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| JJ Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens is nominated for Best Visual Effects at this year's Academy Awards. |
Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the
Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check
back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.
Best Visual Effects
The nominees are:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
What a strange and refreshing category this year. Normally
the domain of big-budget action spectacles, the Academy has given over Best
Visual Effects to some of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. It
would be hard to overstate just how unusual this lineup is in terms of the
recent history of this category, but let’s take it step by step. The history of
Best Visual Effects at the Oscars is a little hard to pin down, but we will
start in 1963, when it basically took the shape it is in now – give or take a
few changes over the years.
In the entire history of the category, only four times has
the Academy nominated more than one film in both Best Picture and Best Visual
Effects (1995, 2003, 2009, and 2015). This year, there are three – Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, and The Revenant
– which is a first. The difference in those three previous instances is that
there were only two or three nominees in the category each time. In 2010, the
Academy changed the rule to allow for five nominees in Best Visual Effects.
Since that change, last year was the only year in which no
Best Picture nominee was nominated for Best Visual Effects. In every other
year, a Best Picture nominee won this category over four non-nominees, while
last year, Interstellar won Best
Visual Effects and was the only nominee cited in more than one other category. This is a
long way of saying: Having mind-blowing effects is great, but if you want to
win, the Academy better embrace your film in a much bigger way.
Circling back around to this year, in addition to the three
Best Picture nominees, we also have the new Star
Wars film and Ex Machina, one of
the lowest budgeted films nominated in this category in at least the last 20
years. So, I say again – how strange and how refreshing. The two most likely
winners – and you will hear this a lot throughout this series, so get used to
it – are Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant, but with voting split
among five clearly popular films, anything could happen.
Mad Max: Fury Road – A visual feast in every way imaginable,
the most remarkable thing about writer-director George Miller’s action
extravaganza is how its effects work is both awe-inspiring and seamless. Of
course, the stunts are the big draw, but the way those stunts are incorporated
into the almost impossible world of the story is breathtaking. The film also
features the kind of big, showy set piece that craftspeople appreciate in its
sandstorm sequence.
The nominees are Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver, and
Andy Williams, who are all sharing their first Oscar nomination, though
Williams was a technician on the Best Visual Effects winner Hugo. What they all have in common is extensive
work in the action genre, each having contributed to numerous films that blend
the fantastic and the real in ways that engage the audience rather than
distract.
The Revenant – Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s gritty
western is the least fantastical of these nominees but also the most
impressionistic. It takes us to a place and time we never knew but have long
imagined, before our westward expansion drained the natural world of much of
its beauty. Like Mad Max: Fury Road,
it also contains a bravura effects sequence remembered even outside the context
of the film in its horrific bear attack.
Richard McBride, Matt Shumway, and Jason Smith are all
first-time nominees, while Cameron Waldbauer is a two-time nominee, having
earned recognition last year for his work on X-Men: Days of Future Past. McBride, Shumway, and Smith, however,
have all worked in the effects department on previous winners in this category.
Most notable perhaps is Shumway’s work on Life
of Pi and The Golden Compass,
both of which prominently feature computer-generated animals that are stunning
in their realism.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – The most conventional nominee
this year is of course the big-budget sci-fi space adventure that features
alien planets, alien spacecraft, and, well, aliens. JJ Abrams’ blockbuster is
wall-to-wall effects with an admirable blend of CGI and miniature work likely
to appeal to more traditional members of the Academy. In another year, this
would be a good threat for the win. Of the seven Star Wars franchise films, six have been nominated for Best Visual
Effects, and three have won. Working against it is the fact that all three of
those wins came for the original trilogy.
This is a veteran group with 11 nominations and four wins
among them. Chris Corbould is a three-time nominee who previously won for Inception. Neal Scanlan won for his only
previous nomination, Babe (directed
by Mad Max: Fury Road helmer Miller).
Roger Guyett is a four-time nominee, and three of his nominations now have come
for Abrams films – Star Wars: The Force
Awakens, Star Trek Into Darkness,
and Star Trek. Pat Tubach’s previous
nomination also came for Star Trek Into
Darkness. It would be foolish to underestimate the Academy’s willingness in
the crafts categories to vote for people it has voted for in the past.
The Martian – The other Best Picture nominee in this category, The Martian is also the other sci-fi
movie here, along with the next nominee below. The Academy clearly loves this
movie, evidenced by its seven nominations, third-most behind The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road. However, it is neither as beloved as those two
films nor as adventurous as Star Wars:
The Force Awakens. The effects are grand but probably not grand enough to
win in this field this year.
Chris Lawrence is a previous winner for Gravity, Richard Stammers has been nominated three times, and
Anders Langlands and Steven Warner are each enjoying their first nomination. No
one would dispute the quality of their work on this film, but in a year with
such a rich list of nominees, The Martian
probably will not be a factor for the win.
Ex Machina – This is my favorite of these nominees and
unfortunately the least likely to win, but for integration in the film and
importance to the story, the effects in writer-director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina have no equal. Every shot
with Ava (Alicia Vikander) is an effects shot, but none of them seems that way
because the effects – and Vikander’s incomparable performance – make us feel as
though we are watching just another human. This to me is the goal of great
visual effects.
Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Sara Bennett, and Mark
Williams Ardington are all first-time nominees, but despite the recognition for
their subtle, self-contained work on Ex
Machina, all have worked in departments on major blockbusters. Whitehurst,
Bennett, and Williams helped bring various films in the Harry Potter franchise to life, while just this year, Ardington also
worked as a character technical director on Ant-Man
and Spectre.
The final analysis
There are three ways this category could go this year. The
Academy could be head over heels in love with nominations leader The Revenant, and the bear sequence will
stick in voters’ minds as reason enough to reward it; Mad Max: Fury Road will be a crafts juggernaut and sweep up Best
Visual Effects along with a number of other below-the-line awards; Star Wars: The Force Awakens will earn
the award for the sheer scope of its effects work, while also benefiting from
those other two likely splitting votes. For now, I am guessing option No. 1
will rule the day.
Will win: The
Revenant
Should win: Ex
Machina
Should have been
here: Everest
Tomorrow: Best Cinematography
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