Sometimes it’s tempting to watch a movie just to see big, expensive special effects. Michael Bay, for example, has built his career on the notion that people will line up to see money falling out of the screen (also: lampposts). Often those movies leave you feeling a little dazed and worse for the wear by the end, and so this supercut of the 10 movies running for Best Visual Effects at this year’s Oscars is a sort of cheat sheet, encompassing the thoughtful framing of Arrival and The Jungle Book, the making of zombie Grand Moff Tarkin and baby Robert Downey Jr., and a whole bunch of Marvel shit. Man, Dr. Strange owes Christopher Nolan a sandwich or something.
Academy Awards Visual Effects Shortlist Reel 2016 from Art of the Film on Vimeo.
Compiled by the people behind the Art Of The Film series, the video also cuts in some behind-the-scenes details of these special effects, illustrating just how weird some of the processes are to create these movies. It will never not be shocking watching a man on a green screen, holding a stuffed animal head, pretending to be a living version of that animal, or seeing the immense scaffolding needed to safely flip a car the desired number of times. Some of these movies are quite good, of course, but if you’re in the market to see money falling out of the screen, this video acts as a sort of primer, and, at least this year, is safe for the Bay-allergic.