1994 – Forrest Gump (WINNER)
This movie had a lot of special effects that were, for the most part, excellently executed. They were innovative, bold, and inventive. There were many visual effects in the film that contributed to its Oscar win, but there were two big ones that were earned them the gold statue. First was the effect of inserting a modern actor into preexisting archival footage from the 1960s and 1970s. The second was turning an actor into a double amputee, just above his knees.
They were able to digitally put Tom Hanks into the black and white news footage of Governor Wallace protesting the desegregation of the University of Alabama. As far as I know, it had never been done before. We got to see Hanks shaking hands with LBJ, JFK, and Richard Nixon, and sharing a couch with John Lennon on the Dick Cavett show. For the audiences of 1994, it was incredible, and went a long way to bolster the believability of the fictional story. They didn’t have to find a JFK look-alike. They just used actual footage of the President, himself. And it wasn’t just sharing the screen. They touched, they interacted. It was an ingenious effect!
However, when I watch those scenes with a critical eye, I don’t think the effect has held up well over time, and here’s why. They used CGI technology to manipulate the mouths of the historical figures so they could control the dialogue, and that is where the illusion sadly failed. I think it might have been fine if I wasn’t specifically watching for it, but most of it looked slightly off. It looked too manipulated.
But it was more than that. Look at the Governor Wallace sequence. It was cool how they put Tom Hanks into the crowd, but whereas the entire crowd was standing still, listening to the politician, Gump was bobbing up and down, looking back and forth, and drawing too much attention to himself. The director, Robert Zemeckis, wanted to make sure that Hanks was noticed, as if we wouldn’t have seen him if he had simply been behaving as the rest of the people in the old news footage. He stuck out like a sore thumb, undermining the effect. There was nothing wrong with the effect, itself, but it was ruined by the directorial choice.
The second great effect was Gary Sinise’s missing legs. They were amazing. It was done with the actor wearing blue leggings to make his legs vanish against a blue screen, and some clever CGI work to make the stumps the right shape. There was a shot of him swinging his legs over the railing of a boat and diving into the water. So that his real legs could move through where the railing was supposed to be, the boat railing was also digitally added.
And then there was the amazing Vietnam battle scene. There is an incredible shot where Gump is running as the jungle behind him is be napalmed. The explosions get closer and closer to Gump until the last one looked like it was erupting only inches from his heels. Other than that, the CGI ping-pong balls looked simple, though they were probably a bit of a challenge. But that’s what made all the movie’s visual effects so great. They made all of the hard illusions look so easy.