Category: Best Visual Effects

2022 – Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

The visual effects for the second movie in the Black Panther series of films were very good, but I think that maybe they could have been better.  I’m sorry to say, they were up against Avatar: The Way of Water.  When compared to that movie, the effects here, kind-of paled in comparison.  I know, I shouldn’t be comparing the two films in a review; I should be reviewing this film’s effects on its own merits; but it is hard not to say, yeah, but look at what they could have been.

Both movies had, as part of the stories, scenes or shots that took place underwater.  But Avatar wasn’t afraid to have those shots in sun-lit conditions, making the images easier to see, more detailed, more realistic, and all the more brilliant for it.  Here, as happens in most underwater scenes in movies, everything was dark, indistinct, and harder to make out.  I mean, I understand, light doesn’t go very deep in the ocean, but that’s what made these effects just good, rather than great.

OK, enough comparing.  The other effects in Wakanda Forever that were actually awesome were those that involved Namor.  We’ve seen characters fly in so many movies, but it was Namor’s method of flight that looked so cool, so unique.  He had wings on his ankles.  You could see them furiously flapping when he wasn’t on the ground.  It was like he was standing on the clouds, running on the air, skidding to a stop to change directions, leaping from one invisible surface to another.  And what’s more, it was a mode of flight that was true to the comic book source material!

So, as you might imagine, the underwater effects were good, as were the above-ground water effects.  The flooding of Wakanda was thrilling to watch.  The water bombs were pentahedron in shape, and looked both fantastical and futuristic at the same time.  Great little design detail.  We were also treated to the character of Riri Williams, wearing an Iron Man-like tech-powered suit of armor, which was pretty cool.  And I also really liked the cool-looking Midnight Angel armor created for Okoye and Aneka.  Great designs for all of it.

But now I have to mention something else that I didn’t particularly like.  So, due to the tragic death of Chadwick Bosman, the character of Shuri, beautifully played by Letitia Wright, took on the mantle of the Black Panther.  I understand that because of all the stunts, acrobatics, and action required of the superhero, it was mostly created using computer-driven CGI.  But I don’t think they got the look exactly right.  In more than one shot, when the CGI Black Panther appeared on the screen, it looked too thin.  Yes, Shuri has a skinnier, lither shape than T’Challa, but she looked way too thin, thinner than Letitia Wright actually is.  It didn’t look right, and it caught my attention in a bad way.  Oh well, that’s a minor complaint.  It was still fantastic, and I think the Oscar nomination was well-deserved.

2022 – The Batman

It took me a while to figure out why I wasn’t terribly impressed with the visual effects in The Batman.  But I believe I now have the answer.  When we go to see a superhero movie, we expect it to be a big, CGI-fueled, visual effects extravaganza.  But this movie was neither an action film, nor was it filmed as a fantasy.  It was a detective movie that was so grounded in reality that the superhero element, at times, seemed like nothing more than window dressing.  There were no supernatural elements, no futuristic technologies, nothing that could not exist in the world in which we currently live.

But this makes sense when put under the light of director Matt Reeves’s vision.  He wanted to tell a story about the early days of the Caped Crusader.  He doesn’t yet have all the fancy gadgets we are used to seeing him use from his utility belt.  The Batmobile can’t sprout wings or turn into a submarine.  Though there was an interesting escape in which Batman’s suit turns into a wingsuit with a parachute attachment.  Thus, many of the visual effects could be practical effects.

But that’s not to say the CGI effects were not used.  Of course they were.  But they were effects that were, in this day and age of filmmaking, pretty commonplace.  There were practical explosions that were enhanced by CGI.  There were sets that were extended by CGI.  There was rain added to scenes using CGI.  And there were digital face replacements, where the stuntmen and women’s faces were replaced with those of the lead actors.  There were also a few short sequences where digital water and flood effects were created, as well as a few electricity arc effects, which were created in computers.  But really that was about it.  There just wasn’t much of it, and in any case, it has all been done before.

Another technology that isn’t exactly new, though I’m guessing isn’t yet the industry standard, was the use of on-set LED screens.  They were used during filming as backgrounds, instead of using blue-screens, where environments and backgrounds are added in post-production.  This was very effective, and has the added bonus of allowing the actors to see and be a part of the environments they are supposed to be in.  I imagine this allows the actors to more readily inhabit the roles they are playing, enhancing the storytelling.

