Why are these things still broadcasted and overhyped. The 2024 Oscars played out about as expected last night with Oppenheimer winning a bunch of awards, obscure movies got undeserved recognition, and the broadcast was a bloated corpse.
There needs to be serious reforms to the Academy Awards if it is to stay around in the coming decade.
Despite being a shell of itself already, the Oscars really sunk even lower in my opinion last night as the broadcast perfectly matched how I felt about most of the movies in contention last night: boring and bloated. And, to be honest, I don’t even know why this little song and dance of an awards show is still on the air.
So, yeah, the Oscars are a boring, bloated mess. What else is new?
Now, I don’t want to come off as if I thought last night’s broadcast was especially bad or anything like that as it actually was one of the most enjoyable over the last decade or so. The producers of the Academy Awards finally got the stick out of their assess (well, somewhat) and ditched their obnoxious, demeaning, and downright elitist production in favor of a more energetic and entertaining “show” as it was in year’s past.
Things like Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance was a nice touch to add to make the production actually entertaining…even though that was maybe 3 minutes of a nearly 4-hour show.
This isn’t my quote, but I saw somewhere (sorry, but I can’t remember where) that last night’s performance was the first time in a while Hollywood “didn’t just honor movies, but actually celebrated them” or something like that. That’s the best of my paraphrasing abilities.
Regardless, the only major headline from the Academy Awards was Oppenheimer won. A lot. It won Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), and Best Editing (Jennifer Lane). And, to be honest, it was really the only film that could have won as it was the only film last night that was a real…well, film.
And here I’m getting into the crux of my argument. I don’t dislike the Academy Awards for being a long, pompous parade for some of the most elite and out-of-touch people in the world, but rather that the award show no longer has any real meaning to the filmmaking genre.
I’m sorry, but aside from Oppenheimer, Barbie, and MAYBE Killers of the Flower Moon, which one of those movies (and the people in them) REALLY deserved to be nominated for the major awards?
Poor Things? Holdovers? Anatomy of a Fall? Zone of Interest? Maestro? Past Lives? American Fiction? REALLY? These movies are the best of the genre today? If that’s the case, then that’s a damming indictment on Hollywood, but I don’t think it is.
In fact, I know it is not as the Academy Awards have (for a long time) been misaligned from the real interest of the average movie goer.
Of course, box office numbers are not everything, but there’s really no better indication as to how beloved and popular a movie is than how it performs at the box office and yet more than 75% of these films didn’t even earn half of their box office hauls prior to the Academy Award nomination announcement date of January 23rd, while others didn’t even earn $100M.
(Warner Bros. Pictures-Barbie-Teaser Trailer)
Sorry if I am putting a price on art, but I just don’t understand how films like Maestro (<$1M), Anatomy of a Fall ($32M), Past Lives ($28M), Zone of Interest ($24M; 24% of domestic box office haul earned BEFORE Oscar announcement), American Fiction ($22M; 38% of domestic box office haul earned BEFORE Oscar announcement), The Holdovers ($42M) can get Academy Award nominations when they clearly are either good films with small audiences or pure Academy Award bait.
I know classic films don’t ALWAYS perform well at the box office at their release (ex: Casablanca), but it is getting to a point where the Oscar voters are just picking the most random, miniscule films that star their friends or ones that are tailored-made for their tastes.
It’s slightly surprising that Oppenheimer won given really popular, successful, and acclaimed films in recent years, such as Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Dune (2021), Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019), Joker (2019), 1917 (2019), Black Panther (2018), A Star Is Born (2018), Bohemian Rapsody (2018), Dunkirk (2017), La La Land (2016), etc. all essentially got robbed by a lesser film (in my opinion, though 2019 did have a really strong field with Parasite as the winner).
Regardless, my complaint against the Academy Awards is that it’s just a crony award show that really doesn’t reward the best film or staff behind said film in a given year, but rather their friends and family.
And, seeing as how many share a similar belief to mine with the 2023 Oscars bringing in just 18M viewers compared to the 40M in 2013, and the show is nearly FOUR HOURS LONG, I don’t see why the Oscars should continue as an entity in its current format.
Images Source: Featured Image: (Universal Pictures) (Oppenheimer | New Trailer (youtube.com))
In Text Image 1: (Warner Bros. Pictures) (Barbie | Teaser Trailer (youtube.com))
