One would think that after a movie
receives an Oscar, or even a nomination, everything changes. The whole
advertising campaign changes from “See this movie” to “See this movie,
nominated for 15 Academy Awards.” The actors all of a sudden become more respectable,
the film gets more clout, and the film industry thinks that people will all of
a sudden flock to the film. So I ask you this, have you ever seen The Artist? Probably not. But I
guarantee that many of you have seen Bridesmaids
and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Part Two.
I have a very personal gripe with
the 2011 Academy Awards, mainly because it was my worst personal ballot ever.
George Clooney did not win for his amazing performance in The Descendants. Kristen Wiig did not win best screenplay for her
brilliantly written Bridesmaids.
Rooney Mara was completely overlooked for her haunting performance as (in my
opinion) one of the greatest characters ever written, Lisbeth Salander. And, The Artist won best picture – while the
last installment of Harry Potter
(which was also the highest grossing movie of 2011) wasn’t even nominated. So if no one sees the winner of the highest
award in the film industry, and the highest grossing movie of 2011 doesn’t even
score a nomination, do the Oscars even matter?
The Sunday before the 85th
Annual Academy Awards, February 22nd, 2013, Ronald Grover wrote an
article entitled “Who Needs an Oscar? Hollywood Basks in Industry’s Comeback”,
and points out in is first sentence that any competition between studios at this
year’s Oscars ceremony will have nothing to do with the statuettes. Especially
considering that The Dark Knight Rises
and The Hunger Games, both that
topped $400 million at the box office, weren’t even nominated for anything. And
I know this is controversial, and I’m sorry, but both of those movies were
better than Les Miserables, which
came away with 8 nominations.
The fact remains is this: we may
very well be living in an age where the Oscars just don’t matter to your
average moviegoers. There was a time when movie stars were Academy Award
winners AND heartthrobs AND in box office hits. Now, you need only need to fit
into one category to truly make it in Hollywood, and as a result, awards and
accolades are beginning to be less important. It has become clear that many in
Hollywood are creating a division in cinema. Popcorn flicks, like say, the
Harry Potters, or the Dark Knight trilogy aren’t artsy enough for the Oscars,
and good, solid movies that are made on a small budget, like say The Artist, don’t have the money to
garner huge audiences. In an effort to bridge the gap, in 2009, the Academy
announced that they would change the number of best picture nominees from five
to ten, but rather than bridge any gap, they created controversy. In an Entertainment Weekly article from 2009,
Dave Karger interviewed members of the Academy for their take on the new Best
Picture category. While some said it was a “necessary step for the Oscars”,
others said that it “tarnished the industry’s most important prize”. It was
Karger’s hope that movies like the well reviewed Star Trek reboot, or high grossing The Dark Knight would receive a nomination. Others argued that this
was just a way to increase telecast ratings the night of the event, and all
that would happen was the category would be diluted with even more small,
unknown films.
Unfortunately for me, an avid fan
of both Star Trek and The Dark Knight, Karger was wrong. While
some high grossing movies were nominated, they were nominated because of who
was involved with them, not for their content or ingenuity. Avatar, the highest grossing movie of
the year, was nominated for Best Picture, and while it was visually astounding,
lets be real – it was pretty much the story of Pocahontas told with computer animated blue creatures. The Blind Side was also nominated, and
while Sandra Bullock was amazing and the movie was heartwarming, can we really
say it was better than The Dark Knight?
No, we cannot.
In an effort to fix the gap once
again, in 2011 the Academy decided that instead of ten nominees, Best Picture
would have between five and ten. To secure their nomination, a picture will
have needed five percent of the first place votes cast (Kilday). Excellent? The Hollywood Reporter says that while
the new formula is better than simply having all the voters list their top ten
movies, it still doesn’t make way for popular movies that are high grossing,
audience friendly, and also fantastic films. And of course that was evident in
2011, when the only high grossing film to be nominated was The Help – while Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Bridesmaids
were simply ignored. And another year went by when the Oscars had no effect on
what movies people were watching.
It really does pain me to say this,
but I’m beginning to feel like the Oscars really just don’t matter. This year, Argo won best picture, which was an
amazing feet considering Ben Affleck was snubbed (a travesty!) for Best
Director. But, people were going to see Argo
long before the Best Picture title got slapped on the top of its movie poster.
So I ask you – do the Academy Awards have any weight on the film industry other
than a night of glamour and glitz? Do you make any movie decisions based on
what’s nominated and what’s not?
Sources:
2011 Theatrical Market Statistics. Motion
Picture Association of America.
Appelo, Tim. "Why Oscars' 10 Best Picture Nominees
Experiment Failed and What Happens Now." Hollywoodreporter.com.
The Hollywood Reporter, 17 June 2011. Web. 14 Mar. 2013.
Grover, Ronald. "Who Needs an Oscar? Hollywood Basks in
Industry's Comeback."Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 22 Feb. 2013. Web.
Karger, Dave. "Oscar Shake-Up: The Power of
Ten." EW.com. Entertainment Weekly, 03 July 2009. Web. 14 Mar.
2013.
Kilday, Gregg. "How New Best Picture Oscar Voting Will
Work."Hollywoodreporter.com. The Hollywood Reporter, 15 June 2011.
Web. 14 Mar. 2013.
