VFX is one of the best categories for a couple of reasons. For starters, the rules of this category are a bit different than other fields. Box office matters here more than most, and while it values Best Picture nominees it doesn't require them, and everyone has kind of a different definition of what works & what is important. Sequels are good...except when they aren't. Some years they are begging for CGI & other years it can be too garish or overdone because that's what everyone brought to the party. And for a category about the cultural zeitgeist, in recent years Oscar has gotten choosier, letting monster hits like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Infinity War lose to (by comparison) arthouse flicks like Ex Machina and First Man. This year, because as we're going to talk through, there's one film that has had this Oscar lined up for nearly the entirety of its production, there's more room for curiosity-strange things happen when there are four nominees that are for sure going to lose. I'm going to walk through the state of the race, and at the end, I'll predict not only the films I think are currently situated for the Top 5, but also the ten films I think are most likely going to make the shortlist (which, as you'll see, is also its own prediction model).
Let's get two movies out of the way first & foremost, as really there are a dozen or so movies competing for three slots. Though it hasn't even opened yet, Avatar: The Way of Water is not only going to be nominated here, but it's also going to win. James Cameron movies have an unparalleled history with this category. Though his first two movies (Piranha II and The Terminator) were left out of the conversation (weirdly the original Terminator didn't even make it for the shortlist), since 1986's Aliens, Cameron has not only been nominated for every movie he's directed, with the exception of 1994's True Lies (which was beaten by Oscar juggernaut Forrest Gump) he's won for every single one of his films. Avatar, unless it is the most spectacular disappointment of the decade, will win this hands down.
The other movie I feel confident will make it is Top Gun: Maverick. In a bleak year for the film industry, Top Gun stands out as one of the true unqualified successes of 2022. Its effects are mostly practical, and in a different year I'd wager it'd have a tougher time getting into this category given how it pushed against CGI so hard (it'd be easy to see the visual effects branch not wanting to celebrate a movie that goes against a lot of their modern business model). But given the film's importance to the industry, it's impossible to imagine them snubbing it in a category it was made for; it might struggle in something like Best Actor (though I think Cruise getting nominated is a real possibility), but it's not missing here. These are our two locks.
Comic book movies basically own the modern movie landscape, and have since at least the mid-aughts. Marvel has only had two years since 2008's Iron Man (2011 & 2015) where it didn't get a nomination, and while DCEU doesn't have that same cache, the one franchise that does do well with Oscar is Batman, who did have a movie much earlier this season.
In terms of a nomination, I think three films stand out, and honestly while I'm confident at least two make it (possibly all three do), I can't say with certainty any of them are a lock. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has recency bias, which is going to help it, and as one of the year's better-reviewed comic book films, it could make it, but its predecessor, which did much better with Oscar (or at least it will have) didn't get in for VFX. Dr. Strange has showier effects, though it's hard to say if they're better (I'm going to be honest-as a rule I find the MCU films to be a bit of a miss in terms of VFX as there's a plastic sameness there & it over relies on CGI for scenes that don't require it-if you look at the OVP Ballots I've published on this blog I've only nominated four films of the over two dozen films they've put out). It's also potentially going to be the highest-grossing comic book film of the year, which could help. The third film that is in contention is The Batman, which is likely the best qualitatively of the three movies, but it also came out so long ago you'd be forgiven for questioning if it's a 2022 movie.
Those are the three that are in contention. However, in terms of the shortlist, there's two more to consider. I don't think that Thor: Love and Thunder or Black Adam will make the list ultimately, but there's not a lot of major blockbusters this year, and so if they're feeling blockbuster heavy (last year they definitely were), they could put one or both of these on the shortlist. In 2021, we saw all four of the MCU films that were eligible make the Top 10 (only two made the actual nominations list). I wouldn't rule out one of these movies sneaking in, though an actual nomination is a stretch.
In recent years Oscar has made a point of citing more prestige films, both in the shortlist and the actual nominations. There's a surprisingly large number of contenders here. The biggest and most important is Everything Everywhere All at Once, the shock success of the spring (one of the only non-franchise films to cross $100 million in 2022). The film is an effects movie, though it's doing it at a fraction of the budget that a Black Adam or Dr. Strange is creating visual effects, and it could get the Ex Machina/First Man-nomination of the bunch.
