‘Star Wars,’ ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ Marvel and More Make 2016 Oscars Visual Effects Shortlist

Major blockbusters typically don’t receive much love at the Oscars — superhero films and big, geeky sci-fi and action properties rarely (okay, never) get Best Picture or acting nods, but the Academy does tend to recognize their technical achievements, often including them in the Best Visual Effects category. This year’s shortlist for that particular award is filled with Marvel movies, dinosaurs, and a certain Star Wars film most of us haven’t even seen yet.

THR has revealed the shortlist of 20 contenders for the Best Visual Effects Oscar at the 88th annual Academy Awards, which contains some pretty unsurprising titles:

• Ant-Man
• Avengers: Age of Ultron
• Bridge of Spies
• Chappie
• Everest
• Ex Machina
• Furious 7
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
• In the Heart of the Sea
• Jupiter Ascending
• Jurassic World
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• The Martian
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
• The Revenant
• Spectre
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens
• Terminator Genisys
• Tomorrowland
• The Walk

Fury Road seems like a shoo-in for the final nominee list, but the remaining spots are up in the air. The Martian, In the Heart of the Sea and Bridge of Spies are the big adult-friendly blockbusters that could easily pick up nominations, while I could see the Academy giving one to Ex Machina, too, since it likely won’t — but should — pick up nods in any other category.

As for Jupiter Ascending, Chappie and Terminator Genisys (three huge blockbuster misfires), this is the closest any of them will get to awards recognition — and positive recognition in general.

The Walk may very well sneak up and surprise us in the Best Visual Effects category; our own Matt Singer wrote a great piece on Robert Zemeckis’ latest, which was one of the biggest theatrical events of the year, and yet almost no one went to see it.

And while Vin Diesel seems to think that Furious 7 is a serious awards contender worthy of Best Picture, it’s likely that it’ll only receive nods in technical categories like Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, et al. — if at all.