Why the Oscars still aren't giving genre films the love they deserve

Tue
Feb 2 2010 4:27pm

Why the Oscars still aren't giving genre films the love they deserve

Even if you weren’t glued to the announcement this morning, you’ve probably heard that the nominees for the 82nd Annual Academy Awards are in. And the news is deceptively good for science-fiction fans: among the newly expanded list of Best Picture nominees, no less than four movies—Avatar, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, and Up—are genre titles.

Of course, this ebullient crow of geek victory depends on considering Inglourious Basterds as sci-fi because it is an alternate history (though the film itself does not contain any other conspicuous sci-fi elements) and saying that Up qualifies on the strength of a floating house and dogs wearing collars that translate their barks into words. Let us assume, for the moment, that both films do count as genre. Four out of ten nominees for Best Picture are sci-fi films! Now do we declare our supreme geekish victory?

Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled that the Academy was forced to acknowledge box-office and critical darlings like District 9 and Avatar. Up has earned the distinction of being only the second animated film—and the first since the Academy banished animated movies to their own category—to earn a Best Picture nomination. (No offense to Up fans, but Wall-E deserved this cross-over recognition more.) Avatar, with its end-of-the-year, continuing-into-the-new-year surge, even had a lot of people predicting that it might take home the Best Picture Oscar come March 7, 2010.

Don't count on it.

As ever, there are two basic ways to examine the chances of a given film winning Best Picture. One: look at the pre-Oscar award count for each movie. For every award in a major category that Avatar took home—Best Picture, Best Director, etc.—it lost one to The Hurt Locker. If it comes down to recognizing a gritty, gorgeous film about soldiers defusing bombs and a gorgeous if empty film about blue kitty people, the Academy is going to side with The Hurt Locker. The fact that mostly-liberal Hollywood has been thus far unable to put forth a critically successful film about the Iraq war will only tip the scales in The Hurt Locker's direction even further.

Up received a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, which was the only film category at those awards in which it was nominated. This is a none-too-subtle reminder that, were it not for the ten nominations to fill, Up would still only have been nominated in that category at the Oscars as well. District 9 might as well forget any hope of recognition, given its track record. One of the surest kisses of death for Oscar recognition has to be something called a “Most Promising Filmmaker” award, of which District 9 has won several for its director, Neill Blomkamp. Nothing says “Better luck next time” like an awards resume that reads like a kindergarten report card. (“Neill is so friendly with all the other kids!”) Inglourious Basterds looks like a lock on Best Supporting Actor, given Christoph Waltz’s dynamite performance. However, it failed to score any love for its only other major nominations in previous ceremonies—Best Director, Best Original Screenplay—so there is no suggestion that it will win any respect from the Academy, especially not when those other categories feature two more nominations for Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker.

(Worse, depending on how votes split for Best Supporting Actor, Stanley Tucci’s eerie, perfectly shudder-inducing portrayal of a pedophile murderer in The Lovely Bones could rob Christoph Waltz of his heretofore assumed victory. While the award would go to a genre film regardless, it would seal the statue-less fate of Inglourious Basterds.)

The other way to handicap the Oscars is to look at the other nominations each Best Picture nominee has received. Here, the picture is even bleaker. Avatar, apart from the Best Director nomination—which will be a squeaker, but which is thought to be Kathryn Bigelow’s already—has no acting or script nominations despite the ludicrous rumors that Zoe Saldana might be recognized as Neytiri. (Admit that you were kidding yourselves, Avatar fans.) The nominations for Visual Effects, Sound Editing, et al.? Kiss of death. Avatar will win them, but that’s all that it will get, trampling other, better (there, I said it) sci-fi films, which make up the bulk of those nominees, in the process. No more King of the World speeches.

District 9 scored an Adapted Screenplay nomination—its only other major award—against three other Best Picture nominees, all of which were lauded more for their stories than ever District 9 was. I expect there will also be some hostility towards a film that was adapted from a smaller film versus one adapted from a book or other literary work. (This is the Academy. Expect them to be snobs. Always.) Inglourious Basterds and Up have no chance against The Hurt Locker, end of story.

