Disney-ABC request for popular Oscar category sparks Backlash

[Colossus1980]

It is interesting that Suicide Squad gets swept under the rug just because the critics and some of the audience hated it. It was also a movie that featured four female leads, two white, one black and one Asian.

SS is not in my top 50 best CBM. But if someone asks what is the most diverse CBM, I'd answer SS hands down. Minorities and females. C'mon pay some respects to SS! King of diversity right here!

[Powerboy]

I like the suggestion that the Academy should have someone in a stereotypical rich person outfit (IE- Mr. Burns, the Monopoly man) read the winners.

"And the illiterate hicks have chosen..."

To be honest, I suspect that would just drop the ratings even more. I don't know for sure if it had an impact but I heard about one of the recent Oscars shows where they actively bashed the MCU. That probably accomplished nothing but, "So, not only are all the nominated movies ones I haven't seen and have no interest in seeing but now they are actively bashing the movies I like. I'm done with this."

[AJBopp]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/awards

Been wracking my brain unsuccessfully for days trying to understand how I got the idea it was not nominated for Best Picture. Somehow I was convinced it was an urban legend.

Just shows that even the dumbest among us can be dumber than we imagine.

[wjowski]

It is interesting that Suicide Squad gets swept under the rug just because the critics and some of the audience hated it. It was also a movie that featured four female leads, two white, one black and one Asian.

...Because it was kinda bad?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

There was a time when the films that did the best were films that Hollywood took risks on. Godfather made a ton of money for example, the original Star Wars was a huge gambit as well. Rocky was a risk but they took a chance and it paid off.

Then studios decided it was safer to recycle IP’s on existing material over and over again and you got a bunch of formulaic films with similar plots with serviceable acting and that became the blockbuster films for the year and the riskier films became low budget affairs that most people won’t see because they won’t get the same type of release. Now you have a bunch of people bitching that films they never saw for nominated over films they did.

[Marvelgirl]

Then studios decided it was safer to recycle IP’s on existing material over and over again and you got a bunch of formulaic films with similar plots with serviceable acting and that became the blockbuster films for the year and the riskier films became low budget affairs that most people won’t see because they won’t get the same type of release. Now you have a bunch of people bitching that films they never saw for nominated over films they did.

Someday we could get back to that if the formulaic movies with similar plots starts flopping. I already value Logan and The Dark Knight getting real Oscar recognition over Black Panther should Black Panther score in this lame category.

[Powerboy]

Someday we could get back to that if the formulaic movies with similar plots starts flopping. I already value Logan and The Dark Knight getting real Oscar recognition over Black Panther should Black Panther score in this lame category.

The category itself is absolutely lame. However, the issue for me is that there have been lame movies that won the Oscar simply for having the "right message" or being in a genre that wins Oscars, auto-wins in some cases. The problem for "Black Panther" is that it has the "right message" but it's in the wrong genre to win an Oscar. Is it really the best movie of the year? Does it really deserve the Best Picture Oscar? No and no. But that has never stopped the Academy before. It's message and genre that influence them or whatever backroom wheeling and dealing. So I might as well just cheer for the movie I want to see win and be done with it.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

To be honest, I suspect that would just drop the ratings even more. I don't know for sure if it had an impact but I heard about one of the recent Oscars shows where they actively bashed the MCU. That probably accomplished nothing but, "So, not only are all the nominated movies ones I haven't seen and have no interest in seeing but now they are actively bashing the movies I like. I'm done with this."

It's different from the point you're making, but isn't the point of the Oscars to reward artistic creativity and let people know which films ARE worth seeing?? People have been hard on the Academy for nominating mostly arthouse films, but the whole point of the Academy Awards is to recognize and reward art.

Maybe a ploy to boost Oscar ratings? Heard that last year's ratings were horrible. Possible the main focus is to grab a bigger audience as opposed to Disney being the main culprit?

Yeah, but I think that they're barking up the wrong tree here. The ratings for last year weren't low because the blockbuster movies weren't represented. As a matter of fact, it was one of the years when a blockbuster, comic book film was nominated in one of the more major categories.

But on the point of representation, Logan scoring a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination this past year is proof that if the film is good enough, regardless of genre, it will be nominated. Logan was a fantastic film and earned its nomination. But I have a sinking feeling that this category means that the good CBMs will probably never actually be considered for the other categories.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

But the main bottom line is that I just bluntly and honestly don't give a damn about most of the movies that get nominated for Oscars in most of my lifetime with rare exceptions. Something like this could at least generate some real interest in the Oscars and give genre movies a chance that they otherwise would never get.

It was nominated. Having not really paid much attention to the Oscars before, I tuned in in 1978 to see Star Wars get best picture only to have it lose when the winner and the other nominees are long forgotten but Star Wars changed the face of movies and was a phenomenon and still is. I think it was the 1990s before I watched the Oscars again and only because someone else in the house was watching them.

Well, the fact that Star Wars was nominated is proof enough that when blockbuster movies ARE good enough, the Academy has no qualms about nominating them. Hell, Fellowship of the Ring was nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Johnny Deep was nominated for Best Actor for his role as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. This past year, Logan was just nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Heath Ledger (posthumously) WON the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Mad Max: Fury Road scored a Best Picture nod a few years ago. There are numerous other examples. So, this idea that the Academy is somehow hostile to popular films is, IMO, not true because there's been a history of them recognizing such popular films.

Having said that though, maybe people here should actually watch the types of films that do get nominated. I love blockbusters, but movies like I, Tonya and Moonlight and Doubt and 12 Years a Slave and Call Me by Your Name and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and Argo are absolutely deserving of the awards they receive. Having seen those films, I can say that they are all fantastic pieces of art that were totally worthy of all the acclaim and praise and nominations that they were given.

