, the reason is simple: Because, in his eyes, “the idea was better than the execution.”

Robert Legato Regrets One Iconic Scene in Interview with the Vampire

For the record, Tom Cruise‘s Interview with the Vampire has a lot of glorious scenes in it that have made the movie such a massively acclaimed masterwork. But the one that notably best piqued viewers’ interest was the major fire scene toward the end of the film.
Brad Pitt in a still from the film’s end scene.

This scene was where Brad Pitt‘s vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac took his revenge on the Paris vampire coven and Claudia’s demise. Needless to say, this scene turned a lot of heads and even earned the VFX director of the movie Robert Legato some much-deserved praise.

However, Legato himself seems to have second thoughts about the making of this scene. If anything, he regrets helming it the way he did. During the most recent episode of the Corridor Crew’s VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGI on YouTube, he shared the same.
Robert Legato. | Credit: Screengrab from Corridor Crew’s Interview on YouTube.
Initially, he shared how he does love filming fire stuff and even got commended for how he helmed this scene. He said:

“I love film fire stuff, and in dailies, they’re like ‘Ah, you did a beautiful job!’ It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s fire. It’s hard to beat.’”

But Legato’s own reviews on the scene couldn’t be any harsher. If anything, he deeply regrets how he ended up executing that scene as compared to how he planned it.

“There’s a bad CG shot in here, by the way,” admitted Legato. “That’s bad. The idea was better than the execution.”

A still from the movie.
Apparently, according to the mastermind artist himself, that scene included a bad CG shot even though most fans mustn’t even have noticed. But that isn’t the only criticism and regret he has for himself for curating that one scene of the masterpiece the way he did.

Robert Legato Even Criticizes the Lighting for Ruining the Epic Scene

While he is probably the first one to point out his own flaws so publicly, Legato also expressed how he wishes he had chosen an alternative and better method for that scene, especially with the mid-sequence lighting modification.

During the same episode, the VFX artist initially explained how the lighting for that shot worked. He said:

“This is the shot where I had to hide a lighting change in the way I operated the shot. So this is the shot I did — It’s a miniature set, and then I tilt up here on purpose to now see the organ.”
The lighting difference Legato was talking about. | Credit: Corridor Crew/YouTube.
Diving deeper into how he actually ended up shooting it, Legato said:

“Now, I’ve changed the lighting below so that when I tilt back down it feels like it’s the same lighting scheme, but it’s all a different re-light. Originally, it was all just pulled straight back, and I can’t hide the s—ty lighting that looks good here, but doesn’t look good there.”

Well, for what it’s worth, nobody is a bigger critic of an artist than the artist itself, so only Robert Legato best knows just how wrong it all went. Because for the fans, the scene still remains (and will continue to remain) one of the most iconic scenes ever.