Oscar Visual Effects Shortlist Has Some Interesting Omissions

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences have announced the 10 films on the shortlist for consideration for this year’s Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. The ten films, listed below, that have made the cut are by and large pretty solid films in terms of special effects. Though I do confess some surprise that The Lone Ranger made the list as I found some of the work in the film’s overly-long climactic action sequence to be not as good as some of the film’s preceding set pieces. But what really stands out is the omission of certain films, specifically Man Of Steel, Ender’s Game and The Wolverine. All featured some rather sterling work and admittedly I am not sure outside of perhaps The Lone Ranger what film you could take off this list to make room for one of these three.

The next steps for these ten films comes in January, when selected sequences from each will be screened for voting members of the Academy’s Visual Effects branch. From those votes will come the final nominees for the category that will be announced on January 16, 2014 and voted on by the entire Academy membership.

Here are the films that have made the short list –

• Elysium
• Gravity
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• Iron Man 3
• The Lone Ranger
• Oblivion
• Star Trek Into Darkness
• Thor: The Dark World
• Pacific Rim
• World War Z

The 86th Academy Awards will be held on March 2st, 2014.