Every Oscar batch contains its share of snubs and no-shows, and the 2011 nominees certainly have more than their share. Leaving off the likes of Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk about Kevin and Michael Fassbender for Shame is inexcusable, but also lies more or less in the realm of opinion. If you honestly think Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a Best Picture contender… well, we can argue, but at least it will be a legitimate argument.
This year, however, The Oscars have gone beyond the quibbles and particulars of individual nominees to reveal a fundamental flaw in the endeavor. Never before has open scorn for certain genres been so palpable. Never before have so many good movies been dismissed solely because they don’t fit the Academy’s view of “appropriate.” The fact that 2011 was such a weak year for movies – that there were so few films of substance to choose from – only highlights the shocking and openly prejudicial nature of this year’s choices.
Let’s take the Wayback Machine to 2008, when the Best Picture category was limited to just five options. The Academy suffered a huge PR blow when neither The Dark Knight nor WALL-E – widely considered the best two movies of that year – earned a nod. But instead of confessing that stuffy period dramas and self-important message pictures automatically carry more currency than science fiction or animation, the Academy announced a bold new plan. Henceforth, there would be ten Best Picture nominees instead of five, a throwback to the Oscars’ earliest days. Academy President Sid Gains boasted about the new diversity it would bring. "Having 10 Best Picture nominees,” he claimed, “is going allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.” (“Other Oscar categories” means things like Best Visual Effects and Best Animated Feature; i.e., those horrible sci-fi things.)
Cynics pointed out that doing so wouldn’t guarantee more diversity; it would just give less deserving period dramas and message films a better chance of excusing their shortcomings. Nevertheless, that first year, they really seemed to mean it. 2009 saw Avatar, District 9 and Inglourious Basterds among the Best Picture nominees. Sure, District 9 was shut out, Basterds managed only a single Oscar for Christoph Waltz, and Avatar picked up only three technical awards, but at least the Academy made the gesture. In 2010, however, the number dropped to two (Inception and Toy Story 3) and in 2011, the Oscars have left themselves with nowhere to hide. Due to the Byzantine nature of the nomination process, the “ten” Best Picture nominees in 2011 number only nine. That means that they couldn’t find anything from the glut of pretentious aspirants worth listing, so chose to keep a spot empty rather than delve into science fiction, action, comedy or children’s films for an alternative. Despite the likes of Bridesmaids (90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) , Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (93%), The Muppets (96%),Source Code (91%), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (96%) to choose from, Oscar voters deliberately left one slot blank rather than honor any of them. (Furthermore, they used one of the remaining slots for the interminable Extremely Loud: sitting at 48% on Rotten Tomatoes and grossing a paltry $12 million at the box office thus far. Most of the other nominees – more respectable though utterly unremarkable -- rank lower both in critical acclaim and box office appeal than at least four of the five films I cited.)
The brazen prejudice on display goes deeper than that. Only two songs graced the nomination list – an unusual number in any year, since we usually see at least three. Apparently, they couldn’t find room for “Star-Spangled Man” from Captain America, considered by many to be a sure lock. Certainly, it comes from Alan Menken who has enough Oscars to make his own chess set, and remains charming and ebullient while furthering the overall theme of the film. But they can’t put it on the list because they needed to make room for… um… NOTHING! Captain America is a comic book movie of course – a genre that can’t score anything non-technical unless someone dies of a drug overdose – but again, the fact that they would rather leave a spot empty than fill it with something “inappropriate” speaks volumes.
The Academy has more cover in other categories, though the absences still contribute to the pattern. Any chance of honoring the Harry Potter series – with, say, an acting nod for Alan Rickman, who has never received one for anything before – is now officially gone. Andy Serkis once again got shut out for his work because his use of motion capture clearly scares the piss out of the Academy... despite the fact that past performers have received Oscars more for prosthetics and make-up than any actual performing (Nicole Kidman, we’re looking at you). And while Bridesmaids scraped together a Best Screenplay nod, as well as a nomination for Supporting Actress Melissa McCarthy, it was clearly too funny (and therefore frivolous) to warrant a Best Picture spot. (That screenplay nod, incidentally, was more than four of the nine actual Best Picture nominees could muster. I guess writing really doesn’t count for much after all.)