There you have it. The best science-fiction films can do are awards for special effects; for Best Some Kind of Picture (but not the Best Picture); or the occasional respect shown an actor who outdoes himself despite the perceived disability of being in a genre film. (The Heath Ledger Effect, if you will.) It’s an honor to be nominated, they say. You know what else the Academy said? It said that the only reason they included more films in the Best Picture category was to recognize (read: allow studios to promote their films as Oscar nominees when they do DVD releases) films that were otherwise squeezed out of serious contention. The key word there is recognize, not award—as in, “We recognize that you like these movies, we just do not recognize that they are actually worth our time.” Speaking of time: the Academy has assured weary watchers that the ceremony won’t be a whit longer for the additions, indicating how little honor they actually intend to bestow on the five extra films they nominated. So even if Avatar were to make a dent in the disdain for our beloved genre films, it wouldn’t be a real victory for nerds. It is just arm-twisting for ratings. Puts those four-out-of-ten Best Picture nominations in perspective, doesn’t it?

For my part, I expect that The Hurt Locker will win Best Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. Avatar will sweep every statue remotely related to effects, including all those sound awards I can never suss out. I am not sanguine about Up’s chances to win Best Animated Picture if only because I fear there might be a vote split. There were plenty of great animated films nominated this year (enough to nominate five instead of three, as they did last year), so the blessing of a Best Picture nomination might be a curse in disguise. The apex of geekery will be, if we are very lucky, a clip show of nominees for those techie awards. It is the only glimpse you will get of J.J. Abrams Star Trek (nominee: Makeup, Sound Editing and Mixing, Visual Effects), so be sure to set your DVRs.

What do the rest of you think?

Dayle McClintock has been a misanthrope about the Oscars since Titanic beat out L.A. Confidential for best picture. Avatar losing to The Hurt Locker would almost be sweet revenge. (Except for the part where it cuts off her geek nose to spite James Cameron. Because that makes sense.)

1. ThePendragon

view all by ThePendragon | Tuesday February 02, 2010 04:37pm EST | amended on Tuesday February 02, 2010 04:37pm EST

Well Avatar honestly doesn't deserve best picture. As pretty as it is, in the end it's a pretty generic film that blows you away with eye candy. District 9 on the other hand really deserves it's nomination. Sad it doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning.

2. rezendi

view all by rezendi | Tuesday February 02, 2010 04:45pm EST

Call me a sky-eyed optimist, but I like to imagine that if The Hurt Locker wins all the major awards, this is best interpreted not as a sign that the Academy's voters hate genre films, but a sign they thought it was, you know, a better movie.

Perhaps, rather than being unjustly snubbed, Avatar is in fact getting exactly the love it deserves. I think it's a great movie. But I also think The Hurt Locker is better.

3. Torie

view all by Torie | Tuesday February 02, 2010 04:58pm EST

I'm supremely disappointed that Moon didn't get a nod, even in the expanded list.

4. Milo1313

view all by Milo1313 | Tuesday February 02, 2010 05:26pm EST

I hate to quibble with you, but I don't think you can rightly use that terminology with films to mean what what it does in fiction. In film every movie is a genre film. That's how they pitch it, as a movie within a specific genre or blended genre. Alternate History doesn't exist as a film genre because literally every film would be alternate history if you think about it. That's why Inglourious Basterds is pitched/marketed as Drama and War, not as Alternate History.

So, if you want to be picky about it, there are only 3 Sci-Fi films nominated across the board (ignoring shorts and foreign flicks): Star Trek (Action-Adventure and Sci-Fi), District 9 (Drama and Sci-Fi), and Avatar (Action-Adventure and Sci-Fi). And note that the Sci-Fi part is usually pitched/marketed as the secondary genre. It's easier to get picked up if you market as Action-Adventure or Drama than Sci-Fi. I get what you're trying to mean in your blog post, but you're mixing two very distinct terminologies and I think that's cheating on the math a bit.

More to the point, in my opinion neither District 9 or Avatar actually deserve to win. Neither does The Blind Side or most of the other films on the list. The Hurt Locker should win, because as fun as the other movies may have been, they weren't really the "best" of the bunch. This isn't 2007 where you have a ton of movies that all could be the best. This was a year of great kids' movies and good adult movies. We have to pick the best of a B/B+ bunch, and I think The Hurt Locker is it. There's a big difference between arguing over whether No Country For Old Men is better than There Will Be Blood and whether The Blind Side is better than The Hurt Locker.