When it comes down to it, I’m not saying the visual effects were badly done.  I just think they were too common, to widely used already.  There seemed to be nothing new, nothing original.  I did a fair bit of reading about the visual effects employed in The Batman, and I couldn’t find anything that made it stand out above any other film, let alone any modern superhero film.  I’m sorry to say that while the visual effects in this film were good, it has all been done before, and done just as well.

2022 – Top Gun: Maverick

This Top Gun sequel had some pretty incredible visual effects.  The Stunt flying, the incredible compositing, the design, everything, was put together to create a film that was far superior, both in the script and the visuals, than its predecessor.  Of course, as you might expect most of the visual effects were all about the fast flying fighter jets, the dog-fights, and the exploding planes.  Not only did they look awesome in motion, but they looked pretty cool on the ground, too.

For example, one of the effects of note in the movie was right in the opening sequence.  The Darkstar, the allegedly fictional jet, which reached a speed of mach-ten.  Even seeing it in the hangar, just the design of the aircraft was pretty cool.  Apparently, that was a real mock-up when we see it before it takes off.  But once it was in the air, it was entirely CGI.  It was partly designed by real engineers that work at Leckheed Martin along with their Skunk Works Division.

And I would never have known that most of the airplanes in the film were composited.  Wikipedia explains it pretty, saying, “In an interview with aviation YouTuber C. W. Lemoine, one of the VFX artists on the special effects team, Fred Lyn, stated that the use of CGI was extensive in the film with the F-14 and Su-57 visualized entirely by computer.  Lyn also said that the F/A-18 scenes predominantly involved a single jet, which was then put through CGI to create the dogfight training scenes that depicted multiple jets.  The four-jet strike force at the end of the film was also created through CGI from a single F/A-18.”  And I would have sworn that they used four jets with four pilots.

But the effects were so much more involved than that.  Of course, even though the actors were put through a boot camp so they would be able to act under extreme g-force conditions while a trained professional pilot flew their jets, the actors also had to learn to operate the camera equipment, which makes sense, since there would have been no room for a camera operator in the cockpits of actual aircraft.  And all that effort was for the purpose of enhancing the realism of the visuals.

But there were also plenty of practical effects in the movie.  It wasn’t all CGI.  There was some pretty impressive actual stunt flying.  In the third act of the film, four jets are flying through a canyon, low enough to avoid enemy radars and missiles, a tactic which put them dangerously close to the ground with mountains less than a hundred feet beyond either wingtip.  If anything went wrong, the actors could so easily have died, and again, I call that impressive.  And of course, Tom Cruise, the main character took on most of the screen-time, doing most of his own stunts, and even doing some of his own flying, as he is actually a pilot capable of flying fighter jets on his own.  Well done, Tom!

2022 – All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of those movies that had some excellent visual effects, many of which I cannot see or identify.  They were in the movie to add to the realism, nothing more.  They were there to enhance the storytelling on a subliminal level.  We aren’t supposed to know that we seeing a visual effect.  And they did their job perfectly competently.  Other than that, though,  they were fairly unremarkable.  The problem is that these kind of visual effects have become commonplace these days, and while I cannot deny that they were done well, I didn’t find anything about them that made them stand out to me, or raise them up above the visual effects from any other film.

You see, in my admittedly small bit of research, I couldn’t find anything that showed innovation, invention, or creativity.  I was more impressed with the visual effects for the Best Picture winner, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, and the visual effects for that movie weren’t even nominated for an Oscar.  The war scenes were done perfectly well, but how often have we seen battle sequences that were just as realistic with period specific WWI explosions and gunfire.  We see expert compositing, digital blood, and interesting lighting effects in nearly every other movie that’s been made for many decades.  I just don’t understand how these effects, while good, were better than any other. 

I read an article about the visual effects in this movie and one of the most impressive things of which the article boasted was the scene near the end of the movie where there was falling snow.  Apparently, they filmed in the morning when it was actually snowing, but the weather didn’t last until the shoot was done, so the continuity was maintained by adding digital snow.  See what I mean?  Good, but not terribly impressive.

Another effect that the article mentioned was the scene where the insane General is ordering his soldiers to go back and fight until the armistice is in effect.  The crowd of soldiers standing in front of his was made larger with computer generated visual effects.  I would never have guessed it, but that is just standard fair for any movie worth its salt.   Why was I supposed to be impressed by that?  What am I missing?

Of course, there were more noticeable effects like the flame throwers on the battlefield, or the character of Tjaden stabbing himself in the throat with a fork, a very bloody and violent effect.  But really I don’t understand, nor could I find any article or review that explains why All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for Best Visual Effects.  Now, I’m not saying that it wasn’t a powerful movie.  I quite agree that it deserved its Best Picture nomination.  But I don’t think I agree with its nomination in this category.

