Categories One-by-One: Visual Effects

[Mister Tee]

The nominees:

Dune
Free Guy
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spider Man; No Way Home

There's not a whole lot to say about this category in terms of competition -- it's Dune in a landslide, unless we've moved to a new Academy universe.

But there are things to say about how this category has evolved over time.

The first decade (the category was inaugurated in 1939) was kind of belated acknowledgement of some big early-30s hits: the monsters of King Kong, the earthquake of San Francisco (Mighty Joe Young and Green Dolphin Street winning as lesser versions of the same). Some years, the competition was fairly lame (the only thing that can explain 30 Seconds over Tokyo winning for about five minutes of the Dolittle raid, or Portrait of Jennie for a brief storm sequence), but occasionally there was a true gem...none greater than The Thief of Baghdad, which is still impressive to this day.

Korda's triumph set the tone for the George Pal fantasy winners of the decade following -- suddenly, outer space (When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds) and elaborate sci-fi (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine) were all the rage (along with the effects gloss on the Biblical, in The Ten Commandments). This carried into the 60s, with films like Mary Poppins and Fantastic Voyage triumphing, culminating in the landmark win for 2001.

I'd say there have been two truly significant winners in this category: 2001 and, a decade later, Star Wars. These films were each thought to represent quantum leaps past the often-cheesy effects to which audiences had been accustomed; they also were distinct for being associated with films thought among the best of the year (Ben-Hur aside, most winners till then were strictly popcorn fare).

This, I'd argue, has had a material effect on the choices made in this category. The two films together -- Star Wars in particular -- made it clear to people that just about anything was now achievable by visual effects, which meant simply putting something previously unimaginable on screen was no longer enough to impress. Not long after Star Wars, a friend and I emerged from seeing the first Star Trek movie, and he opined that he was sick of seeing space ships crawl through blue goop.

A lot of Academy voters seemed to be, as well. In the years that followed, they tended to award films that displayed some sort of ingenuity and flair in their effects, rather than going for simple "wow" factor -- Cameron's films (especially Terminator 2, Titanic and Avatar) knocked people out (at least at the time); Zemeckis won audiences over with Gump's edited-into-history footage, and the cartoons-and-humans-interaction of Roger Rabbit; Spielberg won with extra-terrestrials and dinosaurs; the Wachowskis captivated everyone with the fresh visionary quality of the Matrix (and lost them when they tried to endlessly repeat); Peter Jackson was feted for finally doing justice to Tolkien.

In the past decade, I think this tendency has become even more pronounced. The effects guild may still love their Kong movies, but Academy voters are looking for something with more substance. They bypassed the Apes movies -- which had some dazzling effects -- in favor of films they took more seriously, like Hugo and Interstellar. I don't think there's any rational argument that says First Man has better effects than Avengers: Infinity War; the latter's win simply says it's the type of movie Academy voters prefer. It's kind of a paradox: visual effects have so taken over modern Hollywood that it''s almost impossible to make a blockbuster without them...but they're so omnipresent that they don't really reach people in the simple way that When Worlds Collide, or even Star Wars, once did.

I thought of all this while I was watching Spider Man yesterday. I'd heard some say they weren't sure Spider Man would make the visual effects cut this year, because "It wasn't really that much of an effects movie". And my reaction is, Are you kidding? The movie is wall-to-wall with god-knows-how-they-did-it effects. But, in one sense, these people are correct: it didn't register as being an effects-dominated movie because, if you go to these movies, you've come to take all this stuff for granted. It's beyond the grasp of the artists who worked in the Thief of Baghdad days, but it doesn't have the impact those far simpler effects once did.

And I'll add that I'm very much in sync with this way of thinking: I think Spider Man and Shang-Chi have some mind-boggling effects...but I'd be voting with the majority for Dune, because there's so much more artistry involved in how those effects are utilized in Villeneuve's film. The utter dominance of effects films has at last brought voters around to choosing the art over the science in this category.