5. trinityvixen

view all by trinityvixen | Tuesday February 02, 2010 05:40pm EST

@Torie: Yeah, you'd think that a moody, depressing indie flick that just happened to be set on the moon would be right up the Academy's alley. I think we're the only ones who saw it.

@2,4: Perhaps I'm not expressing myself correctly, then. The point is not that genre films should be preferenced or that less good films should win, it's that I'm not at all convinced that the victory for geeky movies that has been loudly trumpeted since the announcement that there would be 10 Best Picture nominees...has happened. It will still be a dog-and-pony show where they pretend they're not giving it to favorites. This year, the favorite happens to live up to the hype (The Hurt Locker seems to be the genuine article), but it hasn't been in years past to the exclusion of genre things that were better. I'm calling BS on the Academy for their stunt, that's all.

And there's no defending The Blind Side.

6. Seamuscooper

view all by Seamuscooper | Tuesday February 02, 2010 06:15pm EST

The Oscars always go to movies that make people in the industry feel that they do something worthy and important. Thus ultimately forgettable, high-minded dramas like Out of Africa and A Beautiful Mind are always going to win over not only genre films, but comedies. (I haven't seen the Hurt Locker, so I'm not saying it's forgettable, though it does seem to be high-minded, so I'll pick that for this year.)

7. Hatgirl

view all by Hatgirl | Tuesday February 02, 2010 06:59pm EST

@trinityvixen Nope, I saw it too. That makes three of us. Dammit, I loved Moon. I really hoped it would get a nomination of some kind.

8. Milo1313

view all by Milo1313 | Tuesday February 02, 2010 07:11pm EST

I get you now, Dayle, and you're so right about the Oscars. Even people in Hollywood (of which I was one until fairly recently) know that the Oscars are meaningless in terms of "best", but they drag in huge revenues and it's basically free advertisements for the studios, actors, films, etc. so they'll never go away.

If you want to really gage the "best" of the Oscars I suggest only watching the screenwriting, editing, and sound awards...sometimes the costume design and makeup awards if the noms aren't period-piece top heavy. Because of the specific nature of those categories (and because the voters in those categories are less influenced by and less necessary to the politics of the bigger categories) the winners tend to reflect real skill over who brought in a higher profit margin. Editors are better at looking at the quality of the edits as they pertain to themselves rather than how well the movie did opening weekend. Likewise, screenwriters are better at seeing the script for what it is and are less influenced by how an actor portrayed the script. For Best Actor/Actress/Supporting, it's hard for other actors to just see a good performance - they tend to vote by the way the movie made them feel rather than the individual skill. And Best Picture/Director are entirely about cheerleading and profits. Sadly, I think the only time you get to see the "best" picture is in the shorts categories

9. Kadere

Tuesday February 02, 2010 07:50pm EST

The Academy is made up but a couple thousand people in the industry. It's a glorified circle-jerk where everyone in Hollywood congratulates themselves on just how good a job they've all done in being "open-minded" (see Crash) or "pushed the medium" (see Lord of the Rings). The entire purpose of the Academy since it's inception has been to get people to pay for these movies they consider to be "the best." And different institutions in Hollywood do the same thing. The AFI makes up big lists of the best movies in history, but only so you'll go and buy that copy of Citizen Kane you'll watch once to see what all the fuss is about.

Now that's not to say that they don't pick some good films. The Hurt Locker was great, No Country for Old Men was great, There Will be Blood, Brokeback Mountain, Lord of the Rings, Mystic River, The Departed, etc. But what it does mean is that the Academy could care less which film was really "the best" of anything. "The best" is an individualized concept where I think "the best" movie this year was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and you think "the best" film was District 9, and in the end we're both just as right as we are wrong.