2022 – Avatar: The Way of Water

I have to say, I was thoroughly impressed with the visual effects for this movie.  There were images on display, the likes of which, I have never seen in my life.  In fact, nobody in the world had ever seen anything like it.  True, I’d guess around two thirds of the film was CGI, which many people have a problem with, but when it is done this well, I don’t mind one bit.  The motion capture and facial recognition technologies that were developed and employed were beyond amazing, and made even more so, considering that much of the film took place under water.

Speaking about underwater motion capture, Director James Cameron was quoted as saying, “”It’s never been done before and it’s very tricky because our motion capture system, like most motion capture systems, is what they call optical base, meaning that it uses markers that are photographed with hundreds of cameras. The problem with water is not the underwater part, but the interface between the air and the water, which forms a moving mirror. That moving mirror reflects all the dots and markers, and … it creates thousands of false targets, so we’ve had to figure out how to get around that problem, which we did. … It’s taken us about a year and a half now to work out how we’re going to do it.”

But something else that impressed me was the live action elements, and how they were seamlessly blended with the CGI.  For example, Spider was a fully live-action character.  And yet you’d never know he was acting with computer generated images, even though there were the size differences between the Na’Vi and the human child.  But actor Jack Champion, who played Spider, handled it all perfectly. 

And then there were the new alien environments and all the extremely detailed design elements.  The aesthetics of the film were just incredible.  This includes the physical differences between the forest Na’Vi and the water Na’vi; the forest plants and creatures as compared to those of the sea.  The giant whale-like Tulkun looked just as incredible out of the water as in, even when they were interacting with the large, futuristic water-vessels of the humans.  There was one awesome shot that comes to mind, in which a Tulkun leaps out of the water and lands on the deck of a ship.  It looked every bit as real as the live-action boat it was attacking. 

And speaking of the futuristic designs of the human ships, weapons, and technologies, they were perfection.  Cameron actually made them look just as cool as the CGI alien elements of the film.  I especially liked the U-boats with their harpoon guns.  They were a terrible part of the film’s narrative, but they looked pretty awesome.  The hyper-detailed design of every single part of the visuals was just stunning, and I can’t wait to see what Cameron comes up with in the next installments of the franchise, slated to come out in 2025, 2029, and 2031.

2021 – Dune (Winner)

The visual effects for Dune were incredible.  They were unique, distinctive, flashy, captivating, and just plain impressive.  The movie, as a whole, was certainly good, and a big part of it was the visuals.  The filmmakers paid attention to the wonderful environments required by the narrative, and built the alien worlds in such a way as to make them other-worldly, and yet always grounded in a reality that audiences would be able to accept as real.

In doing a little reading about the film’s visual effects, I learned that the director, Dennis Villeneuve, used as many practical effects as he could.  You see, I’m noticing a bit of a trend in Hollywood, especially in big-budget films.  CGI effects and environments are wonderful.  When used properly, they can make the fantastical or the futuristic as believable as reality.  But CGI is not yet so perfect as to replace actual reality.  Filmmakers seem to be discovering that reality, enhanced by a sprinkling of CGI effects, often produces better results on the screen.  The CGI is still there, but it is used more sparingly.  Personally, I like the trend.

To this end, more complete sets were built, rather than building small pieces of sets that were then completed with large portions of CGI.  The dragonfly-like helicopters that were used, were full scale models that the actors could interact with, with functional cockpits.  They were made to fly with the use of cranes, and the insect-like wings were digitally added in post.  One of the coolest scenes in the film was the invasion of Arrakis.  The massive explosions, the ethereal blue shields, and the raining missiles were visually stunning, and were a carefully constructed combination of practical effects and CGI.

There was plenty of blue-screening used, but something they did that took it to a new level was to use different colored chroma key screens, based on the environments that would be added in post.  Instead of blue or green, they used sand-screens for some of the shots that took place in the deserts of Arrakis.  Gray screens were used for scenes that took place on Caladan.  The result of these different-colored screens was that post-production compositing was much easier, and the finished product appeared much more natural on the screen.

But the one effect that could not really be done practically, was the giant sand-worms.  Their scale, and their completely alien nature would have been hard to believably create practically.  But as for that, I found it pretty impressive that they were able to show the behemoths moving through desert sands like whales swimming through water.  It was clever of them to use water based CGI programs combined with sand based software.  Impressive!  And the massive maws of the beasts filled with baleen were really cool!  Great design, great execution!

