The Revenant – 2015
This movie was full of invisible visual effects, and to be honest, the expert digital compositing for things like landscapes and the like, were on par with, but no better than any other contemporary film. So what was it that earned this movie its Best Visual Effects nomination? What was it that earned it three visual effects awards from the Visual Effects Society? Plain and simple. It was the CGI bear.
You see, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Hugh Glass, is mauled by a bear that looked so photo-realistic that I’d swear it was real. Of course, there were two things I can think of that might have made the difficult effect a little easier. First, the lighting was dim, as the scene took place near dusk in a heavily wooded area. Second, the bear moved so quickly at times, that it was difficult to see. What I mean is that, for example, when we first see the bear and it charges through the underbrush, the camera is shaking slightly, and the bear is only half-seen through the bushes. Then when it is upon him, the camera is in constant motion. The bear often fills up large portions of the screen like a shapeless mass of fur, and is not always facing the camera.
Sometimes we got to see certain details very clearly like a clawed paw, a flash of bared teeth, or a blood-soaked patch of fur. And don’t misunderstand. All those qualities of the scene, the low lighting, the shaking camera, are not bad things. No, they went a long way to increase the intensity of the scene. It was really horrific exactly as it was! In fact, no crucial detail was ignored! Even the bear’s behavior was hyper-realistic. The effects artists clearly studied animal behavior, allowing them to accurately create more than just its movements. I’ve seen enough nature documentaries to know how bears behave, how they attack. The way it clawed and bit, the way it crushed its victim into the ground by raising up and pounding its front paws down, the way it sniffed at the mangled body, was all 100% believable.
Another little detail that sold the scene for me was a strange one. Something that usually annoys me in a movie is when a character is in water or snow, and the filming camera gets droplets of moisture on the lens, as if there is a suddenly visible plate of glass between me and the action on the screen. Here, something similar was actually created by the VFX artists. When the bear is sniffing DiCaprio’s head, he gets too close to the camera, and that plate of glass fogs up with the bear’s breath. But the bear wasn’t real, so they had to have gone out of their way to create the effect. Strangely enough, it adds to the realism of the scene.
Another effect that was a bit less impressive was when Glass rode his horse off a cliff. We see the horse fall and land out of sight behind a pine tree, and we see glass disappear into the branches of the tree. But the shot only lasted for maybe two seconds. I also liked where Glass cauterizes his slashed throat with gun powder. Like much of the film, it was gruesome, but cool to watch. These effects looked great, but were brief, and I think the rest of the movie was mostly drama.