What makes nominations for films like District 9 and Avatar and Star Trek and Harry Potter important is that it gets people who wouldn't have seen those movies in the first place to check them out. It gets people to think about those movies as not just b-movie sci-fi/fantasy flicks, or as popcorn mass entertainment, but as pieces of art that are just as worthy of recognition as The Hurt Locker or Precious. And by doing that the Academy is helping make sci-fi/fantasy movies a marketable and enjoyable genre that gets respectable talent behind it instead of leaving us with Sword and Scorcery IV: Luketar's Vengence or Star Wars Episode XIII: Han Solo Buys Socks.

The fact is 10 years ago none of those movies would have been made, and certainly not with the talent and money these films were made with. But by continuing to at least recognize films like these it helps ensure that in coming years more talented directors will go to those genres and perhaps give us geeks something original, deep, and done well enough to deserve a Best Picture award. And then finally Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson won't be alone up there, and won't have turned into nothing but an empty promise.

10. subwoofer

view all by subwoofer | Tuesday February 02, 2010 07:56pm EST

Kadere- I agree completely. All those award shows, the Grammys, Golden Globes, etc. are all composed of a bunch of millionaires patting each other on the back. Who cares. And then these guys are going to have the nerve to plea to Joe public for money for Haiti. If a only a hundred of the A list actors toss $1 million in the kitty each, or 5% of what they made in their last movie, you would have $100 million and that is nothing to sneeze at.

There are bigger fish to fry in the world than worrying who wins what for something I will not remember 3 years from now.

Woof™.

11. Ursula

view all by Ursula | Tuesday February 02, 2010 09:55pm EST | amended on Tuesday February 02, 2010 10:00pm EST

Alternate History doesn't exist as a film genre because literally every film would be alternate history if you think about it. That's why Inglourious Basterds is pitched/marketed as Drama and War, not as Alternate History.

Not really. By that standard, all "real-world" fiction would be alternate history.

In genre, alternate history has a specific meaning, where it is science fiction in the Bujold sense of "fantasies of political agency", but set in the past, exploring specific technological or political changes to the past.

Genre-wise, that is different from historical fiction, stories involving fictional characters or fictionalized situations set in the historic past.

12. cranscape

Tuesday February 02, 2010 09:56pm EST

I hope Avatar doesn't win. That would be embarrassing. I am not sure how scifi fans could be happy that crappy writing should get any kind of recognition like that. Don't reward it. Who cares if it was embraced by the mainstream. The mainstream embraced The Hangover and those stupid vampire movies yet they aren't up for best picture. If you wanted a victory for scifi you should be sad MOON didn't get a nom. It had around a six million dollar budget yet as far as scifi goes makes Avatar look like a golden toilet.

13. cranscape

Tuesday February 02, 2010 10:03pm EST

>It gets people to think about those movies as not just b-movie sci-fi/fantasy flicks, or as popcorn mass entertainment,

That would work if the right films were nominated. Avatar was a popcorn flick with a big budget meant for mass entertainment and low brain activity. They are recognizing the wrong films and doing the exact opposite of what you seem to want because of it.

14. Kadere

Tuesday February 02, 2010 10:54pm EST

Not only are you discounting the fact that District 9 also received a Best Picture nomination, and making Avatar out to be way worse then it is, but you're missing what Avatar's success and recognition here brings to the genre. Avatar is the most successful film of all time, which means that if Oscar's didn't nominate it they'd really be out of touch. It also means that Hollywood will want to continue to use the technology that Cameron used. It also might attract other directors of Cameron's caliber to make big budget sci-fi films. And unlike Cameron those directors might actually know how to write, and they might actually care about making believable rich characters, and they might also want to come up with their own worlds like Cameron did instead of adapting from existing texts. With this new technology Cameron created directors can now build any world they want in a why they couldn't before. The point of Avatar isn't it's terrible script, and the Academy's adoration doesn't spell future thin stories. What it does is keep the genre alive and pushes it forward into new and exciting areas.

15. Torie

view all by Torie | Tuesday February 02, 2010 11:13pm EST

@ 14 Kadere

A nit: Avatar is not the most successful film of all time. It's not even the top 20. Adjusted for inflation, that's still Gone With the Wind.

