About a week and a half ago, the 97th Academy Awards came and went. In the Best Visual Effects category, Dune: Part Two took home the statue in a pool of nominees containing itself, Wicked, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, and Better Man.
It’s that last one, however, that stands out more prominently than the rest. Where the other four nominees are disciples of strong IP filmmaking and vast, fictional landscapes, Better Man takes place in London and every other locale that British singing-songwriting icon Robbie Williams happened upon throughout his life. The only deviation from this real-world setting? Williams is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee. Too niche a choice for theatrical audiences? Perhaps, but Paramount Plus subscribers are quickly learning what they missed out on.
Per Ridley Scott-helmed legacy sequel to the Ridley Scott-helmed historical epic of yore (yore, in this case, meaning the year 2000).
Better Man, led by a mo-cap Jonno Davies as the aforementioned monkey, follows the exorbitantly colorful life and career of Robbie Williams from his early days in the boy band Take That, through his solo career, all the way to the violent battle he now famously waged against his past selves at the Knebworth Festival. It’s a completely factual story in every way that matters.
Better Man was the only correct choice for the Best Visual Effects Oscar, full stop. It might be true that Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi spectacular brought Frank Herbert’s galaxy to stunningly evocative life on the big screen, but the achievement of Better Man‘s visual effects defy the boundaries of what such effects are expected to achieve.
To reiterate, Better Man is a biopic about Robbie Williams, meaning that this is not a film that needed these particular visual effects. The other four nominees, meanwhile, could have only existed if a hefty VFX budget was in play — Denis Villeneuve would never have made the Dune films if the sandworms were hand puppets (although, that’s a movie I’d love to see).
This illuminates the fact that Better Man made an active, conscious choice to present itself with these visual effects, which subsequently invites the question of why Robbie Williams is being portrayed by a CGI chimp here. Why indeed? The artist’s circus chimp-like impulse to entertain? The indictment of celebrity culture as “less-evolved”? The base distance from realism that allows Better Man to weave in dream sequences and aerodynamic choreography far more seamlessly? Yes, yes, yes, and more.
Better Man‘s visual effects don’t just look good — they were dreamed up precisely so that the film would be able to get its thematic identity across at all. They’re every bit the storytelling device that the script and the camera are, and a better world would have seen Better Man honored for such a feat in a more official capacity.
Published: Mar 12, 2025 05:30 pm