(used for lists of nominees from each year)
http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/
While the way we view Oscar winners and nominees may have changed over the years, I do not think that the Oscars are irrelevant as a radar for well-made films. Personally, I do make an effort to see movies that have been nominated for Best Picture—especially if the movie is nominated in other categories. This year especially I made sure to see as many as I could so I could at least root for my personal favorites. While it is disappointing when movies like “The Avengers” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows” are ignored after doing so well with the masses, I think it puts even more of a spotlight onto the movies that might not have done so well in the box office.
ReplyDeleteThe Academy Awards should be reserved for movies that are considered a work of art, not just a hit movie that was shot well. Not to say that some of the hits aren’t great pieces, but looking at a movie like “The Artist” that won best picture last year, they just don’t compare. To respond with proof to your question, I purposefully watched “The Artist” after it won because I knew that I could rely on the Oscars as a faithful compass to a good film.
However, I don’t think that you can judge a movie based on how many nominations it received during awards season. This is evident by how well “The Avengers” did in the box office—over $623 million (Grover). Obviously you can expect that this action film was written well, shot great, and had amazing effects just by the sheer numbers it was able to drive in. Blockbusters like “The Avengers” typically never have a spot on the Oscar’s stage in recent years—unless, of course, the cast is presenting an award. In the current film climate, I think it is generally accepted that blockbusters and Academy Award winners are very different and both of these types of films mean very different things to the studios.
Looking to the future, it seems as though the studios will be focusing a lot on sequels, according to Mr. Dergarabedian’s forecast of $11 billion in sales for 2013 based on sequels including, “Iron Man 3”, “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” (Advertising Age). This trend has been increasing over the past five years or so and it doesn’t seem like they are going to run out of sequels or books to remake. While these sequels may be the bread and butter for the studio, when the time comes in February next year, each major studio will be competing for a spot to win Best Picture and come home with Best Director. It will always be a huge honor to be nominated and even bigger honor to win an Academy Award. This doesn’t take away from the big blockbusters, but any film involved in the Academy Awards should not be ignored and those passionate about movies and films will not hesitate to peruse the nomination list for titles they haven’t seen yet.
Works Cited
Advertising Age. "Hollywood Eyes Record 2013 With 'Star Trek,' 'Hobbit,' 'Hunger Games' Sequels." 28 Dec. 2012. Web. Mar. 2013.
Grover, Ronald. "Who Needs an Oscar? Hollywood Basks in Industry's Comeback."Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 22 Feb. 2013. Web.
The Academy Awards definitely seem to pose less importance more recently. As the award show adapts to the changes in interests of its viewers (the extension of Best Picture nominations, removal of some categories all together, etc.), the relevance of its outcomes wanes. In the past the ceremony seemed to have a certain level of high-society class to it, whereas now we see a much lighter-hearted ceremony filled with attempts at comedy and grandeur. We can see things like Jennifer Lawrence tripping up the steps of the stage, Seth MacFarlane singing about breasts, and Kristin Chenoweth annoying nominees with Hollywood trivia on their way inside without batting an eye. The type of entertainment we as a society enjoy now has shifted drastically from what it once was, and ceremonies like the Academy Awards rely heavily on drawing in an audience with lame attempts at keeping the viewers interested. Creating buzz seems to be what it’s all about nowadays. Ronald Grover mentioned in his article “Who needs an Oscar? Hollywood Basks in Industry's Comeback”:
ReplyDelete“Lionsgate boosted ticket sales for "The Hunger Games" in what analysts say was Hollywood's most aggressive online marketing push. The studio stoked interest among the film's core younger audience by starting a year early with a near-constant use of Twitter and Facebook, a Tumblr blog, a YouTube Channel, and live streaming of the premiere on Yahoo (Grover).”
Getting social media to play a part in the industry is crucial, and heavily awarding a film like The Artist to stun the viewers or selecting Argo as Best Picture perhaps after realizing their Ben Affleck snub wasn’t received well are examples of just that. Viewers took their concerns to the Internet. Oscar Buzz seems to hold more importance than the Oscars themselves.
However I think there’s a lot more to it than the demise of the ceremony’s integrity. Because we as a society are so connected to each other, we have other ways of being influenced. Before the Internet, what would define a true movie-lover’s hobby lifestyle? Perhaps a few magazines, maybe they would attend an event like a local film festival, but mostly they were reliant on the Academy Awards and the weeks surrounding it to bask in all the film-related gossip they ever wanted. Now times have changed. They could read a particular blog, follow dozens of online magazines, and interact with film critics like Roger Ebert on Twitter, hell they could even interact with the actors and actresses themselves. All of these new outlets have shaped how we discover and judge film.
Why should one be disappointed with the turnout of the ceremony if they could simply turn to the blogs they read and share a mutual agreement about what should have happened with their favorite blogger? There’s a lot more that goes into how people are deciding what makes a movie good, or an actor distinguished than a gold statue nowadays, all do to a combination of the Academy Awards’ decrease in professionalism and the advent of the internet. The fate of film is no longer in the Academy’s hands, and even though they may snub films from the Harry Potter series and award The Artist, it’s not a nail in the coffin. Viewers just seek praise for the films they missed at the ceremony elsewhere.
Works Cited
2011 Theatrical Market Statistics. Motion Picture Association of America.
Grover, Ronald. "Who Needs an Oscar? Hollywood Basks in Industry's Comeback."Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 22 Feb. 2013. Web.