How Tom Cruise, Katy Perry and James Gunn's bad dog shaped these VFX Oscar contenders

Four of the apical contenders for the 2026 ocular effects Oscar boldly reimagine beloved worlds oregon characters. For “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” the VFX teams created bright, idiosyncratic visions of 2 of the astir celebrated comic-book franchises. The remake “How to Train Your Dragon” translated beloved machine animation to unrecorded enactment and the sequel “Tron: Ares” downloaded elements from a integer domain to the flesh-and-blood world.

Making ‘Superman’ amusive again

For writer-director James Gunn’s warmer, much optimistic instrumentality connected “Superman,” a halfway mantra was “How bash we support it fun?”

“When Guy Gardner [Nathan Fillion arsenic the notoriously caustic Green Lantern] uses his powers, determination is simply a playfulness,” says ocular effects supervisor Stephane Ceretti. “Guy creates oven mitts to seizure this kaiju. When helium sweeps distant the tanks, we didn’t primitively person him utilizing [a giant] mediate finger, but it works.”

For the flying scenes, they employed the “volume” — the caller exertion that surrounds carnal elements of sets with elephantine LED screens displaying the environments of the country (say, different satellite oregon the metropolis of Metropolis, blazing by astatine breakneck speeds seen by a quality successful flight). That prime allowed prima David Corenswet to respond successful existent clip to his filmed environment, alternatively than shooting him earlier a bluish surface and aboriginal superimposing him implicit footage.

For the shocking connection from Superman’s Kryptonian parents that upends his full identity, “We utilized a precise cutting-edge method called ‘4D Gaussian splatting’ that allows america to grounds a existent hologram,” says Ceretti. “We had 192 cameras that recorded them from each antithetic angles — close, acold — astatine the aforesaid time. It had ne'er been utilized earlier successful a film.”

But the ocular effect that champion expresses the movie’s “punk” property mightiness beryllium Krypto, the superdog — oregon superbad dog.

“James said helium cracked the codification — ‘My canine is simply a atrocious canine and Krypto’s going to beryllium a atrocious dog,’” says Ceretti, laughing.

How to bid your dragon for a live-action remake

To person the CG-animated “How to Train Your Dragon” to unrecorded action, each filmmakers had to bash was hazard beingness and limb successful helicopters and find, you know, dragons.

VFX supervisor Christian Manz says they utilized a premix of existent animals arsenic notation points: “Toothless mightiness look similar a achromatic salamander/dragon, but helium behaves similar a feline oregon a panther. A batch of it was astir however to crushed them, go country partners with existent actors. Hopefully radical don’t adjacent deliberation about” the dragons being CG.

Once they seemed real, they had to alert arsenic compellingly arsenic successful the 2010 original.

“A batch of it was driven by the cinematography, moving with Bill Pope,” helium says. “We looked astatine a clump of worldly Tom Cruise has done because, often, it’s being done for real. ‘What would you beryllium doing if you were trying to movie this?’

“Actually flying astir successful a chopper with [director Dean DeBlois] and Bill erstwhile we were reckying [reconnoitering] everything — we wanted to transportation however we felt, zooming done canyons and things. That’s wherefore ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ works, due to the fact that they’re in those planes. In those flying sequences, you had to feel it.”

From the caller ‘grid’ to the existent satellite and backmost to the aged grid

“Tron: Ares” VFX supervisor David Seager had 2 main challenges successful the franchise’s 3rd movie — bringing elements from the updated integer domain to the flesh-and-blood world, and revisiting the limitations of the 1982 original.

“I’ve been calling it ‘visual effects haiku,’” says Seager. “Trying to get to the halfway of what makes it look similar the 1982 “grid”; successful galore cases it was turning things off.

“Back successful the day, you had to truly enactment hard to bash each these fancy techniques. Now it was like, ‘Nope, crook that off, crook that off’ and introducing what we present see errors.”

But however to transplant characters and vehicles from the physics-defying grid to the existent world? “Let’s sprout it arsenic existent arsenic possible. We’re going to spell connected determination and sprout a airy rhythm chase.”

They modified electrical Harley-Davidsons to sprout a “more traditional, spy film, motorcycle pursuit scene,” past replaced them successful station with the futuristic airy cycles. “It looks existent due to the fact that they changeable it for existent — each those small camera operations, adjusting to a stunt performer braking to spell astir a car — then we made it a visual-effects problem.”

Giant steps toward a gleaming retro-future

For the sparkling, retro-future “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” VFX supervisor Scott Stokdyk’s squad painstakingly crafted an alternate New York City blending 1960s architecture with out-of-this-world, “Jetsons”-like futurism. But fans of Marvel’s First Family volition astir admit however “First Steps” expresses the team’s superpowers.

For instance, for Sue Storm / the Invisible Woman’s unit fields and invisibility, Stokdyk recovered that manager Matt Shakman responded to “Things that looked optical, similar aggregate exposures of photography, prismatic light,” resulting successful the archetypal big-screen depiction of Sue’s powers to convey their ground successful light.

For the astir spectacular sequence, with the heroes perilously adjacent a neutron star, the filmmakers checked successful with astrophysicist Cliff Johnson weekly. Among the nuggets helium shared: “There’s a lensing effect that expands things retired and warps things retired successful a precise absorbing way,” which affects our presumption of the stars astir it. “He worked with america connected the colour palette too.”

But the biggest situation successful that sequence, says Stokdyk, was Sue’s zero-G hair. Bemoaning erstwhile techniques and the paucity of usable real-world references, helium laughs and says, “We had our breakthrough erstwhile Katy Perry went up!”