"Oppenheimer" Was Not Nominated Or Even In The Top 20 Finalists For The Best Visual Effects Award As The Oscars Continue To Make No Sense

I'm not going to claim to have seen as many movies this year as I have in the past, but I'm pretty good at reading the tea leaves when it comes to award season, and I really think that this is going to be Christopher Nolan's year. It feels like it's his time. I think that "Oppenheimer" is going to win a whole lot of Academy Awards this year. Sadly, Best Visual Effects will not be one of them.

I don't think Christopher Nolan will be tossing and turning in his bed at night because "Oppenheimer" won't get nominated for Best Visual Effects, but the principle of this annoys me. When you look at the list of movies that are nominated for best visual effects, they're either CG-heavy or just nominated because they were well-received movies. I didn't see "Killers of the Flower Moon," but I don't think that many people came away from that film, blown away by the visual effects. "Oppenheimer" was a movie that bragged about the fact that I had zero CG shots in it. Movies like that should be rewarded for the effort they put into them.

I argue all the time that film is subjective, and it is. At the same time, when we're talking about things like visual effects, I do think there are objective truths as to whether or not something looks good. The fact that "Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania" which is a movie that has some of the most vomit-inducing visual effects I've seen in a minute, is on the shortlist for the Oscars proves that a lot of Oscar voters simply don't see the films.

This will never happen, but I feel like Oscar voters should write in an explanation for why they voted for what they voted for. It would really separate the men from the boys. If you didn't think that "Oppenheimer" was one of those visually stunning movies of the year, I disagree with you, but only five films can be nominated. Even though I still think that "Oppenheimer" will win many awards, one of the cool things about Christopher Nolan is that he just wants to make great movies. He doesn't make films that are made to be Oscar bait, thought "Oppenheimer" is definitely one of his finest achievements.