This is one of several films that are a possibility, though. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is an animated film that could be included. Animated films are not frequently cited, even stop-motion ones (in the past thirty years the only ones that made the cut are Nightmare Before Christmas and Kubo and the Two Strings). However, the early buzz on this is really good & I expect it to get in the Top 10. Other films with effects budgets that could make it, even if they're more "supporting" effects include All Quiet on the Western Front, Nope, and Bardo.
We frequently think of pretty much every movie that is a major player for Best Picture with an effects budget making the lineup (recent Best Picture nominees Dune, 1917, and Gravity got their wins in part because they were already being celebrated by the Academy), but that's not always the case. Three recent Best Picture nominees (Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, and Mank made the shortlist but ultimately were skipped by Oscar for an actual nomination, so people speaking with complete certainty that the buzz around Everything Everywhere will guarantee it a nomination here-I don't buy it. It's in the hunt, but it's not a guarantee, particularly given that much of its best effects are related to martial arts, a genre that is very rarely celebrated by this branch.
That brings us to the wild cards, and specifically two types of films that have struggled to land in this category: non-English movies and documentaries. To date, no film from either description has been nominated for an Oscar. This is particularly shocking for films not primarily in English, as the past three decades have produced films as varied as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Apocalypto, Pan's Labyrinth, Das Boot, Ran, and Curse of the Golden Flower which were cited in other categories by AMPAS but didn't make it here. The Bollywood smash hit RRR is definitely in contention. A huge action film hit worldwide, the movie is on the Academy's radar & is the most expensive Indian film ever made, even if it doesn't have the cultural cache to American audiences that something like Black Panther does. At some point, with Chinese & Indian cinema continuing to take a larger percentage of the global box office (and continuing to break production budget records), a film from one of these movie communities will crack this category, though it's hard to tell if a film that will have no cache in other categories (unlike some of the movies I just listed) is a serious threat.
The only documentary which has been a contender for a nomination was 2020's Welcome to Chechnya, which was honestly a surprise miss at the time (when it made the shortlist, I was sure it'd make the cut & honestly I was thinking it was the greatest threat to Tenet losing). This film makes its visual effects actually part of its story, and has the backing of Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas's visual effects company that is a longtime favorite of this branch. Similar to RRR, I don't know what it'll take to make the cut, but I do think it's a threat, especially for the shortlist.
One of the phenomena that's unusual about the shortlist concept, particularly for this category (which has made their shortlist public a lot longer than most branches), is that you get to see a number of films make the shortlist that you know "aren't getting nominated." This makes predicting the shortlist a fun challenge. Two franchises stand out as potential threats here. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Jurassic World: Dominion are not going to get Oscar nominations, as none of their predecessors did for VFX. However, all of their predecessors made the shortlists, and I think it would be foolish to dismiss them getting into the Top 10 even if they have no threat to actually get nominations for the Oscars. Frequently the losing nominees will feature films that have big, showy budgets and aren't always big hits (which Jurassic World was, Fantastic Beasts was not). Don't rule them out in a shortlist just cause they won't make it with Oscar.
Two other contenders that come to mind are Bullet Train and The Grey Man. The former slunk across the threshold into $100 million territory, but is largely forgotten by audiences right now. However, its "set piece as visual effect" (most of the film takes place on a finite train) is the kind of gimmick that this branch will go for in a ten-wide field. The Gray Man was something of a critical miss, but in a year where Netflix has very few contenders, don't count out them trying to get some sort of love here.
My Current Predictions
Below are my current predictions. As I said above, this is a race with a lot of moving parts, and particularly if Bardo or Pinocchio are bigger deals than I currently think they'll be with AMPAS, I might change my mind here, but I'm betting on the three big comic book films, and that both of the "rule-breaker" nominees (RRR and Good Night Oppy) get onto the Top 10. For the Top 5, I am going with the surprise snub of Everything Everywhere in favor of all three major comic book movies. The reason for this is simple-this is a branch that rarely goes for supporting effects (First Man being the big exception), and while this movie is a "great effects" movie, it's not a movie where the effects are particularly big or groundbreaking in the way we've come to expect. They're just well-utilized. In that way, I feel like it might be in the camp of something like The Shape of Water more than First Man. But, as we'll see in the coming weeks as precursors start to come out, my thoughts there may change.
Shortlist: Avatar: The Way of Water, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Good Night Oppy, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Jurassic World: Dominion, RRR, Top Gun: Maverick
Nominees: Avatar: The Way of Water, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick
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