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Oscar 2019 Winner Predictions: Visual Effects

Year in, year out, Oscar voters have tended to judge this category in favor of the film that least makes them feel embarrassed to support.

First Man
Photo: Universal Pictures

Now that Black Panther has broken through whatever “glass ceiling” is in the way of a genre that already makes obscene amounts of lucre demands to be taken seriously as an art form, Oscar bloggers seem ready to see the cultural dominance finally carry over to this category as well. In this case, not Black Panther, which wasn’t nominated, but rather Avengers: Infinity War. Precisely one out of the approximately 850 Marvel Universe movies has won the Oscar visual effects: Spider-Man 2, and that was way back in 2004, when Disney’s conglomeration of acquisitions weren’t ruling the monoculture in an endless array of sequels, reboots, crossovers, origin stories, and animated spinoffs.

Marvel franchise fatigue wasn’t even a thing when Oscar first started thumbing its nose at the superhero parade, and it’s curious to see everyone predicting the drought to end this year, despite the very long history of resistance to the glut. They may end up being right, as Infinity War just about clubs you over the head with its maximalism. (Though if voters look just a little to the left, they’ll see one of the finest deployments of that very characteristic in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.) But year in, year out, Oscar voters have tended to judge this category in favor of the film that least makes them feel embarrassed to support, hence awards for Life of Pi, Ex Machina, Interstellar, and Blade Runner 2049. First Man more than justifies the vaguely patronizing category title of the award the Visual Effects Society just gave it, “supporting visual effects,” but until high-concept, big-budget dramas for adults have disappeared like half the cast of Infinity War, the smart money remains on the smart movie.

Will Win: First Man

Could Win: Avengers: Infinity War

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Should Win: Ready Player One

Eric Henderson

Eric Henderson is the web content manager for WCCO-TV. His writing has also appeared in City Pages.

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