I was exaggerating. Relatively speaking, compared to Star Wars, it's a gone and forgotten movie.

Not really. Annie Hall is still probably considered one of the best films of the 1970s and pretty much launched Diane Keaton to stardom. It also won her the Oscar for Best Actress.

The Oscars have a serious problem. Viewership has been dropping, because 'Oscar bait' films are a recognizable genre now: solemn, middlebrow films that aren't particularly entertaining, and that work just as well or better on TVs and tablets than they do on the big screen. Let's face it: 12 Years a Slave is nobody's idea of great motion picture entertainment, and the only way you'd get me to watch something like Still Alice is to give me the Clockwork Orange treatment. This is an attempt to reverse the trend by creating an award for films that people actually go to the theatres to enjoy. I suspect it's too little too late.

Uh, I would call 12 Years a Slave a good idea of great motion picture entertainment because its just a fantastic movie filled with amazing acting and a compelling story. And that is exactly what the Oscars is meant to reward. So, yeah, I'd say that movie deserved its Best Picture win.

And, honestly, the viewership of the Oscars isn't really going to change much with this new category. The viewership declining kind of had nothing to do with which films were nominated. People more often than not watch awards shows to just see their favorite celebrities.

[motherofpearl1]

The Oscars are joke, it's an insiders club. A popular Oscar is good news to me, far too many times genre films are disregarded so this should help getting those films recognized.

Ditto. Many so called 'popular' films feature fine acting and great storytelling yet fail to win because they aren't 'worthy' enough. I've lost count of the Oscar winners who've sent me to sleep over the years!

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The category itself is absolutely lame. However, the issue for me is that there have been lame movies that won the Oscar simply for having the "right message" or being in a genre that wins Oscars, auto-wins in some cases. The problem for "Black Panther" is that it has the "right message" but it's in the wrong genre to win an Oscar. Is it really the best movie of the year? Does it really deserve the Best Picture Oscar? No and no. But that has never stopped the Academy before. It's message and genre that influence them or whatever backroom wheeling and dealing. So I might as well just cheer for the movie I want to see win and be done with it.

Black Panthers problem isn’t the genre. It’s the quality of the film. Let’s say it gets best picture nom. It’s probably going to have the most basic and least interesting directing of any of these films, one of the more simple screenplays, the least creative cinematography, probably on the lower end as far as great acting performances and quite frankly it’s a pretty standard film that’s derivative of a lot of prior films and stories.

In other words it’s just not good enough.

Most years you can watch the Oscar nominated films and whether you enjoyed it or not you can see the quality of the craftsmanship.

[Hall]

Black Panthers problem isn’t the genre. It’s the quality of the film. Let’s say it gets best picture nom. It’s probably going to have the most basic and least interesting directing of any of these films, one of the more simple screenplays, the least creative cinematography, probably on the lower end as far as great acting performances and quite frankly it’s a pretty standard film that’s derivative of a lot of prior films and stories.

In other words it’s just not good enough.

Most years you can watch the Oscar nominated films and whether you enjoyed it or not you can see the quality of the craftsmanship.

To think Logan was nominated for screenplay and could have won if the Oscar actually took comic movies seriously says a lot about how not good enough Black Panther is.


I remember many stand out moments from Spiderman 2 and X-Men 2 that still holds up today and was more creative than anything from Black Panther. The train scene from spiderman 2. Nightcrawler attacking the white house. Definitely a superior cinematography and CGI scenes than anything we got from Black Panther. So even in the technical category aspect. Black Panther is not good enough.


You are right, it is not the genre, it is the quality. MCU movies are just not good enough. I think Marvel movies of yester years - Spiderman 2 and X-Men 2 would have stood a better chance. Those movies had a much higher quality, felt more like independent films and a director's own piece of homework and had stronger screenplays than the slate of derivative MCU movies. Spiderman 2 and X-Men 2 also benefited at a time of no comic movies backlash like what we have now or oversaturation of the genre like what we see now.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

To think Logan was nominated for screenplay and could have won if the Oscar actually took comic movies seriously says a lot about how not good enough Black Panther is.

The very fact that Logan was nominated means that the Academy has taken comic book movies seriously. I mean, people here realize that being nominated alone is still a huge honor, right? So, even though it didn't win, its not like the Academy snubbed Logan. It STILL got the nomination.

[Hall]

The very fact that Logan was nominated means that the Academy has taken comic book movies seriously. I mean, people here realize that being nominated alone is still a huge honor, right? So, even though it didn't win, its not like the Academy snubbed Logan. It STILL got the nomination.

It was never going to win but it was a huge honour and I agree with that. For comic fans regardless of if you like Marvel or DC more, that was winning for us just to be nominated alone. But the Oscars will rather award a simple average gay movie than a brilliant comic book movie.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It was never going to win but it was a huge honour and I agree with that. For comic fans regardless of if you like Marvel or DC more, that was winning for us just to be nominated alone. But the Oscars will rather award a simple average gay movie than a brilliant comic book movie.

I mean, did you see Call Me By Your Name?? Because it was really not just an "average gay movie." It was actually quite a brilliant film and well deserving of its win. Just because Logan didn't win doesn't mean the Academy thought it was undeserving because of its genre. If they really thought that, they wouldn't have nominated it at all. They just thought that Call Me By Your Name was more deserving of that particular award. And, having seen both of those films, I can't fault them for thinking so. Not to say that Logan wasn't deserving because it was. Again, it was nominated.