The Best Visual Effects film in the Oscar race will now witness 10 films that have advanced to the short-listing round for the 88th Academy Awards.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the following films:
Ant-Man
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ex Machina
Jurassic World
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Tomorrowland
The Walk
Well, in the above films, there seems to be a tough competition between Ant-Man, The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road as all the three movies have considerable amount of visual effects that have created a benchmark at a new level altogether.
Directed by George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road thrilled the audience with its numerous portions of visual effects and special effects delivered majorly by Iloura Studio. Be it explosions, prosthetic, special and additional effects, this film had it all! A number of VFX studios also joined hands to create various effects for different portions. This is one film that has truly empowered the audience with heavy VFX depicting the war and the fight for survival.
Based on the Marvel Comics superhero, Ant-Man, directed by Peyton Reed, displayed the transition of size of the superhero profusely due to visual effects. The VFX majorly done by Industrial Light & Magic and Double Negative, there were a couple of studios that helped to produce the high end project. With explosions and fight scenes spread across the film, the major sequence of VFX involves the transition of the Ant-Man as he changes his size to a tiny ant.
Directed by Ridley Scott, The Martian brought space or specifically ‘Mars’ to the earth by splendid visual effects that took the audience on a virtual escapade. With MPC, Framestore and The Senate delivering a major portion of the visual effects for the film, few other studios too extended their contribution. In this film, the creation of the red planet and the strife to return to the mother earth could only be profoundly delivered by CG backgrounds that consisted heavy VFX. It enthralled the audience as it was considered a direct comparison to Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
Apart from these three hits Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk and J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens have unique style of visual effects suiting to the epic story line and character evolution. The Walk had its portion of creating the stunning Twin Towers and the ‘Man on wire’ that enchanted the audience displaying a wide virtual perspective of deep detailing. While, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens has multiple character design and creation and a war that belongs to another world of power and might.
However, five films will be nominated for final Oscar consideration which will be held on Sunday, 28 February, 2016. Surely, it is going to be a task to shortlist the films as 2015 has witnessed a whole new era of visual effects with such hits.