Why the Oscars don’t matter
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Now. This may seem like I’ve been building up to this punchline for a month and in a sense I have. For the idiot who just finished spamming the site with endless Oscar talk to turn round and say they don’t matter seems cheap. And it is.
However, I feel that the issue does need clarifying. Just because I take an interest in the Oscars, I don’t view the Academy’s opinion on movies as any more valid than anyone else’s. Ultimately, it’s just an industry awards show where the most established Hollywood residents pat each other on the back. Just because your favourite wasn’t nominated for best picture, doesn’t mean it’s objectively worse than Phantom Thread.
This year’s awards were actually an outlier. In that, I really enjoyed watching five out of the nine nominees. Last year, it was two out of nine. Hated La La Land. Hated Manchester by the Sea. I thought Moonlight was fine but boring. And even with me enjoying many at this year’s awards, only two made it into even my top 10 favourite films from 2017.
My favourite films from last year were Thor: Ragnarok, Star Wars and Baby Driver. I like dumb, action-packed romps filled with jokes and pop music. The academy, though, is dismissive of genre films. Any sci-fi, fantasy, action or horror films that get a look-in are the exception rather than the norm. It all depends on your personal tastes and the academy’s tastes are those of older white men who’ve worked in Hollywood their whole lives.
The example I always go back to is the 2016 awards. That year, Spotlight won the best picture. The movie about journalists uncovering the church paedophilia scandal was pretty good. But I challenge any normal person to look me in the eye and tell me they’d rather watch that than fellow nominee Mad Max: Fury Road with a straight face.