It all comes back to opinion, of course, and no one wants to see the Oscars turn into the MTV Awards by brazenly pandering to box office success. But discounting a great film just because it’s in a popular genre is as bad as discounting one because it couldn’t make any money. The awards are supposed to be about quality – a laughable notion in many ways, but still a worthwhile one for those of us who care about the medium – and quality can be found in all shapes and sizes. With this year’s nominations, the Academy has demonstrated its utter revulsion to that concept… and thus to the idea of good movies in general. They can claim otherwise all they like; the evidence has never been more clear.
I just don't understand how these scmucks can watch the same damned movies every year. How much imagination or creative vision does it take to make a period film or a message movie? It's literally the laziest type of filmmaking imaginable. It's all the same pretentious nonsense. You can bet it'll be the same dance again next time with the Hobbit & Prometheus getting shut out in favor of more pompous historical drama.
the Oscars are not really in the same ''league'' as the sci-fy movies out there and that's why it deserves to be shut-out because it's not the same thing.
You can't expect to compare District 9 Vs The Wrestler or something like that. A freaking alien Vs a real actor?
When movies in that nature are done in large scale movies, then maybe it has a chance (LOTR) but other then that, it's OK if Captain America or Harry Potter isn't nominated for best picture...it shouldn't....never, ever, ever.
Why? It don't belong...it's not the same type of movies...not the same league. The Oscars is for actors and actresses, not who is the cooless or hypess or most importantly, the most popular. It's about one's character defining a movie by the person who does such a wonderful job that you truly believe what you see on screen.
Michael Fassbender SHOULD have gotten nominated for his acting in Shame....Extremely Loud should NOT have been nominated for best movie but, that's the crappywood politics for you. It has become a popularity or need for cash schematics for which people now bribe and push and fight for their movies to be nominated instead of deserving nominations.
That's what I think anyway.
That's pretty much why I don't pay much attention to awards shows. But at least wh have the Saturn awards which are the only ones that cater to our genres of choice. They aren't afraid to recognize motion capture performances and haver awarded such for best actors in the past
This was just a bad year for movies. It was difficult to get excited about any of these nominated films. I am curious about Hugo because Scorsesee made a children's film, which I have to see to believe. Harry Potter deserved some love over its run, not just this year. Source Code was great and could have legtimate Best Picture in my opinion. Bridesmaids, on the other hand, I have not seen and don't intend to see because that kind of humor is not my cup of tea. The Muppets was good, not great. I miss Jim Henson and Frank Oz.
The big issue is that big blockbuster movies are generally being shut out of real contention because they had a big budget, because they made big money, and because they catter to the masses rather than the elite few. There have been instances where sci-fi, fantasy movies received multiple Oscar nominations (Aliens had 7 of them, Avatar had 9, The Lord of the Rings trilogy had 30 of them). But for a movie of this type (sci-fi, fantasy) to bring the best movie award home, it would mean that the academy recognizes that those movies (to name but a few) changed the way movies were done. I guess that Avatar, with its simplistic story but game-changing camera work, visual effects, technology trend setter, were not enough to sway the opinions of the top brass.
Dont get me wrong, many movies get the nominations or awards they deserve but when a movie like Black Swan gets nomimated for best movie, that really shows the lack of openess to other mores deserving movies that fall in the 'sci-fi, action, adventure, fantasy' categories. The Kings Speech truly was a great movie so it was a well deserved win (thank goodness).
We need another win in this category to complement The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Lets hope Prometheus lives up to the hype.
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I disagree with you Jedi. Just because a movie has impressive FX doesn't mean that it wasn't about the actors or that it couldn't have told an important story. X-Men First Class featured people flying around and wierd makup and all kinds of diverting stuff. But at heart it was about the relationship between Charles Xavier and Magneto. First they were friends with the same goal but their differencs of opinion on how to accomplish that goal drove them appart and made them enemies. Both actors put in solid, believable performances.
