Planet of the Apes never won the Oscar for best VFX: “It’s a crime” for Wes Ball

Nominated three times for the Oscars for best special effects, and yet never a winner…

There has been a long way since the first adaptation of the novel by Pierre Boule in 1968 and Planet of the Apes: The New Kingdom of Wes Ball. The already impressive makeup for the time ended up giving way to new special effects technologies – CGI and motion capture. Wearing a suit and several sensors, the actors bring the monkeys to life like never before. Leading figure of this technique: Andy Serkis. After Gollum and King Kong, the Briton amazed the critics by lending his body and expressions to Caesar – the primate hero of the last trilogy of the Planet of the Apes.

“In performance capture, the way of recording facial movements is evolving all the time, considers the actor and director. The details, the nuances, the acting of the actor which provides the starting point of the animation, the transposition of this real performance into digital creation… We are getting closer and closer to 'TRUE'.“

HAS First, each component of the trilogy is marked by the beauty of its effects and the accuracy of the interpretation. We have notably written for Planet of the Apes: Supremacy : “The monkeys are even more astonishingly realistic than in the two previous films, and the talent ofAndy Serkis and Weta technicians reach a kind of apotheosis here.”

Planet of the Apes – Supremacy: Finally an Oscar for Andy Serkis?

However, despite the prowess of the VFX and his performance, the actor has never been nominated for an Oscar for best actor – and never the Planet of the Apes won the Oscar for best special effects despite its three nominations. In 2012, Planet of the Apes origins was nominated, but saw the statuette go to the team of Hugo Cabret (Martin Scorsese), in 2015, Planet of the Apes: The Showdown lost to Interstellar (Christopher Nolan), and three years later, Planet of the Apes: Supremacy was beaten by Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve).

Today, the master of motion capture is no longer part of the adventure, but the demands for awards for special effects continue.

Recently interviewed by AP Entertainment on the red carpet of the premiere of the latest film in the saga in Los Angeles, the director, Wes Ball (The labyrinth) expressed himself on this sad observation:

“I think people don't understand the level of skill and artistry that goes into creating these films. It's special effects but it's also the production work that we do, all the things that “we create, at different levels.”

However, it’s not for lack of trying. Because since the first part, Fox has been fighting for the recognition of Andy Serkis and the work done on computer-generated images. For example, she published this behind-the-scenes video for the release of the third part:

For Wes Ball, this ignorance is atrocious:

“I think it's criminal that these ape movies never won the Oscar for best special effects. It's crazy! So I did my part to change that.”

With Planet of the Apes: The New Kingdom, perhaps he hopes to change the situation? The first visuals already demonstrate spectacular photography and applied and stunning CGI.

Taking place three hundred years after the death of Caesar, the film explores a new era where apes have taken power and men have returned to the wild, forced to hide to survive. Through an initiatory journey which leads him to discover a past of which he knows nothing, Noa (Owen Teague), the intrepid young chimpanzee joins forces with a young human, Nova, to challenge the authority of a tyrannical primate Proximus (Kevin Durand).

To find out if Planet of the Apes: The New Kingdom deserves a nomination or even a victory at the Oscars, see you in cinemas: the film was released this Wednesday in France.