Another thing to keep in mind: a lot of the financial success of Avatar was the ridiculous price tag. In NYC a 3-D film costs $16.50, and part of the reason why so many recent 2D films, like Clash of the Titans, are being transferred to 3D is because it's extremely profitable. It's an easy way to make up for lower ticket sales. So if we measured success by "how many people saw it" rather than "how much it made," it probably still wouldn't even be in the top 20. (Anyone got the numbers on that? I'm curious.)

That said: if Avatar's lesson for success is that a weak script, bad acting, a technological gimmick (3D), and lots of money will inspire other science fiction, I'd rather do without it.

16. Kadere

Wednesday February 03, 2010 01:53am EST

I'm well aware that changing inflation can change the list to appear however we went it to appear. The film's either number one or number 21, and even that's incredibly impressive. With or without inflation the film has still made close to $2 billion worldwide.

The fact that the price tag is high only proves the point further. People are willing to cash out $16.50 to see it. The fact that people are paying to see it in IMAX when they could as easily see it in 2D for cheaper only goes to show how much people enjoy it.

Sure if we looked at how many people went to actually see the film and rated excellence of film by that margin Avatar would be very far behind Gone with the Wind or The Godfather, but compared to Hurt Locker? or Up in the Air? or Precious? or Inglourious Basterds? or District 9? Or The Blind Side? or A Serious Man? Avatar would blow them all out of the water. How many people went to see Up in the Air? A little over 2,000 maybe? Most of those movies would be considered disastrous flops by those standards.

Avatar's lesson for success has been the same lesson we've all known since Jaws and Star Wars. People pay big bucks for big visual effects. Story, characters, acting doesn't matter and hasn't since '75. The recipe for financial success is simple plot, relatable characters, and big eye-popping visual effects. The same can be said for classics like Gone with the Wind and Sound of Music as well. Whether you're looking at top grossing films with or without inflation story never matters.

Believing that these lessons will disappear and big popcorn movies like Transformers 3 and G.I. Joe 2 and Avatar 2 and 3 will just go away or won't be successful because they're poorly written isn't the way Hollywood or our planet works. The fact is most people just want to unplug for 2 to 3 hours and experience something new and dazzling, figuring out plots and having deep characters forces them to be engaged when they'd rather relax.

But that's not to say that we can't have both! That we can't have big expensive 3D movies with GOOD acting, and GOOD writing, and GOOD direction. That we can't have engaging popcorn. Avatar's success will only help people who are pissed at it's weaknesses try to make big movies like it that are actually good. I mean Cameron wrote the script in two weeks, he's not really trying with this one, he just wants to show off his new toys. And now we can take those toys and make compelling drama out of them. And that's the point.

17. Robotech_Master

view all by Robotech_Master | Wednesday February 03, 2010 02:59am EST | amended on Wednesday February 03, 2010 03:01am EST

The guy from Moon should have gotten nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

There ain't no justice.

Also: Are you sure that the glasses-rental fees for 3D films get counted as part of the take? They're something we pay separately at my theater. When I had a free ticket voucher, I still had to pay the $2 for glasses rental. Wouldn't seem like that should count since you're not actually paying to see the movie but to rent the glasses.

18. N. Mamatas

Wednesday February 03, 2010 03:40am EST

The important thing is to recognize that shadowy forces whose motivations are nonetheless transparent and, indeed, almost silly, are out to get us.

19. sps49

view all by sps49 | Wednesday February 03, 2010 04:08am EST

I don't remember big visual effects in Jaws. And Star Wars (which should've won over Annie Hall, ha!) had good effects, but also had a strong plot, characters, etc.- and the imitators of the following years neglected all but the effects.

Now I have to look for Moon.

20. CounterDax

Wednesday February 03, 2010 06:28am EST

I doubt Coraline will win best animation... it's Up (what a disappointment! The animation was terrible compared to Pixar's previous film, Wall-E) or perhaps Wes Anderson's Mr. Fox, just because Wes is Wes and he is loved all around. Seriously, Coraline is the best animation film nominated.

21. toryx

view all by toryx | Wednesday February 03, 2010 10:35am EST

Aside from the lack of a nomination for Moon (which I also saw and thought it was absolutely fantastic) I think the truer criticism should be that there aren't enough science fiction films worthy of any sort of nomination.

