How can the Oscars get their Ratings back.

[BeastieRunner]

Stream the show.

Have more streaming nominations.

People want to watch their favorite movie win, not be told that this certain movie very few people watch is the best and they should feel bad for not liking it.

Easy peasy squeezy.

[C_Miller]

Stream the show.

Have more streaming nominations.

People want to watch their favorite movie win, not be told that this certain movie very few people watch is the best and they should feel bad for not liking it.

Easy peasy squeezy.

So the nominees should be based on the box office? Because that's how you assure peoples' favorite movies will win.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I guess it comes down to the chicken or the egg question. Are studios taking the easy way out by shifting all money to franchise movies and manufacturing demand for them or did the audience tastes change and they only want franchise movies, so the studios are trying to match? In 2019, the top 10 highest grossing films were all sequels, remakes or based on a comic book. That's where the box office is and honestly, I think the only way to get audiences would have been putting Avengers Endgame against Captain Marvel and Joker, but I don't want that.

My feeling is that box-office is largely a self-justifying fictional loop (especially when you factor how notional the box-office returns of blockbuster movies actually are) and that making toy commercials doesn't justify destroying and downsizing the thing that actually puts your guys to work. At the end of the day there's a small number of superhero roles and characters, and the middle-film offers actors and creatives more room to be more people and play different characters.

The Oscars ratings issue is symbolic of that whole issue. How moviegoing has changed. Oscar winners like Forrest Gump or Gladiator or major Oscar nominees like Saving Private Ryan or The Social Network, were movies that had popularity and fame among the public. Those were "must see" movies in their time. They didn't make as much bank as 90s action movies nor were most of them actually great movies but they were commercially successful. The 2010s era saw a total reverse where nobody even sees these movies or hears about them. I think The Social Network losing to The King's Speech was an example of the AMPAS making a bad mistake where the award didn't go to one of the few famous and well known middle-films of the last decade which launched so many careers.

If I am the Academy, I would lean in to not caring about ratings.

I agree. I mean the Oscars is probably one of the few things that's forever. So just write it as a loss and treat it as a form of Tinseltown socialism.

The problem is that the Oscars in theory pays the bills for a bunch of legit things the AMPAS do. The thing that people don't always get is that the Academy is an actual academy, and it's involved in key non-profit stuff like film restoration, film preservation, research and so on. It gives grants to scholars and it has archives with important materials. If the Oscars itself can't pay the bills then it's important stuff like that which gets affected.

...but I think the taste of the general audience has decreased over time and I'd hate to see the Oscars sink to that level of pandering.

I am not sure if that's the case. I mean some of the best films in recent years which are successful is Blumhouse horror. Jordan Peele's Get Out is one of the few non-superhero movies that really caught the zeitgeist in a big way and that was a movie that Oscars should have covered with glory. It captured the mood and favor and appeal of the public and yet it just got an Oscar for screenplay (deserved but it could've gotten more). US by Peele was also a success. Then not by Blumhouse, but MIDSOMMAR is a great film. Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, that should have gotten him a second Oscar and it was a movie of the moment that audiences got into.

So audiences do gravitate to intelligent stuff and they do well commercially. And the Academy's failure to reward films like this is part of the reason it dropped the ball.

[C_Miller]

I also think one of the problems with the audience is that it's a zero sum game. Like it's Best Picture or Bust. I am regularly of the belief that it is an honor just to be nominated. Could the Oscars do a better job at honoring films that are nominated to make that just as much of an honor? Perhaps and I do feel like they really dropped the ball at celebrating the films this year. They didn't even bother to show clips, so the performances that didn't win weren't even featured at the ceremony at all. I don't really have an answer of the best way to fix that, but it's something to think about.

The other problem is that you have 6000 voting members and the ranked choice voting sometimes leads to a pick that is settled for rather than wins. While the numbers aren't released, I feel like that's how we got Spotlight and Green Book. The only way to get the Academy to "pick the right movies" is to shrink that voter base to a committee that gets to choose.

[ed2962]

The Oscars have been losing audiences for years. People have been complaining about how it's long and bloated for over a decade, yet each time the producers tried to either streamline the show or shake up the format, their die hard fans get upset and producers went back to the tried and true. Which of course, kept losing viewers. The fans who remained were really watching for the red carpet and interviews and pomp circumstance. Folks weren't on the edge of their seats wondering who was going to win best picture anymore.

