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Oppenheimer Benny Safdie.jpg

Why Was 'Oppenheimer' Snubbed From the Oscars Best Visual Effects Shortlist?

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 8, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 8, 2023 |


Oppenheimer Benny Safdie.jpg

The top 20 finalists for the Visual Effects Oscar have been notified they have made it to the next round of voting, and there is one glaring omission from the party. The Academy has specific rules for what qualifies as a potential nominee, and the nominations for various tech categories are ultimately chosen from a shortlist. The finalists for the Best Visual Effects Oscar were announced this week, and the twenty movies contending for those five spaces including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quanumania, Godzilla: Minus One, Napoleon, and Rebel Moon. What’s missing? A big bomb. Oppenheimer was not included. And yes, this is kind of ridiculous.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was crowned an Oscar favourite long before anyone saw it or the Barbenheimer frenzy defined the year in pop culture. It’s earned well over $900 million at the box office, grossing far more than the likes of Fast X and Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. Its reviews are some of the best of Nolan’s career. Everyone also lavished praise on its effects. While a lot of it was practical, VFX was still implemented, and the results were gorgeous, overwhelming, and kind of terrifying.

Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema have talked extensively about those in-camera effects, which might have given some people the idea that there are no CGI shots in Oppenheimer. That’s not true. As The Hollywood Reporter noted earlier this year, ‘there’s a sizable amount of largely “invisible” visual effects work’ on display. The movie’s VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson (not that one) points to the scene re-creating the Trinity Test as an example. ‘In all, the film contains roughly 200 visual effects shots, including the practical effects shots.’

The definition of VFX seems to have been distilled down to ‘lavish green-screen and CGI in blockbusters’ through the gaze of the Best Visual Effects category, and that’s a huge wasted opportunity. It eliminates so many films using modern and old-school tech to tell their stories. I struggle to imagine how you could watch Oppenheimer and deem it less worthy of celebration for its craft than Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a dull and ugly film clearly made by overworked VFX teams adhering to a studio’s limiting demands. CFX existed long before CGI.


I think the reason for this might be more political than artistic. According to a report from Cartoon Brew, ‘Nolan and Universal decided to not credit the majority of the film’s VFX crew.’ DNEG, the studio that did those VFX and has worked with Nolan several times, credits over 160 people. Alas, not crediting VFX crew is depressingly common (and is another reason many workers in this field are seeking to unionize.)

I think Oppenheimer should be nominated here, and I think the entertainment industry needs to stop d*cking over its VFX workers. Do you want another summer of strike? Because this is how you’ll get it.