The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects tends to recognize movies that the Oscars otherwise overlook: the sci-fi epics, the technological breakthroughs, the big-budget extravaganzas. It’s where Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, Donner’s original Superman, and the recent films of Christopher Nolan—to take just a few examples—have managed to find some awards success.
A new supercut of every Oscar winner for Visual Effects, compiled by Burger Fiction, thus works as a gorgeous, fascinating journey through film history, with Best Picture winners like Ben-Hur and Forrest Gump placed right alongside niche fare and superhero blockbusters. There’s a remarkable line of winners from the ’70s, particularly—featuring King Kong, Star Wars, Superman, and Alien back to back—that showcases classic cinema at its most visually audacious.
Since the turn of the century, we’ve seen the academy prioritize big budgets over the boundlessness of imagination. But as the final stretch of this supercut indicates, we’re seeing a welcome shift toward more inventive, if financially scaled-back, productions once again. In 2013, Gravity emerged as the lowest-budget victor in 10 years—and that was before last year’s champ, Ex Machina, became the lowest-budget champ, in real dollars, in more than 50 years. Looking ahead to this month’s Oscars, then, it’s worth wondering: Might a surprise out-of-the-box winner—say an animated movie like Kubo and the Two Strings—walk away with the prize?