2021 – Free Guy

This was a fun movie, and the visual effects really reflected that.  The effects were creative and bright, and just pleasant to look at.  The color palate of the movie was flashy and familiar for anyone who has played video games.  And I liked that as part of the narrative of the film, it was both common and no reason for any concern to see explosions, gun-fire, car crashes, burning people, and helicopters crashing into buildings, just as a typical day.  Things like that were happening in the background of many scenes, and yet were not the focus of the scene.  It was a very interesting dynamic.

The visual style of the movie was perfectly crafted.  One of the great things they were able to do that helped to tell the story was to make it instantly obvious when a scene took place inside the game, and when one took place in the real world.  They used specific colors and lenses, as well as deliberate framing and camera movement techniques that made the differences easily recognizable.

But I think what made Free Guy so unique was the in-game experience that it created.  For example, when Guy puts on the sunglasses, and sees the world through the eyes of a player instead of an NPC, everything changed.  Everything was filmed as live-action, and yet it was an unmistakable video game experience.  All the glowing signs and the digital in-game markers looked exactly like they were supposed to, like live-action versions of video game interface devices.  It was really cool and very creatively designed.

As a side note, I have to say that it was also really awesome to see live action versions of specific video game devices like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2, or a Mega Buster from Megaman.  But my favorite was from the awesome game Portal.  The Portal Gun effect was really fantastic!  I wish they could have found a way to have GLADOS on the screen, if only for an instant!

And the film’s climax was two-fold.  First there was the destruction of Free City.  As the bad Guy, Antwan, takes a fireman’s axe to the servers in the real world, the city starts to digitize and dissolve in the game.  As the buildings begin to crumble and dissipate, the NPC population flees in fear.  Some of the people are even lost along with the environment, and it was a cool effect.

But the other fun effect was the character of Dude!  They digitally put Ryan Reynold’s head on the body of professional bodybuilder, Aaron W. Reed.  It looked just real enough to be believable, but just fake enough to be, as the narrative required, incompletely created and thrust into the game before it was ready.  It was brilliant, and if truth be told, slightly creepy at the same time.  Well done, everybody!  This was a fun movie with fun visual effects.

2021 – No Time to die

Well, I know your first question is going to be, “Why only three stars?”  It isn’t because the effects weren’t good.  In fact, they were very good.  But I’ll be honest, I’ve seen them all before.  It was a typical Bond film.  There were car and motorcycle chases, lots of gunfire, and a lot of things blowing up.  But there was nothing I haven’t seen before.  It was an action/spy thriller, and the action was certainly thrilling to watch.  But I’ve been trying to think of an effect that I haven’t seen in some other movie, and I can’t think of one.

In fact, I did a little looking on the internet for a reason why No Time to Die was nominated in the Visual Effects category.  What I found was an article written by Edward Douglas on Goldderby.com, and a video on Youtube that offered a short breakdown of the film’s effects.  Here is what Douglas had to say.  “Their visual effects work on “No Time to Die” is so seamless that few people will realize how much of the movie relied on those VFX. In order for director Cary Joji Fukanaga to pull off his movie’s stunts without putting his actors or stuntmen in danger, the VFX team could digitally place actors’ faces on stunt performers, which has become the norm in action movies, and save some elements of explosives and gunfire for post-production. The VFX were also used to create and enhance the movie’s real world locations, either adding or removing elements as needed.”

So basically, my assessment was right.  There was some masterful digital compositing and some seamless face replacements.  There were explosions and gunfire, and there were stunts and car chases.  But if that was all, then it wasn’t enough for me.  The two and a half minute video showed some of those things, but not much else.  Although, there was one thing the video revealed that I found interesting.  The scene where the American CIA agent, Paloma, wearing high heel shoes, is karate kicking a bad guy, apparently her legs were CGI.  Who knew?

There were also a few other interesting digital effects, but nothing spectacular or flashy.  There was the shot of a bomb-like device plummeting down an ele4vator shaft, spraying electromagnets onto the walls in a spiral pattern, an effect which lasted about a second and a half.  That looked interesting.  And there was the shot of a super-spy glider deploying its retractable wings, and that was cool.  But again, the effect was brief.  There was just, in general, nothing new or innovative here. 

But I have to ask, since there is no category at the Academy Awards for Best Stunts, are stunts essentially folded into the Visual Effects category?  I imagine they are, and that brings up an argument that I have heard before, more than once.  Should Best Stunts have their own category?  There are arguments for and against, and everyone seems to have a valid point.  But I don’t know the answer.

