Not many surprises in the list of films eligible for the Visual Effects category for this year’s Academy Awards as announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. You’ve got films like Jurassic World, Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Tomorrowland and The Martian as well as less flashier films like Bridge Of Spies and Furious Seven.
And of course, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At one point, the franchise was a powerhouse in this category. The visual effect in the original Star Wars netted one of the six Oscars that the film won back in 1978. The remaining two films in the classic trilogy were given Special Achievement Awards for their visual effects, probably in order to give the other films nominated in the Visual Effects category a fighting chance of getting their own Oscar statue. The prequel trilogy did not fare so well, while they were nominated, neither The Phantom Menace nor Attack Of The Clones won the category. Revenge Of The Sith didn’t even make it to the final nominations.
From this list of twenty eligible films determined by the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee, half will be cut before the Academy releases its shortlist of potential nominees later this month. From those ten films, five will be selected via voting by members of the Visual Effects Branch for the actual nominations to be announced January 14, 2016.
The films are listed below in alphabetical order:
- Ant-Man
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Bridge of Spies
- Chappie
- Everest
- Ex Machina
- Furious Seven
- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
- In the Heart of the Sea
- Jupiter Ascending
- Jurassic World
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Martian
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
- The Revenant
- Spectre
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- Terminator Genisys
- Tomorrowland
- The Walk
