So as I complete the list of this year’s Oscar contenders, I’m going to rank the nominees in each of their individual categories. Starting this frivolous expedition is Best Sound.
Now I remember back in the day when there were two “sound” categories; Best Sound Design and Best Sound Mixing, both of which are completely different jobs. But it’s all audio and film is a visual medium, so let’s just throw them sound men together in one batch.
Going in reverse order:
5. The Batman
(Stuart Wilson, William Files, Douglas Murray and Andy Nelson)
I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Batman as an overall experience. But the sound design was probably one of it’s better aspects. Good sound needs to be immersive, and it shouldn’t call attention to itself. There’s nothing flashy going on here, just solid work from the sound team.
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
(Julian Howarth, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Dick Bernstein, Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers and Michael Hedges)
Avatar is a garbage movie, but a bad script doesn’t take away from the achievements of those that work behind the scenes. And with Avatar 2, you had a whole team that had to create sounds that felt authentic to a foreign planet. And the sound effects here does bring the blue planet to life… only if the script had the same amount of life in it.
3. Elvis
(David Lee, Wayne Pashley, Andy Nelson and Michael Keller)
Musical… Elvis… Baz Luhrmann… Remember earlier when I said Sound Designs shouldn’t call attention to themselves. Well Baz is a gaudy sort of guy, and the sound in Elvis is just as gaudy as it’s visuals… but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You have to consider the director’s style and the subject matter. The only downside here is that the sound team couldn’t fix Tom Hank’s bad accent.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front
(Viktor Prášil, Frank Kruse, Markus Stemler, Lars Ginzel and Stefan Korte)
Ever since Saving Private Ryan, there’s just been something special about war movies and their sounds. You can almost feel the bullets wheezing by you or taste the dirt as it blows up, covering the screen. You feel like you’re in the muck and the blood of the trenches. But where this rendition of Western Front steps up its game is in the quiet scenes. The slight snow falling on frozen branches. The quiet just before hell breaks loose. It’s effective and unnerving.
1. Top Gun: Maverick
(Mark Weingarten, James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor)
Everyone that goes to film school learns that in the original Top Gun they used a mix of animal roars to create the sound of the jet engines, which is a cool story. I’m not sure if they continued that tradition with Maverick, but the jets hear really sound spectacular. Even the way the dialogue is leveled while we’re in these cockpits is impressive. I mean the first 15 minutes there’s not a ton of dialogue, but the mix of audio and visuals do make you cling to the edge of you seat.
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