 The Midnight Sky – 2020/21

I had to do a little research and reading to figure out why this movie was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Visual Effects category.  Honestly, it wasn’t very apparent after I finished watching the film.  Initially, I thought that there was nothing new about the visual effects.  I’m really sorry to say that even after doing my bit of research, I hold to that opinion.

There was no visual effect technique in the film that I hadn’t seen in other films.  Yes, they did them all flawlessly, but where was the innovation?  And they seemed to be no better than what I’ve seen in those other films.  There was the space ship, the meteor shower, the weightless actors, the weightless blood, the CGI space suit helmets, the blinding snowstorm, the CGI wolves, and the devastated globe of the Earth.  And as good as these effects were, I can think of several movies where the exact same effects were featured.  Just watch the movie Gravity, and you’ll see most of these effects, and done better.

And I have to point out that half of the effects like the space ship and the image of the destroyed planet fall under the domain of the production design team.  Yes, the visual effects team brought the visuals to life, but that’s just the end result.  The production design staff did the ground work of planning it all out before it ever got to the digital artists, though I have to say, those things looked great on the screen.

One of the more impressive effects was the digital space suit helmets.  You see, if the actors were wearing actual helmets, they would have been reflecting everything from the filming cameras to the crew running them.  So the actors performed the scenes with no helmets, and the CGI glass was added in post.  This included the appropriate reflections of what would have been behind the cameras.

I also liked the snowstorm effect.  Yes, the effect has been seen plenty of times before, but this one looked incredibly real and fiercely intense.  However, the article I read felt it necessary to say how difficult and impressive the CGI wolves were to create, but to be honest, you could barely see them passing in the background of a few brief shots.  I’m sorry, but they didn’t seem all that impressive to me.

And finally, I liked the design of the space ship.  At least both its interior and its exterior were pretty unique.  The giant spider-web design of the debris shield was pretty cool, and the laser-printed components of the ship’s interior gave the aesthetics a more organic look than most movie space ships.  I also liked how some of the walls were not made of simple metal, but a more fabric-like material.  When a meteor hit the ship, the walls rippled and bounced back into shape instead of getting crushed and damaged.  But again, that has more to do with a great and interesting design than the Visual effects artists.

The One and Only Ivan – 2020-21

I’ll start this off by saying that Disney doesn’t put out bad material.  Their visual effects are always… well, almost always… top notch.  The main draw of these visuals is the talking animals, for which Disney is famous.  The photo-realistic CGI animals looked fantastic.  Like I said, Disney doesn’t put out bad material.  But then, why did I only give the visual effects three stars out of five?  Because, come on, Disney!  We’ve seen it all before, and executed just as beautifully.

I’m basing my opinion on films that have been nominated for Best Visual Effects in recent years that used the exact same tricks.  I saw no difference in the quality of the talking animals between this movie and The Jungle Book or The Lion King, or older films like The Golden Compass or The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Does that make me question the quality of the CGI effects here?  Of course not.  But I don’t get why the same visual effects keep getting Oscar nominations, when the actual quality has not improved, or gotten more innovative, or something!

Keep in mind, this is just my uneducated opinion, but I’d say there were certain effects that I felt crossed the line into slightly cartoonish.  The main character of the silverback gorilla, Ivan, was great.  It was alright if, every once in a while, his emotive expressiveness looked a little too human.  After all, the movie is geared towards children of around five or six years old, and I understand that they might require a more recognizable display of emotion on the faces of the animals.  And Gorillas have nearly human faces that can realistically mimic our facial expressions.

But the baby elephant, Ruby, was the worst offender.  They went too far with the human expressions on the non-human face, and it was mostly in the eyes.  To be sure of my opinion, I went on YouTube, and watched a few videos of real baby elephants.  Ruby reminded me more of the animated Disney feature, Dumbo, than an actual live elephant.  Real elephants have smaller eyes that are much darker and unexpressive.  I understand why they had to make the eyes expressive on a near human level, but it took away from the realism they were trying to achieve. 

And one other thing.  The animals in this movie were too physically flawless.  Part of what makes a painted, or CGI, image is the imperfections that are crafted into it.  If there are none, it looks too much like an artificial image.  And I think all the CGI character in Ivan suffered from this.  They weren’t rough enough to be believable as real animals with human intelligence.  They were too squeaky clean and flawless to make me believe they were real.  This movie could have learned a lesson from the superior effects of the 2012 nominee, Life of Pi.  When I watched that film, I was shocked to learn that the character of the tiger was 100% CGI.  At times, I thought it was real, and I got all the emotion from its realistic face that I needed.