But, again, that should have nothing to do with VFX. Unless anti-human is the name for a new CG program.

You can say the same thing comparing Avatar to RotF as you did when comparing The Golden Compass to TF1.

Avatar: Aliens are obvious CGI on an obvious CGI world
RotF: Aliens are blended seamlessly into a physical world

 

No offense i did not like the film Avatar. Here's for ROTF

 

While I highly enjoyed Star Trek, no doubt that ROTF should be the third film on that list. Definitely wouldn't win, but at least nominate it after the travesty two years ago (which I consider an even bigger snub than The Dark Knight's lack of wins). So glad to see Up getting the recognition it deserves, though. Glad that the Academy isn't restricting such an amazing movie to just the Animated category.

 

... because they were animated. Everytime you have a CG critter in a movie, it has to be animated. That's how it works.

 

^Think he means the D9 aliens were more realistic, and that the Avatar Navi were more cartoonish and more obviously CG animated.

 

Hardly matters. Avatar will get just about every Oscar this time around!  

 

Um, wasn't Avatar done by WETA?

Um, that was already "revolutionized" 4 years ago in Pirates 2: DMC. And Davey Jones was far more impressive in the realism department than anything in Avatar.

Frankly, I thought Avatar's CGI was unimpressive. The movie looked like a PS3 game FMV. The only visual gimmick that was noteworthy was the heightened integration into 3D viewing technology.

 

Yay for District 9, Hurt Locker, UP, Star Trek and Inglourious Basterds for being nominated.

 

I'm still not sure of how Avatar revolutionized anything. The motion capture? It didn't really look much different than a lot of stuff I've seen in video games in recent years (it looked better being CGI instead of in-game graphics, but as far as the animations, it was pretty similar). And the fact that it looked fake for a large portion of the movie doesn't help.

To me, ROTF was easily the most impressive in terms of visual effects, with District 9 being 2nd. I may even give Star Trek the nod over Avatar.

 

Honestly, I think District 9 has the best effects of the nominees but we all know Avatar will win.

And I think ROTF's were the best of the year.

 

WETA and Image Engine did District 9.

WETA and ILM both worked on Avatar.

ILM and Digital Domain worked on Star Trek.

At the level of film making that directors can tap into now it's sort of the norm to have several companies working on the effects at the same time. So no matter which way awards might fall effects companies still work together while at the same time seeing if they can't top what the other guys are doing.

 

It doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, ROTF entertained me even after the 10th time watching it. I loved the movie and that's all that counts.

 

A couple of thoughts:

The supposed Hollywood/critic conspiracy to bring down Michael Bay and Transformers is ridiculous. The nominations are picked by the Visual Effects branch of the academy who are all vfx industry professionals and probably worked on all the films put forward for consideration.

People seem to be forgetting that ILM isn't a tiny little company created for Transformers. They're the biggest and most highly regarded effects house in the world with a 30 year history and 15 visual effects Oscars.

Star Trek is a heck of a lot more complicated than some people are giving it credit for. As a simple comparison, Star Trek contained roughly 1000 effects shots whereas ROTF only had 600.

 

This please. All of it.

I too detest the Transformers films - particularily the recent sequel - but am man enough to realise that the efffects work is stellar. Personally I think Transformers moment for Oscar glory should have come for the first movie, where it was clearly the more inspiring work.

However, having been snubbed for that, Michael Bay has produced a sequel widely considered to be one of the most poorly constructed, critically mauled films of recent history. Whatever bias this illustrates (and lets face it, it does) I can understand that the panel might feel that rewarding a film that ignores almost every aspect of quality filmmaking in favour of VFX is a A Bad Thing. Not to mention that (as Subotnik points out above) there may be contributing technical factors that we are not considering.

District 9 on the other hand used it's VFX to enhance an already excellent piece of filmmaking.

 

Forget about the Oscars. A TF movie winning an Oscar equals to free advertisement for Hasbro and Hollywood will never do that.

 

I loved star trek, but I'm surprized they beat out ROTF. Giant frikin robots for god's sake! ST was great for what it is, but one transformation sequence knocks that off for the awesomeness of VFX!

 

the oscars mean nothing, its a bunch of arrogant idiots that vote for them, Avatar is years passed rotf in gfx, but district 9 and star trek, really, thats the best they came up with what a joke

 

So.... perhaps they're pissed at Bay for making them work so damn hard, so they don't vote for his movie as revenge.

Wow, that came off as a huge slight against the animators. I menat it as playing off the "Michael Bay is a screamer" stories from people who've worked with him.

 

The academy members are usually pretty high up in the ranks and not the kind of people to get shouted at by Michael Bay. To get in you need to "have achieved distinction in the arts and sciences of motion pictures", be sponsored by a couple of current branch members, go through a vetting process by the executive committee of the branch you want to join, and then finally be signed off and invited to join by the Academy's board of governers.

 

I think the mainquestion that needs to be asked is:

" Does Michael Bay even care if he gets an award or not?"