District 9 and Moon are both certainly worthy of attention and I wish they'd both gotten nominated for Best Picture. I don't, however, think that either Avatar or Star Trek are the kinds of films that should warrant the attention that were lavished on it. They were fun and entertaining but hardly meaningful.

Good science fiction has the power to change people's perspectives just as good drama (like the Hurt Locker) can. Avatar preached a sermon that's been told so often it's become cliche. Star Trek...I don't know what Star Trek was trying to do other than be fun. Neither film told stories with any real meaning in them and the tragedy is that because they were fun and exciting (like visual candy) they're getting the attention that should rightfully go to far better films (back to Moon and District 9).

That's my feelings on the matter, anyway.

22. seth e.

Wednesday February 03, 2010 01:38pm EST

This post strikes me as a strenuous effort to maintain indignant-victim status. I mean, sure, genre movies make up a third of the nominees, but it must be some kind of mainstream trick, right?

Not really. Looking at Torie's link, it seems that of the 20 movies above Avatar, more than half could be construed as genre films, if you're a little generous in your interpretation. And that "trend" goes back to 1937, with Snow White. People like fantasy movies, exciting movies, good-looking movies, and well-written movies. Most financially successful movies are two or more of those things, and from the point of view of a Hollywood studio, throwing money at a good-looking adventure movie is easier and more predictable than trying to figure out what good writing consists of. All this has always been true. The current slate of nominees isn't much of a change.

And why use the Academy Awards as a barometer of cultural acceptance in the first place? That's not what they're for. Moon was never, ever going to be nominated, not because of its quality or because of its genre, but because it's just not the kind of movie that gets nominated for Oscars. Wendy and Lucy didn't get any love last year either, despite rave reviews and despite being the kind of realist character study that Hollywood likes to recognize every once in a while to prove they're classy. The Oscars celebrate the already-successful; as much as anything else, they're a collaborative marketing effort to drive ticket sales for high-budget movies and pet projects. It really has nothing to do at all with the state of one genre or another.

The OP points out, and again in comments, that he's just saying that this isn't a positive sign of genre success in the larger culture. That's true, but only because there's no way for it to be that kind of sign. Basically, he's accusing something that doesn't function as a barometer of not functioning as a barometer. Unless you have a deep-seated urge to be outraged about something, I don't see why it's worth looking here for reasons to doubt that fantasy, if not science fiction, exists in the mainstream now.

23. omega_n

Wednesday February 03, 2010 05:05pm EST

I laughed out loud when I saw that Avatar had been nominated. I had this crazy notion that Best Picture contenders should have more going for them than "Ooooh, shiny!!!"

24. Jim Henry III

Monday February 08, 2010 05:11pm EST

I thought Moon better than any of the nominees I've seen, though I haven't seen the majority of the nominees; and I thought Coraline better than Up, and both better than the majority of the new live-action movies I saw in the last year. But I make no comment on the politics of Oscan nominations and voting or their meaning, if any, as general cultural indicators.

26. Kom

Tuesday December 20, 2011 04:20am EST

@ 22.

The kind of movie IS the genre for the most part. Moon's genre, being it science fiction wasn't in its favor. Add to the fact that its distributor is not a major studio so hence the lack of campaigning during awards season.

Films with fall/winter release dates are "in the memory" with the Academy and those who follow the Oscar race; my theory goes that the reasons behind this is to cause hype and excitement over films that are scheduled within these months. There is a rush to see all these proposed Oscar hopefuls and due to this rush it causes people to not look at the actual performance and skill of the given actor and director, but base their selections on gun shot feelings. Now imagine if all these films competing for attention in these months, particularly Nov. and Dec., were released in earler months do you think that the excitement and hype would be the same? No. It's clear that the mentality is that movies released before the fall/winter are considered poor films not held in high esteem than those being released at the end of the year. Simply put, those films aren't what the Academy goes far. That's about seven to eight months of "bad" movies to pretentious Oscar watchers. That leaves three to four months for "good" movies which is one small window to fully process and evaluate X number of movies that are considered "the best." The Academy basically zoned out months to build up the hype.

Going back to genre. The Academy is blatantly biased and favors drama over any other genre out there. Yes, a small indie will be included as well as other genres, but facts don't lie that dramas will out number the rest.

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