OVP: Best Visual Effects (2023)
The Nominees Were...
Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts, & Neil Corbould, The Creator
Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, & Tatuji Nojima, Godzilla Minus One
Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams & Theo Bialek, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland, & Neil Corbould, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco, & Neil Corbould, Napoleon
My Thoughts: I am totally intrigued and fascinated by the direction that the Visual Effects category is headed in this decade. Increasingly, the Visual Effects world has struggled with uglier blockbusters. The Marvel and DCEU films in 2023 were rough, with movies like Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom looking atrocious. And Oscar seems to have noticed. But with less original franchise starters that have the kinds of budgets to compete with these pictures, they went with two films that actively flopped, a franchise that it took seven installments before they actually cared, and another franchise it took 70 years before they could get behind it. All of this at the expense of subtler special effects in Best Picture nominees like Poor Things, Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Oppenheimer, showing that they're still the only tech category that doesn't just cite the Best Picture nominees.
The only movie that you'd normally expect to get nominated here was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the only nomination the entire MCU got in 2023 despite three high-profile releases. I will totally own that while I didn't love this movie, and I did think that it wasn't extraordinary in its visual effects, it's easily the best the MCU has been since...Eternals? The special effects on-display here are great during some of the Counter-Earth scenes, as we get giant crashes over this domestic city, and they are aided by stronger cinematography than we normally get in most blockbusters these days. It's not enough by Oscar standards, but this is the one comic book movie that didn't embarrass itself last year, and it shows.
The Creator isn't a good movie, but its visual effects are gorgeous. The lighting in this sometimes veers too dark, but that's one of the few complaints I have. This is a decadent film in terms of its actual effects, frequently mixing both the big (lots of explosions) with the small. There's something really compelling about the CGI in terms of the head movements of the actors playing robots that you actually believe their heads are hollow, a tricky feat in a film, particularly when they're being played by actual actors and not just CGI green screen suits. I didn't like the political ramifications of the film (a movie about the merits of AI happening during a strike when the actors in the film were fighting against AI), but that's not the fault of the visual effects department (and given my pick doesn't have any real-world ramifications like it would in an actual Oscar ballot, won't impact my decision).
Godzilla Minus One gained a lot of headlines for having one of the smallest budgets for an Oscar-winner for Visual Effects in a decade (I believe since Ex Machina in 2015), but if you watched this, it doesn't show it. No, the effects in this certainly aren't Avatar levels of groundbreaking, but they prove that great visual effects help the story and help the look of the film. The CGI that is working through this has some grit because of the budget, but it uses that advantageously. I was particularly impressed not just with the way that we see an increasingly menacing Godzilla (with no obvious cutaways because they couldn't afford a full body shot like, say, The Little Mermaid which cost 25x this movie but you never get a proper look at Ursula), but also the smaller effects like the water shots, which are breathtaking, and give us multiple worries (Godzilla is right there, but also...the ship sinking is going to kill everyone anyway if they can't keep it afloat). A really special film, and one helped at every turn by this team.
Mission Impossible getting this nomination has to be one of the weirdest 11:00 numbers I've seen from Oscar in a while. Yes, Godzilla had the longer streak it was breaking (this is the first time in 70 years that a Godzilla movie was nominated for an Oscar), but that was a prestige reimagining of the picture. This was just Movie #7 in the series. There are definitely scenes in this that really require visual effects wizardry, not just CGI but lots of stunt work (the opening scene on the motorcycle, the scene in the train where they're pouring out of the boxcar), but I have two things puzzling me. The first is that there's a lot of repetition to previous movies (there's not a lot of newness here save for the two scenes I just listed), so I have to take away some points for just building on the previous films while not providing enough new. The second is-why did it take so long? My rule with the OVP is always judge just by what's in front of me that's new, but...this is not the best VFX in the series (Ghost Protocol and Fallout get VFX nominations for my My Ballot for a reason-they're the best in the series). I can't fault the film for that (I will judge on its merits), but if Oscar was going to go here, why not do it sooner?
The final nomination is for Napoleon, which is the least showy of these five, and honestly got its nomination almost completely on the legs of the battle sequence at Austerlitz. This is impressive, the way that it unfolds and, similar to the dual threats in Godzilla, is handled well from a narrative perspective in addition to the effects (the threat of both being shot and being drowned in the same passage). But I'll be honest, much of the rest of the film is dull, particularly those scenes in Egypt where you never actually believe the actors are remotely near the Pyramids...it's just a mess of background CGI that would've done better with better location shooting.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Visual Effects Society gave their trophy to The Creator against Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Oppenheimer, while its supporting effects winner was Nyad against John Wick: Chapter 4, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, and Society of the Snow. It's worth noting that they have an Animated Feature category given Oscar's shortlist, and it was indeed won by Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Poor Things won Best Visual Effects at the BAFTA's against The Creator, Guardians 3, Mission Impossible 7, and Napoleon. The Oscar shortlist for this category was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Poor Things, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, Society of the Snow, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The inclination is to fanboy out and think it was Spider-Verse in sixth or go with Poor Things because it was nominated elsewhere, but I'll be honest...given the need to award big budget films here (save Godzilla), I'm going to bet that it was Indiana Jones that just missed.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There's a specific film that's going to show up in my list that Oscar loved way more than me (this is the only time I would cite it but Oscar wouldn't), but I can't really complain about a movie with 13 nominations missing somewhere, so I'm going to instead say that the fun plays on size in Dungeons & Dragons were really smile-inducing (particularly the Bradley Cooper effect & Chris Pine's facial morphing), so I wish Oscar had gone there.
Oscar’s Choice: You have to go all the way back to 1998 to find what happened here-a Visual Effects field where anyone could win. I predicted The Creator, which I'm guessing was second place, but you could make the argument for pretty much any order here, and Oscar surprisingly did the classy thing by giving it to the ingenuity of Godzilla Minus One.
My Choice: I'm going to repeat that. I think the single best effect of the year is the heads in The Creator, which is my silver, but cohesively (and in terms of story-telling) I cannot deny Godzilla. Behind them are Guardians, Mission Impossible, and then Napoleon.
And those are my thoughts-what are yours? Is everyone ready to storm Tokyo with Godzilla, Oscar, & I, or did another film tickle your fancy? How did Mission Impossible get this nomination on its seventh try? And was it Poor Things, Indiana Jones, or another option lounging in sixth place? Share below!
2 comments:
Oh, how I wish Dungeons & Dragons had been recognized in this category!
Patrick: Same-I don't mind this lineup from Oscar, given he definitely thought outside of the box (which was not the case for most of the tech categories in 2023), but some tinkering (specifically Dungeons & Dragons instead of Napoleon) would've made it a lot stronger.
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