[titanfan]

So the nominees should be based on the box office? Because that's how you assure peoples' favorite movies will win.

I mean if you want ratings, or do you want to keep the credibility of what it's about?

The movie industry has changed in a sense that you the disparity of the movies budget is so vast. You can have movies filmed with 5 figures against movies filmed with 9 figures. Or maybe further break movies into different subcategories.

At this point there are so many blockbuster/action/superhero movies they really could be their own category.

[Mister Mets]

Here's a few ideas.

Start it earlier. It consistently ends pretty late Eastern Time, so it could start at 7:00PM.

I'd recommend allowing Slate Voting for the nominations, so that voters can select three favorites first time around. That could result in a more varied and diverse group of nominees, which can appeal to a larger audience. This way voters don't have to choose between their esoteric favorites, and the big hits, or veteran actors and newcomers.

Very few people see the short films, so two approaches would be to move those awards to a different night, or to promote the films more so that ordinary people care about who wins best live-action short. Theaters could pair the shorts with the film releases, the way Pixar does with animated films.

I would add a new award category for Best Collaborative Performance. Every year there are great characters that do not factor into the acting discussion because it's not one person's performance. This may be voice performances, motion capture, characters from animated films, or trained animals. And these tend to be in big movies that people care about more (and if it's a dog from an indie film, it's a cute dog; people love that.) There was some discussion about adding multiple new categories, but that adds too much time. I would just add one, and Best Collaborative Performance is enough of a catch-all for the roles that require the work of multiple individuals.

There are some really nice montages of scenes from movies. The Oscars should do more of those, with the expectation that it's better than some guy on Youtube with free time on his hands

The ending consistently sucks. They peter out at the end after the announcement of Best Picture. That might be why they tried to end it with the Best Actor announcement, since having a celebrity on-stage is more meaningful to viewers than having a producer. It didn't exactly work out this time, with Hopkins at home in Wales, and Covid restrictions making it harder for him to send someone on his behalf. My suggestion would be to have a two minute trailer for movies for the rest of the year. It would be easy to make a montage based on material the major studios make available. This could be a way to make major announcements, or showcase big projects in the future. It could show off the villain in the next Spider-Man film, Denzel Washington's Macbeth, and whatever the studios want to highlight.

[skyvolt2000]

2018: 26.5 million (The Shape of Water)

2017: 32.9 million (Moonlight)



Things seem to have gone wrong for them somewhere around 2017-2018.

What happened was you had two movies that did not show everywhere.

Only 1,014 theaters showed that movie. I live in 9th largest cities in USA (3rd in Texas)-we NEVER saw that film. NOBDY here knew about that film and were asking what was it when it won.

Of the movies that lost to Shape of Water-I only heard of Get Out. FYI about Get Out-it was slated to be yanked from my theater after opening weekend. When it was number 1-guess who got showing all that week after NOT having a single one for the rest of the month.

Of those films you listed-never heard of Nomadland, Spotlight, The Artist or Green Book.


Folks are not going to be interested when the majority of films are those that no one heard of.

And that is not counting in "Oscars so White" mess. The theaters (especially the small ones) that would show Moonlight and Shape of Water are NOT in POC communities. Happened with Dear White People and Fruitville Station here.

If I am the Academy, I would lean in to not caring about ratings.

They have to care because those ratings help determine how much they can charge for advertisements during the show.

[Powerboy]

Personally, I'm not saying that the movies that win Oscars are not the best choices. But the discussion here is the Oscars getting ratings. To do that, they have to acknowledge movies most people care about. I wonder if movies that once were popular movies and decent Oscar nominees just don't get the same popularity anymore because of the big superhero movies.

Speaking of, I saw "News of the World". Excellent movie. I hope it gets nominated. It would be nice to see a movie I watched and liked get a nomination. Ironically, it might normally be a movie I would not have seen except it's Tom Hanks in a western which I had to see.

[BeastieRunner]

So the nominees should be based on the box office? Because that's how you assure peoples' favorite movies will win.

Top grossing movies have won in the past.

When genre fare like Black Panther or Dark Knight that are brilliantly crafted get shafted, the Academy is basically saying that they know better that everyone.

