Categories One-by-One: Visual Effects

[nightwingnova]

I'm revisiting this category and looking at it not from the point of view of the best and what I'd like to win but looking at trends over the past half decade, as I did in the editing category.

2009 - Avatar no contest.

2010 - Inception no contest.

2011 - Acclaimed Oscar Best Picture nominee Hugo over the prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, two blockbuster sequels and one lower-tiered movie. Here is where I thought a prequel with impressive CGI would have won over a movie whose visual effects I can't quite remember (though I was mesmerized overall by the movie's technical proficiency).

2012 - Best Picture Oscar nominee Life of Pi with its celebrated special effects over another Jackson Tolkien movie, a combo of several Marvel movies (The Avengers) and two lower-tiered movies.

2013 - Critically and technically-acclaimed Gravity over 3 blockbuster sequels and a bomb.

This all tells me that, of course, groundbreaking and/or uniquely impressive technical achievements get you in the running for the prize. But also that being an acclaimed movie will give you a boost above the others. It also appears that sequels are out of luck unless they come up with something new that makes them stand above the other nominees.

This says to me that Captain America and X-Men are out this year. So should the recent Apes chapter, though I can see it surprise and slip in because of its fantastic CGI.

What's left, between the underwhelming pedestrian Interstellar and the loved blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy (with its amazing talking, shooting raccoon and walking, fighting tree), I think it will be Guardians.

[Big Magilla]

(Strange. My posts from earlier today have disappeared.)

Did you not see this?

http://uaadb.cinemasight.com/viewtopic. ... 63#p132463

[nightwingnova]

There were no proper introductions of some of the characters. You figured out who they were if you were a fan of the comics or if you did research.

I agree with you about time travel. It's gotten too silly and cheap.

I just watched this latest chapter of the X-Men, and 1) I haven’t see all the films – I skipped Brett Ratner’s contribution – so I’m not sure if I missed the intro of some characters or simply forgot them from so long ago, but I had no clue who many of these people were; 2) good god, I’m sick of time travel stories; and 3) too many years of special effects are like too many years of porn: after a while, what once excited you leaves you cold.

[nightwingnova]

"Apes" has won the top prize at the Visual Effects Society.

I still lean for the win towards "Guardians" fun talking raccoon and dancing tree to the "Apes" retread. Still am most impressed by X-Men, though.

Don't sense any love for Interstellar.

(Strange. My posts from earlier today have disappeared.)

[Precious Doll]

I've never had any issue with the 403....

What browser do you guys use?

I used Safari and my partner uses Firefox, doesn't appear to make any difference.

Funnily enough last night I stumbled across a site by someone that listed all their 'alternative' Oscar selections. The year I clicked into that came up in my search for 1981. From there if I attempted to go to another year I got the Forbidden 403 error!

I still think it is a server issue.

[Sabin]

I've cooled on X-Men: Days of Future Past since seeing it, but I really like it. It's the closest I've gotten to watching the old cartoon in live action. Can't be entirely biased about it.

[nightwingnova]

It's Sunspot. I think the X-Men had the most impressive effects.

But, I would side with Guardians as the likely winner because it's effects are fresh (not a sequel that may or may not have been awarded previously - most voters won't remember) and not conventional (love the talking, walking, fighting tree!).

X-Men also had lots of effects, not just the Time in a Bottle sequence, but all of Mystique's changes, the various effects in the future time period with translocation portals, Storm's effects, Iceman's effects, Pyro's effects (it's not pyro, I just can't remember who it is), etc. There's the stadium levitation scene and others.

Guardians of the Galaxy had plenty of effects, including all those surrounding Rocket and Groot.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is hard for me to handicap, for largely personal reasons. I found the effects pretty exceptional – easily more impressive than any of the others – and a number of people I’ve spoken with seem to feel the same. But I have no idea if that opinion is widely held, or if some just dismiss this as another chapter in a franchise. I’d thought that maybe being a later film in a series where the original failed to win for effects would be a handicap, but it turns out that’s not so -- Terminator 2, Spider Man 2 and Pirates: Dead Man’s Chest have all triumphed despite that. I see the film as having a real chance.

