Chancellor Agard/ Entertainment Weekly
Blade Runner 2094‘s futuristic version of LA has been rewarded.
John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects at the 2018 Academy Awards Sunday.
Starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Ana de Armas, the sci-fi film pics up 30 years after the original Blade Runner and follows new blade runner Office K (Gosling) as he investigates a mystery that leads him right to Ford’s retired blade runner, Rick Deckard. Although Nelson, the film’s VFX supervisor, had better technology at his disposal than the original film did, there was a conscious attempt to not overuse digital effects.
“In the new movie, we had the technology to do things better. But so many films have been based on Blade Runner, with new technology, and all they do is add tons of stuff. It’s overkill sometimes,” said Nelson in an interview with Deadline. “We really wanted the film to feel analogue… The point is that we had the new technology, but we consciously reined in our effects a bit, and I think we’re a better film for it. CG does shiny things well, but we didn’t like shiny things in our movie. We liked dirty, wet, grimy.”
Blade Runner 2049 beat out Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and War of the Planet of the Apes.