Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (SoSF Managing News Director)
Some in Hollywood are surprised by this year’s large crop of scif/fantasy flicks as possible Oscar nominees for visual effects. What I don’t understand is why the surprise? When it comes to visual effects, science fiction and fantasy films have always been way ahead of the mark and this year’s contenders are certainly no exceptions.
This past Friday the Motion Picture Academy announced the seven genre feature films that will vie for nomination in the visual effects Oscar category. They are MGM’s “Casino Royale”; Fox’s “Eragon,” “Night at the Museum” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”; Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”; and Warner Bros.’ “Poseidon” and “Superman Returns.” Three of these well deserved films will get the Academy Award nomination nod.
If Pirates doesn’t win it’ll be a gorram crime.
As much as X-Men sucked, the scene where Dark Phoenix and Xavier are facing off was pretty amazing.
Really, special effects all look the same to me; it’s just how they are utilized that looks better or worse. My thoughts:
Casino Royale- didn’t notice much other than (spoiler) the thing with the car, which was pretty surprising.
Eragon- The actor made poor guesses where the CGI Dragon was and physical contact was avoided because they couldn’t pull it off well.
X-Men- yeah, lots of debrix/crap flying around between the psychics and plenty of fire for phoenix. Nothing Brilliant.
Pirates- pretty beautiful scenery. However, I think the tentacles/squid were used so much I lost my sense of illusion and began studying the texture/shinnyness rendering.
Superman- Pretty smoothly blending of art deco and modern. Lots of physical model useage helped here. The “New Krypton” was a bit much but “Bullet in the eye” was awesome, and its Superman, so you expect this stuff anyway. I just wished Routh could’ve acted better- this gets my vote.