Visualizing The Oscars’ Best Visual Effects Likely Nominees - Awards Outlook
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Visualizing The Oscars’ Best Visual Effects Likely Nominees
With the announcement of its delay to 2024, there is now a Dune: Part Two shaped hole in several of the Oscar categories including many of the technical awards. Best Cinematography, Costume, Production, Design, and Score were almost definitely being considered to go to the famous sequel and yet most of them have another film that takes over as a new frontrunner. However, Best Visual Effects is not easily up for grabs with some possible creative and surprising picks.
While a Marvel film has never won the award for Best Visual Effects there have been many that have been nominated and so there is a chance we see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 or The Marvels on the list of nominations, but definitely not the terrible looking Ant-Man and the Wasp Quatumania. With the Marvel visual effects artists voting to unionize after a great deal of mistreatment there could be a narrative of them getting nominated and possibly winning in a year that will be fairly supportive of groups that want to unionize.
There have only been three fully animated films that have also gotten a nomination for Best Visual Effects but all of them have been revolutionary in the animated medium from The Nightmare Before Christmas to Kubo and the Two Strings and even the The Lion King remake which could be considered live action. Regardless, this does create a narrative of Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse getting that nomination for its revolutionary animation style.
Even with the boost of most film festivals, Oppenheimer still feels like it is the Best Picture frontrunner and will be nominated for a considerable amount of technical awards and Best Visual Effects might be one of them. It was boasted that the film used no CGI which could easily be the film’s detriment but also to accomplish such a challenge as visual effects were still used.
Another film with what seems to be modest special effects and modest means is The Creator which could be nominated for the smaller budget and the small scale science fiction that blends with reality, much like previous winner, Ex Machina. This is also a Gareth Edwards film much like Rogue One which was a previous nominee for this category.
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is being hailed as an epic very similar to his previous film of Gladiator which also won Best Visual Effects for its transportation into another time and therefore there is a solid chance for Napoleon to get nominated for Best Visual Effects.
The movies mentioned above have the best chance to be nominated for Best Visual Effects but there is the chance of a few other films to end up on the list. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny made a big splash with the de-aging of Harrison Ford in the opening and therefore could get on there just from that accomplishment alone. However, the rest of the film is a bit less visually imaginative. Transformers films have been nominated in the past even though their visual moves have been a bit more stale of late, there is still a chance that Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ends up with a nomination.
Gran Turismo uses a lot of practical effects and the blend of the practical and CGI were fairly impressive and have the potential to be a huge upset but a lack of attention for the film might cause it to falter. Only one Hunger Games movie has been even considered on the short list for Best Visual Effects and it is difficult to know how The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will be received but its visual subtitles of presenting a new world has a chance of getting a humble nomination.
Blue Beetle is another film of low popularity from DC movies that do not usually have much luck in this category and probably won't this year. For the same reasons, Shazam! Fury of the Gods will also be passed up. Meanwhile, The Flash was beloved by those suspicious preview audiences and while they thought it was beautiful no one else with eyes did. And while Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom just revealed itself to exist and while it looks fun the visuals aren’t going to be its strong suit.
There are other films that have visual effects and therefore could probably qualify for a nomination however they looked terrible enough that it will be very unlikely to be nominated. A Fast and Furious film has never been nominated for this category and it won’t start with Fast X. The Meg obviously was not nominated and its sequel was not much of an improvement visually or in any way. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was one of the most enjoyable films of the year which would possibly carry it to a stray nomination but the effects were not the best part of this movie even with an abundance of them. Avatar: The Way of Water did the same effects of The Little Mermaid but much better and while the movie creates a magical world, this film's muddiness is its detriment. 65 was barely even seen by anyone and would not have helped into the Oscars even if it was seen. With the exception of The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, movies based on theme park rides do not have great luck in this category and The Haunted Mansion has a lot going on but probably too much. Lastly, Zack Snyder’s ambitious science fiction epic Rebel Moon might not qualify for the Oscars due to it not being in enough theaters before its Netflix release.
There is no clear front runner in this category at this exact moment but there are plenty of perspectives that will form various narratives that will be exciting to watch.