AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the fifteenth category of the 14th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. I’m drawing only from films that were either released or playing at a film festival in the 2020 calendar year. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

The winner:
Greyhound fascinatingly constructed a treacherous adventure at sea without the use of any water and made it feel frighteningly real.

Other nominees:
Tenet
The Midnight Sky (read my interview)

Sky Raiders
The Call of the Wild

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 13th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Alita: Battle Angel

The winner:
Avengers: Endgame assembled so many superheroes and incredible odds against them, and every magnificently-created scene was stunningly watchable and exhilarating.

Other nominees:
The Lion King
1917
The Irishman
The Aeronauts

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 12th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Christopher Robin, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Mary Poppins Returns, Ready Player One

The winner:
Avengers: Infinity War featured a character who could create worlds with the snap of his fingers, and the film matched him perfectly by conjuring up an incredible and astonishing number of superheroes and backdrops.

Other nominees:
First Man
Paddington 2
Black Panther
Annihilation

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 11th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Downsizing, Kong: Skull Island, Logan, The Fate of the Furious, The Space Between Us, War for the Planet of the Apes

The winner:
Blade Runner 2049 (John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover) presented a dystopian future with bright, flashy technology standing in stark contrast to the dreary, desolate landscape behind it.

Other nominees:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner, and Daniel Sudick)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Ben Morris, Michael Mulholland, Neal Scanlan, and Chris Corbould)
The Shape of Water (Dennis Berardi, Trey Harrell, P. Kevin Scott, and Luke Groves)
Dunkirk (Andrew Jackson, Andrew Lockley, Scott R. Fisher, and Paul Corbould)

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 10th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
Deadpool, Deepwater Horizon, Suicide Squad

The winner:
Doctor Strange presented a mesmerizing world able to be manipulated by those around it, telling so much of its story with its imagery and its remarkable ability to transform to its powerful characters’ wil.

Other nominees:
The Jungle Book
Star Trek Beyond
Arrival
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 9th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mention:
The Revenant

The winner:
The Walk marvelously and seamlessly recreated a landscape that everyone knows was tragically destroyed over a decade ago, setting it as the stage for its most impressive extended scene.

Other nominees:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Ex Machina
Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Martian

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 8th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions:
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The winner:
Interstellar was simply dazzling, crafting worlds and dimensions out of thin air with stunning vision.

Other nominees:
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Guardians of the Galaxy
Snowpiercer
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 7th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

The winner:
Gravity used space as its arena, crafting a marvelously lifelike story with immense visual and graphic power.

Other nominees:
Star Trek Into Darkness
Iron Man 3

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the fourteenth category of the 6th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order):
The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hobbit, The Impossible

The winner:
The Avengers incorporated heroes and villains from many different stories, and their battles were epic thanks to stunning visual effects.

Other nominees:
Prometheus
Life of Pi
The Dark Knight Rises
Skyfall

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 5th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

The winner:
Super 8 was subtle yet masterful in its presentation of the spectacular, particularly in that magnificent train wreck scene.

Other nominees:
Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor
X-Men: First Class
The Tree of Life

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 4th Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

The winner:
Inception bent reality in scene after scene, making the impossible look gloriously possible through seamless special effects.

Other nominees:
Iron Man 2
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Alice in Wonderland
Daybreakers

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 3rd Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them. Click here to see previous years of this category.

The winner:
Avatar dazzled with the most enticing and visually astonishing vision of a new planet and its fascinatingly conceived and designed creatures.

Other nominees:
District 9
Star Trek
Watchmen
Zombieland

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the sixteenth category of the 2nd Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are pictured in alphabetical order.

The winner:
Iron Man (John Nelson, Ben Snow, Daniel Sudick & Shane Mahan) looked super-cool and managed to overcome comic book movies’ tendencies to look fake and, well…cartoonish.

Other nominees:
Cloverfield (Kevin Blank, Michael Ellis & Eric Leven)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron)
The Dark Knight (Nick Davis, Chris Corbould, Timothy Webber & Paul J. Franklin)
Wanted (Stefen Fangmeier, Jon Farhat, Boris Lutsyuk & Craig Lyn)

AFT Awards: Best Visual Effects

This is the fourteenth category of the 1st Annual AFT Film Awards to be announced. The AFT Awards are my own personal choices for the best in film of each year and the best in television of each season. The AFT Film Awards include the traditional Oscar categories and a number of additional specific honors. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order by film title. Winners will be announced in late February.

**I have omitted descriptions for each of the nominees for a few categories because they have become repetitive. For some of my own invented categories, they will return.**

This category at the Oscars typically contains three nominees, and I have limited it to the same here.

Runners-up:
300
THE GOLDEN COMPASS
SWEENEY TODD

The nominees:
I AM LEGEND
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
TRANSFORMERS