Claws out: Visual Effects Society slams Academy for Oscars dig at Cats
After a skit ridiculing the special effects in the critically reviled flop Cats at last night’s Oscars, a catfight is now brewing between the Academy and the Visual Effects Society.
To present the award for best visual effects, Cats stars James Corden and Rebel Wilson arrived onstage dressed as their characters from the film. They quipped that as cast members of the Razzie-nominated musical, “nobody more than us understands the importance of good visual effects”.
The line elicited some of the biggest laughs of the night but not from the Visual Effects Society (VES), made up of more than 4,000 members, who released a statement today to criticise the Academy’s scapegoating.
“The best visual effects in the world will not compensate for a story told badly,” the statement read. “On a night that is all about honoring the work of talented artists, it is immensely disappointing that the Academy made visual effects the butt of a joke. It demeaned the global community of expert VFX practitioners doing outstanding, challenging and visually stunning work to achieve the film-makers’ vision.”
The Oscar-winning visual effects animator Hal Hickel also referred to it as a “dumb joke” on Twitter.
The VES statement also made a dig at another skit, from Julia LouisDreyfus and Will Ferrell, where the pair jokingly misunderstood the role of the cinematographer and the editor. “Moving forward, we hope that the Academy will properly honor the craft of visual effects – and all of the crafts, including cinematography and film editing – because we all deserve it,” it read.
Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical was one of 2019’s biggest disasters, reportedly losing studio Universal over $70m. It was rushed to meet the deadline for
Academy consideration but instead, led the nominations for the Razzies this past weekend, the annual “celebration” of the year’s worst films.
The visual effects of the film were heavily criticised and within days of release, a new version with tweaks was sent to cinemas worldwide. In his Vanity Fair review, Richard Lawson called it “a 110-minute journey into a computer graphic phantasmagoria, revolting and briefly alluring, a true grotesque”.
At last months’s Baftas, Wilson also quipped that the black half of her dress was made up form an outfit she wore “to the funeral of the movie Cats” while Corden claims not to have seen it but has “heard it’s terrible’.