Entry posted by Jean Valjean
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This year's nominees are, in the order in which I am the most impressed:
- The Jungle Book
- Kubo and the Two Strings
- Deepwater Horizon
- Rogue One
- Doctor Strange
As it happens, I've seen every single movie in this category, so I'm capable of having a fully informed opinion on this one.
The most likely winner this year will be The Jungle Book. It was simply so amazing, and it was a pretty epic film. At first I thought that it would be absolutely ridiculous if any other movie stood a chance, however, my opinion changes when I saw that Kubo and the Two Strings got nominated. I wouldn't complain if it wins, and I wouldn't be surprised either. There's something cool about seeing a stop-motion animated picture win for special effects. It's never been done before, and if any film should be the first one to do it, it should be Kubo. Also, I think that it has it in the bag this year for winning Best Animated Picture, so it would be pretty cool to get a double-win in that department. I also believe that it should have been nominated for Best Cinematography (I don't think that it would have won with La La Land in the picture, but it definitely deserves it more than some of the films that actually got the nomination).
Even though it's the least likely to win, I was genuinely impressed with Deepwater Horizon. I never posted it on this site, but I made a video review as I was driving from the theatre with a friend, and one of the things that I commented on upon some reflection was that the entire thing felt very real. I've worked in industrial environments, and that movie made me feel like I was in one again. Granted, it couldn't recreate the actual heat or the smells of the workplace, but the visual effects still made it seem very real. To me, it's hard to recreate that environment onscreen, for the same reason that it's hard to recreate a human face with visual effects (more on that later): I know it intimately from real life, and know when something very slight is off.
As for last place, I was honestly torn between giving that honor to Rogue One and Doctor Strange. While they are both pleasing to look at visually, I didn't necessarily think that either of them were quite good enough to be nominated over the likes of, say, The BFG. I think that The BFG wasn't quite as ambitious as Rogue One in the CGI face department, since it wasn't trying to recreate anyone in particular, but what it did have was more convincing than Rogue One, and used far more extensively and enjoyably.
Anyway, BFG didn't get nominated, so I have Rogue One and Doctor Strange to talk about, and compare. The reason why I put Rogue One above Doctor Strange is because while Doctor Strange is visually quite cool, I attribute that more to the concepts than the special effects themselves. Also, Doctor Strange for the most part dealt with inorganic objects, which are easy to render. When it ventured into Dormamu territory, it became very obvious that it was a CG-fest. Rogue One had its obvious moments of CG, too, what with the CGI Cushing and Fisher being not quite capable of escaping the Uncanny Valley, but to be fair, those were at least a fair bit more ambitious than Dormamu. I must give credit where it's due, too, since a fair number of people were fooled by CGI Cushing. Rogue One also ambitiously has to do something similar to what Deepwater Horizon did, which was recreate an environment that we know intimately; that is, we're really familiar with the look and feel of A New Hope, and we've formed out expectations around that, while also simultaneously expecting the special effects to be far more realistic. For that reason, Rogue One inches out Doctor Strange for second-to-last place, and Doctor Strange shouldn't be on the list, because The BFG deserved a nomination.
And that's my opinion. But I'm sure TMD is of the opinion that Doctor Strange should win this year. That guy has a love-affair with Marvel movies, I swear. Remember when he said that The Avengers deserved to win Best Special Effects in the same year that Life of Pie came out? Ah, TMD, you're too cute 
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