Right, but working in those films' favor were A) a lack of competition, B) they stood out as the (mostly) biggest films of their respective years, and C) they were the clear technical virtuosos of the bunch. One could make the case for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being the clear technical virtuoso of the bunch but so was Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I'm not sure that the Academy thinks in terms of "due" when it comes to this category. If that was the case then why didn't the Harry Potter films win anything? The last time a sole nominee won this category was Death Becomes Her. This category tends to favor films nominated for sound awards as well. I hate to be a precedent wonk (especially because I think all this "Birdman can't win because its not up for editing" stuff is bollocks) but the last time a film won Best Visual Effects without being up for sound awards AGAINST a film up for sound awards was The Golden Compass. It beat Transformers, which was pretty shocking at the time and likely speaks to how much people hate Michael Bay.

[OscarGuy]

Wednesday, we had serious issues with a different type of error, but I'm not sure the cause of the 403's.

As to the effects, I have seen all five films, so I should probably comment.

Interstellar will win simply because it's supposed to. The effects are fairly conventional (as is true with all of the films on this list by now). Dawn of the Planet of the Apes should probably win since the prior film lost undeservedly.

Captain America had tons of effects in it, especially the helicarrier and its crash scene at the end of the film. X-Men also had lots of effects, not just the Time in a Bottle sequence, but all of Mystique's changes, the various effects in the future time period with translocation portals, Storm's effects, Iceman's effects, Pyro's effects (it's not pyro, I just can't remember who it is), etc. There's the stadium levitation scene and others.

Guardians of the Galaxy had plenty of effects, including all those surrounding Rocket and Groot.

Ideally, Interstellar wouldn't be the awards juggernaut. It's effects are probably the most familiar of all of these, but for the tesseract scene at the end alone it will win.

[Okri]

I've never had any issue with the 403....

What browser do you guys use?

[Precious Doll]

Are those of you who have the 403 problem using PC/Windows? Because I'm on a Mac, and I've literally never had that problem.

I've been having this problem on and off since August and I have a MacBook Pro laptop. The last few weeks have been particularly troublesome. Same problem on and off when I used my partners MacBook Prop laptop. I have even tried logging onto this site at my mother's house using her Apple iMac with the same problem.

I have also cleared my history (several times) and my cache through the development option - makes no difference. This problem is not happening on any other site I visit. I'm no IT expert by any stretch of the imagination but I suspect the problem lies with the server that this site is on.

[dws1982]

Are those of you who have the 403 problem using PC/Windows? Because I'm on a Mac, and I've literally never had that problem.

I can't comment too much here, because I've only seen Interstellar. In all of the other non-specialty categories (Foreigns, Shorts), I only have about three movies total left to see, but in this one I have four. I think your analysis looks pretty solid. Hard to say if the way it kind of flamed out from Best Picture contender (in the minds of bloggers) to tech-only nominee will hurt it here, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Guardians or Apes win either.

[Mister Tee]

READ IN REVERSE ORDER, STARTING AT THE BOTTOM. CURSE THAT 403

[Mister Tee]

But how seriously either of the last two can contend probably rests on how voters view Interstellar. Had Interstellar turned out the critically lauded best picture contender Paramount so long envisioned, it’d win the category easily, on the basis of being original and ostensibly grown-up. The question is, how seriously is the diminished-profile Interstellar taken in Hollywood? Do its high-end-of-expectations five nominations mean it’s still widely admired, and likely to get the same preferential treatment a best picture candidate would have? Or is it running with the rest of the pack, judged purely on achievement? (To be fair, some might even vote for it on that basis) The ever-sniffing-Oscars Broadcasters went for the Apes, but, I find in checking, they did that in 2011, as well. I’ll be interested to see what choice BAFTA makes here – they passed on the first Apes, going for the final Harry Potter instead. Even after BAFTA, it may be up in the air.

I’m finding this one of the year’s most difficult categories.

[Mister Tee]

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is hard for me to handicap, for largely personal reasons. I found the effects pretty exceptional – easily more impressive than any of the others – and a number of people I’ve spoken with seem to feel the same. But I have no idea if that opinion is widely held, or if some just dismiss this as another chapter in a franchise. I’d thought that maybe being a later film in a series where the original failed to win for effects would be a handicap, but it turns out that’s not so -- Terminator 2, Spider Man 2 and Pirates: Dead Man’s Chest have all triumphed despite that. I see the film as having a real chance.