OVP: Best Visual Effects (2001)
The Nominees Were...
Dennis Muren, Scott Farrar, Stan Winston, & Michael Lantieri, AI: Artificial Intelligence
Jim Rygiel, Randall William Cook, Richard Taylor, & Mark Stetson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Eric Brevig, John Frazier, Ed Hirsh, & Ben Snow, Pearl Harbor
My Thoughts: We are continuing our time in the 2001 contests with limited nominees, and next we have Best Visual Effects. While this isn't like Best Makeup, where all of the nominees are cited in the Best Picture field, none of these are getting their sole citation in 2001, so we'll be back to all of them again later, though one stands out more than the others. In fact, one of the movies would change the entire game when it comes to the visual effects industry.
The Fellowship of the Ring in some capacities feels odd to cite as still a monument of visual effects. After all, CGI has become a mainstay in the years since, and a film like Avatar or even Transformers probably has left a bigger imprint on the world of visual effects than Peter Jackson's original epic. But watching it, it's hard not to think the series has some of the best special effects in a movie of the past 40 years, which movies are still trying to recapture (there would be no Game of Thrones without this movie). This one isn't as showy as The Two Towers (with Gollum starting a motion-capture revolution), but it still contains some impressive CGI work with the Nazgul & Balrog. It also smartly doesn't overwhelm the audience, and has the good sense to build actual sets to interact with at Rivendell & Hobbiton, so that the effects can feel more alive (if we'd already been in a sea of CGI, Galadriel's menacing out wouldn't pop nearly as much).
This isn't the case for Pearl Harbor, a film that in 2001 was seen as the next Titanic (at least that's how it was marketed), and while it made a mountain of money...it was not Titanic. Too much of this film is visual effects for me. This would start some of the trend of most of the film feeling almost animated, and while there are movies that I can get behind that on (think Avatar or the initial Star Trek remake), this one feels like we're too early in the CGI conversation, and it reads a bit garish. I wanted more practical effects recreating historical battles, as it comes across a bit plastic in a movie that already has that problem with its script.
AI: Artificial Intelligence shows some of its seams in addition to Pearl Harbor, but it does so in a way that feels more at-home in the movie itself. You get a host of different machines coming onto the screen, but the script indicates they're supposed to be a bit busted, not the sleek, sexy creations of Blade Runner (save for Gigolo Joe), but instead something that was discarded, early iPhone models that are no longer necessary. The combination of real life actors, impressive makeup techniques, and early CGI make these effects not just beautiful, but they also work within the confines of the story itself...which is the whole point of visual effects, I want them to aid the film, not distract from it.
Other Precursor Contenders: I knew this would eventually start to happen, but we are officially timing out of one of the precursors we've used throughout these write-ups as benchmarks, as 2002 was the first year of the Visual Effects Society Awards. BAFTA did have this category in 2001, though, and it was five-wide, with The Fellowship of the Ring beating AI, Harry Potter, Moulin Rouge!, and Shrek. The 2001 shortlisted finalists for Oscar were Black Hawk Down, Cats & Dogs, The Fast and the Furious, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, & Jurassic Park III (a weird year where they had a tie, so there were eight contenders instead of the at-the-time normal of seven). All of these movies were hits in 2001 (yes, even Cats & Dogs), but I'm guessing one of the films that Oscar really went for (Black Hawk Down and Harry Potter) was fourth, and my hunch is that it was Harry Potter as practical effects were becoming a harder sell in 2001 for this category.
Films I Would Have Nominated: For starters, I never got why this was only three-wide, even in the early years where visual effects were less common in movies (my My Ballot will definitely be five-wide), so I'd include both Harry Potter (while not as revolutionary as Fellowship, it still became a standard-bearer for a decade's worth of visual effects) and Monsters Inc, at the time a huge step forward in visual effects in animation, given Sully's fur specifically.
Oscar’s Choice: If you told me Fellowship got 80% of the vote...I'd assume that was still too low.
My Choice: Obviously Fellowship. It might not be able to beat its later siblings (this has the least impressive overall effects of the three pictures), but it's miles ahead of the competition. AI is next, with Pearl Harbor in back.
And those are my thoughts-what are yours? I cannot imagine it, but does anyone prefer a nominee to Fellowship of the Ring? Given that AI was something of a box office fizzle at the time, how did it beat Black Hawk Down and Harry Potter for a nomination? And with us moving further back, is there another tech precursor I should look for for Visual Effects in these write-ups? Share below!
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