There have been comedies that should have won.

There have been 2 thrillers and horror movies that were brilliant recently that didn't even get nominated.

The hoity toity clubhouse feel has got to go if they want to be seen as relevant.

Otherwise, they will continue down the path of obscurity.

My personal gripe is that best film usually goes to something in the drama category. There are so many other worthwhile films that deserve the prestige. Great performances aren't just the dramatic side of things.

Celebrate the art of film across the board, not just 1-2 genres.

Give us more best categories I guess is where my rambling is going.

[j9ac9k]

I haven't looked through this thread yet, but the title immediately made me think of two reasons why my answer is "It can't": 1) There are so many options for movies that appeal to different groups now that the idea of one "best" anything in movies doesn't feel authentic or legitimate. 2) The internet had given us so much more access to actors that we can look up a YouTube video or their Insta of them being emotional or authentic or talking about their roles so much more than before that seeing them give an Oscar's speech where they're just reading a list of names isn't exciting or interesting.

[Vakanai]

I guess it comes down to the chicken or the egg question. Are studios taking the easy way out by shifting all money to franchise movies and manufacturing demand for them or did the audience tastes change and they only want franchise movies, so the studios are trying to match? In 2019, the top 10 highest grossing films were all sequels, remakes or based on a comic book. That's where the box office is and honestly, I think the only way to get audiences would have been putting Avengers Endgame against Captain Marvel and Joker, but I don't want that.

Last year I believe thread the needle for films. All the nominated movies made at least 200 million at the Box Office, well at least the ones that didn't go straight to streaming. The Oscars before that I think took it too far into sellout territory with movies like Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther being nominated. The year before that was one of my favorite sets of Best Pictures in recent memory, but the audiences clearly didn't agree as only two films made at least 200 million dollars (Get Out and Dunkirk). But at the end of the day, the one that I believe was the Goldilocks ended up with the least amount of viewers until this year.

If I am the Academy, I would lean in to not caring about ratings. I don't think it's a good idea to pander to the changing tastes of audience. It may make me arrogant or pretentious, but I think the taste of the general audience has decreased over time and I'd hate to see the Oscars sink to that level of pandering.

Basically your argument is that the Oscars should stick to their guns, have a few years left of being about "quality filmmaking", and lose all ratings and relevance in our world and just be some minor thing that no longer even has an audience, is no longer able to afford to be an event, and is just a meh award that gets mailed to some people who shouldn't be that thrilled because literally no one cared that they one.

Truthfully, I agree. I'm tired of the other networks running damn reruns on Oscar night, it'd be nice to just do away with it for personal convenience.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Basically your argument is that the Oscars should stick to their guns, have a few years left of being about "quality filmmaking", and lose all ratings and relevance in our world and just be some minor thing that no longer even has an audience, is no longer able to afford to be an event, and is just a meh award that gets mailed to some people who shouldn't be that thrilled because literally no one cared that they one.

Truthfully, I agree. I'm tired of the other networks running damn reruns on Oscar night, it'd be nice to just do away with it for personal convenience.

Ultimately awards suck, and I agree. The Oscars at this point stand for a kind of film-making that went out of fashion a decade back.

It's not that Forrest Gump is great or anything but at least audiences really liked that film, it had novelty and it had a really popular actor who audiences loved then (and still love to this day). That's the kind of movie the Oscars used to rely on for ratings to draw eyes. Now nobody cares for that kind of film anymore. For young kids these days, Tom Hanks is probably better known for his SNL clips as David S. Pumpkins.

Top grossing movies have won in the past.

Oscar movies used to gross better back then. Movies like Gladiator for instance earned $400mn worldwide.

When genre fare like Black Panther or Dark Knight that are brilliantly crafted get shafted, the Academy is basically saying that they know better that everyone.

There have been comedies that should have won.

There have been 2 thrillers and horror movies that were brilliant recently that didn't even get nominated.

The hoity toity clubhouse feel has got to go if they want to be seen as relevant.

Otherwise, they will continue down the path of obscurity.

My personal gripe is that best film usually goes to something in the drama category. There are so many other worthwhile films that deserve the prestige. Great performances aren't just the dramatic side of things.

Celebrate the art of film across the board, not just 1-2 genres.

