Oscar Predictions: Best Visual Effects

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.

I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.

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Previously:

Introduction & Best Documentary Feature

Foreign Film
 

Glossary:

BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards

VES - Visual Effects Guild's Award

The Visual Effects precursors are pretty good indicators for the Oscar. The BAFTA award has at least nominated the eventual winner 19 of the last 20 years (currently 18 in a row). In that time, it's matched winners with the Oscars 14 times. The Visual Effects Society Awards are tricky. They give out many awards, ranging from animated performance to created environments to effect simulations. The most predictive for the Oscar is the award for Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. Of the 15 ceremonies before this year, that award has featured the Oscar winner 13 times and had matched the Oscar winner 10 times. The other VES categories can be useful, to get a temperature of things in general. This year, they don't say much that I didn't already know.

Blade Runner 2049

BAFTA - Visual Effects - Winner

VES - Visual Effects (Live-Action) - Nominee

There have only been three years with VES and BAFTA results that looked like this year (different winners that are both Oscar nominees). Two of those years (2014, 2007), the winner of the BAFTA (Interstellar, The Golden Compass) also won the Oscar. The third year (2011), neither the BAFTA winner (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2)  nor the VES winner (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) went on to win the Oscar. It went to Hugo that year as part of a wave of technical Oscar wins. All that looks great for Blade Runner 2049. It won the BAFTA award. Two of those three years I mentioned (2014, 2011) the other Planet of the Apes movies were nominated and lost. The Oscar voters just don't care about that franchise, I guess.

War for the Planet of the Apes only has this one nomination. Meanwhile, Blade Runner 2049 has five nominations, all in technical categories, setting it up for a wave of wins like Mad Max: Fury Road and Hugo.

War for the Planet of the Apes

BAFTA - Visual Effects - Nominee

VES - Visual Effects (Live-Action) - Winner

The only hope that War for the Planet of the Apes has is if Oscar voters pick it as a make-up call for not awarding either of the previous movies. Such a thing isn't unheard of (look at Return of the King in 2003). It's not common though. Getting even a second Oscar nomination would've gone a long way for me to believe War has a chance to win this.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

BAFTA - Visual Effects - Nominee

VES - Visual Effects (Live-Action) - Nominee

A good rule of thumb for the Star Wars movies is to look at the first movie in a trilogy as the high water mark for Oscar success. A New Hope got 10 nominations with 6 wins, only to see that drop to 3 nominations and 1 win for The Empire Strikes Back then four nominations (with no competitive wins) for Return of the Jedi. The Phantom Menace got 3 nominations followed by only one for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. With that in mind, The Force Awakens got 5 Oscar nominations and failed to win the Visual Effects Oscar despite winning both the VES and BAFTA awards. The Last Jedi dropped to 4 Oscar nominations and didn't win the VES or BAFTA awards.

Kong: Skull Island

VES - Visual Effects (Live-Action) - Nominee

No BAFTA nomination hurts a lot. The movie got a bunch of VES nominations but lost all of them to either Blade Runner 2049 or War for the Planet of the Apes. I can't even give it the hope of a surprise win like Ex Machina in 2015. It's widely agreed that Ex Machina won because the Oscar voters picked their favorite movie, not the movie they believed had the best visual effects. Skull Island is not the critical front runner of this group. It has no hope.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

VES - Visual Effects (Live-Action) - Nominee

Fun fact: This is the first year that the VES Award nominees matched all the Oscar nominees. Perhaps that helps War for the Planet of the Apes' odds. It does nothing for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.