I believe that if the same actors had done a movie with the same themes, but the goal they were pursuing was providing famine relief in Africa instead of defeating supervillians, it would have gotten noticed.
Imagine that Xavier and Magneto have a shipment of food they want to provide to the starving people but they are frustrated by international regulations and greedy local politicians on the take. Xavier tries to work within the system by following the rules but gets beaten up by thugs and paralyzed for his trouble. Magneto wades into the local underworld and deals with unsavory local characters and uses murder and intimidation to get the food shipment into the country. The happy people have food, thanks to Magneto. And all it cost Magneto was his standards, morals and soul (metaphorically).
It's the same story. Just the details are different.
Do you think my hypothetical movie is any good? Would you go see it? Do you think it would get recognition from the Academy?
If so, why not X-Men First Class?
Great article Rob. Sometimes I disagree with you on some of your articles but this one is bang on.
I too love the Oscars being a big movie fan but always get frustrated with the same crap year after year. My love/hate happened the year I really started appreciating movies and that was 1994. Forrest Gump beating superior films like Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption and Quiz Show was huge slap in the face.
Over the years, there has been a lot of truly WTF Oscar moments. Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan. Juia Roberts and Sandra Bullock winning Oscars for ho hum roles in ho hum movies. And of course the biggest slap in the face was Fellowship losing to A Beautiful Mind as best picture. The voters rationale was "well, we're not giving the Oscar to FOTR because we will award it when the 3rd movie comes out". And that was evident, ROTK was showered with Oscars compared to the first two films and was not the best of the series. Fellowship was the best film of that year and should have won it. I'm not just using genre movies as examples of "well, they will get the Oscar some other time" crap. Another thing I detest is the "well, this actor or actress has been nominated many times and never won so he/she is due" crap. Like Scorcese winning for The Departed. Ok, Departed is a good movie but he should have won for his previous work. Goodfellas.
Don' t even get me started on the Best Song crap. For awhile it was the Disney animated song category thanks to their musicals in the 90s but since they don't do them anymore, we're down to 2-3 nominations per year. I've been disappointed with this category for years. I've seen so many good rock or pop acts release a song for a soundtrack and were snubbed. Having these artists perform these at the Oscars would have made them more exciting. Well...I guess they have the Grammys for that.
I can could go on forever on this topic. Thanks Rob for sharing your opinion.
Kara hit the nail on the head. The best movie of the year should win the oscar, I don't care if it is an artsy fartsy drama, or an animated flick about a banana slug. The academy (I refuse to capitalize the "a") is nothing but a pretentious clicque. I know that going in, which is why I don't ever care about any of the award shows.
And who says 2011 was a bad year for movies? X-Men, HP, Thor, and (the best of the bunch) Captain America alone make it one of my favorite years that I can think of. I think 2010 was worse, 2008 was a tad bit better, but 2012 looks to be one of the best in a loooooong time.
Suck it, oscar! :)
i would watch karas movie but only if prof. x gave magneto cpr at some point.
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One category of the Oscars has always pissed me off most over the past 20 years is when it comes to Best Original Score. Its typically the movies that are nominated for Best Picture that get those nods and much of the time, the score for much of those films tend to stink or is just simply that unimpressive.
I nearly laughed my head of when Social Network (good movie by the way) of won for Original Score last year (Inception was robbed), and while it was a bit original, it was mostly average piano and not much else to say it was really the best score that even a 5 year old prodigy could pull off at a school play. It certainly wasn't on the level of Chariots of Fire and if it was, then it winning it would have made more all the sense.
Now take the same Social Network score or any other nominated film score and put it in the worst movie of the year, it would have never gotten any attention even if the music was that damn good. I'm still baffled to this day on how in the hell a fantastic score that is Batman: Mask of the Phantasm got overlooked. Oh that's right, legit quality has been tossed out the window because we have no idea what the hell constitutes constant legit quality in the eyes of the Oscars.
Now you see one of many glaring problems of what's wrong with the Oscars.