Give us more best categories I guess is where my rambling is going.

I agree with the overall sentiment about this. I mean Get Out or Midsommar not getting nominated or winning major awards is the reason nobody cares about Oscars anymore.

Still I am glad Parasite won in 2019, that was great.

[Castle]

The Academy has two options -- go full arthouse (like they did when they gave the award to Parasite last year, as people noted 'the year the actually best picture won best picture') which would chase away ratings for good and alienate it from mainstream tastes completely

Art house has to evolve to semi mainstream. they need to get more people to see their films. I am one of the many or silent majority that has never bought the narrative that art house are only for the smart intellectuals. if this art house films are meant to be the best of cinema from an objective standard, then Hollywood has to find a way to get more people to see them. I will like to see an art house movie winning best picture that can at least a gross of over 100m at the USA Box Office or 70 million at least in 2021 money standard. This is the reason I was so happy with the success of 2019's Little Women.

The fact is the movie business has crunched the "middle film". Time was that A Beautiful Mind, or The Departed earned solid money at the box-office i.e. $100mn+ and as such it counted as a popular successful film that attracted viewers to follow its fortunes at the Oscars. In the 90s you had Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump which also fit that.

Now that's all gone.

Yep. I even made a thread a month back about the 95 Oscars and how the votes till this day seem split between Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump and Shawshank-Redemption. Two of the films grossed more than 100m in the USA alone in 1995. So I wonder where they went wrong? or maybe it is just one of those many reasons the 90s were just better at everything.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...s-Forrest-Gump

-- or go sellout, give Marvel movies Oscars, give Kevin Feige four awards in one night and so on.

Sigh, While I would love to see the nominations expand to Comic film and sci-fi, I think comic films getting nominated era have passed. the best era for comic films that should have gotten a chance, was the 2000s. (2000-2010 best of comic films) the comic films that can stand a chance now is DC films like Joker.

I don't see them opening the door to Kevin Feige movies, because Feige movies are everything the oscars supposedly hate about comic books. in the sense that people only see comic book film as fun theme park advertisement and not deep drama. The Oscars also love to celebrate directors and writers as a singularity of their own work and Feige MCU is way too cooperate.

Basically your argument is that the Oscars should stick to their guns, have a few years left of being about "quality filmmaking", and lose all ratings and relevance in our world and just be some minor thing that no longer even has an audience, is no longer able to afford to be an event, and is just a meh award that gets mailed to some people who shouldn't be that thrilled because literally no one cared that they one.

Truthfully, I agree. I'm tired of the other networks running damn reruns on Oscar night, it'd be nice to just do away with it for personal convenience.

But when they were sticking to their guns with quality filmmaking. they were getting big ratings. I think the problem is that after the controversy of Oscars so white, they academy panicked and just rushed to change many things without overthinking. sort of like how WB panicked after the backlash of BvS.

See this is what I keep telling folks, especially those that claim to be adults and are meant to have sound wisdom. letting social media, the internet and twitter mob dictate your life is dumb and will start a snowball that will end up destroying you.

[Castle]

Top grossing movies have won in the past.

When genre fare like Black Panther or Dark Knight that are brilliantly crafted get shafted, the Academy is basically saying that they know better that everyone.

There have been comedies that should have won.

There have been 2 thrillers and horror movies that were brilliant recently that didn't even get nominated.

The hoity toity clubhouse feel has got to go if they want to be seen as relevant.

Otherwise, they will continue down the path of obscurity.

My personal gripe is that best film usually goes to something in the drama category. There are so many other worthwhile films that deserve the prestige. Great performances aren't just the dramatic side of things.

Celebrate the art of film across the board, not just 1-2 genres.

Give us more best categories I guess is where my rambling is going.

Please not with black panther. I beg you. that movie was not brilliantly crafted. it is not different from the other mcu movies, it's very cooperate than crafted and the story is not even as strong as thor 1 , which it copies , the themes are not even as present as the first xmen movie and the technical aspect was bad not as good as TDK this is the proof.



This movie is not Oscar material , not with this sort of visual style or generic story telling.
I know this is all MCU POV but please in the world of film making with no bias, Black Panther is no where near as crafted as X2 or Spiderman 2. Marvel films of 20 years past. Those were actually Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi personal films and the Oscars loves personal directed films.