What film do you think deserves to win an Oscar for Best Visual Effects this year and why?

Return of the King? The Hulk? Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions? X-Men 2? Am I missing any others that could be nominated?

Revolutions.

Well, the Hulk was the most insanely difficult CGI character ever even attempted on the big screen, as well as the most technically impressive. But it won't win. ROTK will win. But the best, most seamless visual effects I've seen this year are from Master & Commander and Pirates of the Carribean. Neither one will win though.

I haven't seen ROTK, so I can't comment. But it will win.

I think the Hulk is the first title character which is 100% CGI right?

But ROTK will win because everything looks pretty.

i think ROTK will win bc it has MORE THAN just good CGI. it has incredible model work/bigatures, great sets, etc.

Well...my Nominations list would be:

Hulk
Matrix Revolutions
ROTK
Pirates of the Caribbean

For Win:
I would pick Hulk...it looks incredible...by far the most difficult and best looking CGI creation yet...
but ROTK will win...and its okay...cause theres some amazing work...but I noticed quite a few flaws in the WETA work...whereas the ILM work in Hulk was flawless imo...
POTC and Revolutions had the most seamless FX of the year though...so they have a chance...

Yes, you're missing Pirates of the Carribean.

Reloaded and Revolutions had some incredible composite work. Blue screen didn't look so painfully obvious in those movies, and that shot of Morpheus slicing the Escalade was seamless. The CG for the Zion battle was incredibly well done also, and while they didn't look great in motion, the CGI humans looked incredible as well, better than the CG humans that the LOTR movies have pumped out. Looking through the Zion Archives on the Matrix site made me appreciate the amount of work the teams went through to build all the sets.

The Hulk looked incredible, but other than that, the movie didn't have as many special effects as the Matrix movies or ROTK. While POTC had some very effective and well implemented effects, there was nothing too dazzling about them.

How about Terminator 3? Large quantity of high quality FX in that film.

I think ROTK is going to win. While it was slighly hit and miss in spots when it was going strong it beats anything else of the past few years hands down.

I'm hoping Pirates can sneak in with a win. The effects were seamless, especially during .

Although I can appreciate the scale of work in ROTK (and the previous films as well) there are too many shots where you can clearly see sub-par effects.

It's not the number of effects in a movie that should be judged, but the quality of them.

After all it's "Best Special Efects" not "Best and Most number of Special Effects"

Wow... I guess I'm in a minority...I thought the POTC effects were just average... nowhere near as cool as HULK (except, the hulk dogs totally blew). I think that T3 had some pretty damn good visual effects but overalll I'd give it to Return of the King. Sure there are a few parts where the effects are only OK, but for the most part, the work is fantastic... ie. when it's good, it's better than anything else this year... so for that reason alone, it'd be my pick.

MATT

One thing that should get Revolutions the award is because of one shot:

*Spoiler*

The end when they do the Bullit Time punch...Its in extreme slow-mo...rain...lightning...and then he punches Smith and the movement of his skin and flesh and jaw and hair...and the camera is only like 6 inches from Smith's face...OMG...no other film has ever gotten that close to that one shot.

This reminded me of the slow-motion shot right after Edward Norton pulls the trigger with the gun in his mouth at the end of Fight Club

yeah kinda...

Return of the King will win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects because Oscar voters tend to vote for the best movie nominated, rather than the best effects.

Hence when TTT won over AOTC...and when The Matrix won over TPM...and Gladiator won over Perfect Storm...Oscars are merely a popularity contest...

I dunno. For me it's a toss-up between the moonlight f/x in Pirates and Shelob. If it comes down to it though, Shelob just looked awesome.

TT had better effects than AOTC. AOTC was essentially an animated feature film with a few human actors thrown in here and there. The Matrix deserved to win over Phantom Menace as well. Gladiator, however, didn't deserve to win (best visuals). However, I did feel A.I. had better effects than Fellowship of the Ring. Also, Minority Report should have been nominated in place of Spider-man last year.

Return of the King deserves to win it this year despite a few bad shots, nothing else really compares to the scope and integration that RotK tried and achieved. Minas Tirith, The elephants, Gollum, some of the battles, and several other things put the effects work in RotK leaps and bounds ahead of the competition (despite a few poor shots here and there), not to mention every single shot in the movie is essentially a special effect - due to the size/heights of the characters in respect to each other and their surroundings (Hobbits, Elfs, Rangers, Wizards were all different heights, and I don't mean by the actors being slightly taller or shorter).

Revolutions had solid special effects as well. Though that hand->face punch is nothing extradordinary, and the overall movie was, well.. yeah.

Reloaded came off as a bit too cartoony in many of the scenes and Pirates of the Caribbean - while seamless with transformation - had relatively poor animation.

Hulk wasn't anything new really. The lead wasn't 100% CG since a good portion of the movie was Eric Bana and not Hulk. Also, many of the shots of Hulk made him look way too much like a little toy running around, but the closeups were phenomenal.

I dunno, I just think there's more to visual effects than CG. The Matrix films have been good throughout but Reloaded just recycled the original's effects, Revolutions did have the relatively impressive attack on Zion as well as a cool ship effect shots, but I think the movie sucking will hurt it's overall chances.

T3
ROTK
Matix Revolutions

T3 had the best effects IMO, but ROTK will probably win because of the amazing way that so many different elements are woven into a near-seamless package.

no matter what the film was...AOTC had better FX than TTT...in terms of sheer quantity...and quality...its seamless in AOTC...TTT had some shoddy FX...and Gollum looked like crap in a lot of places...they fixed Gollum in ROTK though...same with TPM and Matrix..

AOTC was far from seamless, many times it looked like the actors were walking on a picture instead of being in it... many.. many times.

T3 had a few good effects - but wasn't really anything special, but not anything bad either.

X2 also had some good effects as well.

I think Mystic River had the best visual effects....... the great acting seemed so great to do with the effects.... LOL

I don't know who will win the Oscar because the voters frequently give it to the most popular film, etc.

But by far the best effects I've seen this year were in POTC. Terrible movie, but the effects were supperb.

I don't understand all this praise for the POTC effects. Nothing in the movie looked particularly great to me, the ghost pirates looked cheesy.

In terms of both technical bravado and artistic quality, ROTK is the best for me hands-down--just think of the epic shots of Minas Tirith, and that's only one small part!

However, I do acknowledge that the Matrix films, especially Revolutions, had some superb effects work. I have not seen The Hulk. X2 had some very good work in it as well, and people seem to be forgetting that.

Master and Commander. Some excellent effects work in that -- excellent because you don't even realize it is effects.