FINAL 2021 Oscar Predictions: VISUAL EFFECTS

With the little bit of back and forth between Tenet and The Midnight Sky with the precursors, two things should secure an Oscar win for Tenet: BAFTA and the film’s production design nomination.

Despite the choice to not add the film to the Academy’s online screening room (that Nolan was really a stickler for seeing the film in theaters despite a worldwide pandemic closing them down), those two factors should be enough to secure an incredible third win in this category for a Christopher Nolan film after 2011’s Inception and 2014’s Interstellar.

Is there an outside chance for a VES winner like The Midnight Sky, Mulan or The One and Only Ivan to upset? What about super longshot Love and Monsters? Probably not as this is the only nomination for three of those films (Midnight, Ivan, Monsters) but we can’t forget the stunning upset that Ex Machina gave to Best Picture nominees Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant in 2015, breaking a 45-year streak. With no Best Picture nominees present this year, that door is slightly cracked open. Ever so slightly.

The 93rd Oscars will be held on April 25 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and the Union Station in Los Angeles.

Here are my ranked final Oscar predictions in Visual Effects.

1. Tenet (Warner Bros) – BAFTA, BFCA, VES
Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley and Scott Fisher

2. The Midnight Sky (Netflix) – BAFTA, VES
Matthew Kasmir, Christopher Lawrence, Max Solomon and David Watkins

3. The One and Only Ivan (Walt Disney Pictures) – Annie, BAFTA, VES
Ivan Nick Davis, Greg Fisher, Ben Jones and Santiago Colomo Martinez

4. Mulan (Disney+) – BAFTA, BFCA, VES
Sean Faden, Anders Langlands, Seth Maury and Steve Ingram

5. Love and Monsters (Paramount Pictures)
Matt Sloan, Genevieve Camilleri, Matt Everitt and Brian Cox

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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