The 10 Biggest Surprises Of The 2016 Oscars

6) Best Visual Effects Goes To Ex Machina, The Cheapest In The Category

One award that Fury Road perhaps surprisingly didn’t win was for Best Visual Effects, with its streak being momentarily broken by the darkest horse in that race. The frontrunners for Visual Effects included The Force Awakens, The Martian and The Revenant along with Fury Road, all high-grossing films that feature well-regarded VFX.

Oddly enough, they were all beaten by Ex Machina, a film which uses special effects sparingly, which cost just $15 million to make, and which grossed not even $40 million at the world box office. Usually the Visual Effects category is reserved for blockbusters like Interstellar and Gravity (the two previous winners), so Ex Machina winning was the heartwarming underdog story of the night.