The Oscars have changed the way they nominate movies, now they have to change who votes. This is a discussion we’ve all seen before, but it needs to be talked about again when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II ends its film career. There are exceptions to everything I’m going to write about, so don’t bother me about all that.
This year, the Oscars are changing the way nominations are delivered. A couple of years ago they increased the Oscar nominations from 5 to 10, with the intention of giving “popular” action and comedy films a chance to be nominated for the grand prize. GREAT IDEA. However, the problem is, it turned out that it was just a token vote and they never had a chance to win. Now, a movie needs a certain number of first-place votes to be nominated, so any number of movies between 5 and 10 can be nominated. The bright idea here is that if a movie is nominated, it really has a chance to win. . This just goes back to the original problem that some great movies won’t get a chance anymore.
I’m only going to use recent examples as they are easier to remember. In 2008, Slumdog Millionaire walked away with the grand prize, well, good movie, but I haven’t heard anyone talk about this movie in the last 3 years. I want to see 2 movies that not only didn’t win, they weren’t even nominated; “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight”. Both films are still called modern classics that managed to combine a gigantic box office and impeccable reviews. You know how much effort it takes for an action movie to get flawless reviews, much harder than a movie about underprivileged kids with serious problems (that’s my summary of the Slumdog plot)?
In 2009 and the year “The Hurt Locker” made everyone really happy by winning, even though about 10% of people who saw the Oscars saw this movie. Again, this movie is very very good and should be seen, but LET’S GO TO THE PEOPLE, Avatar should have walked away with this one. I know he was responsible for the terrible 3D craze, but it was spectacular. At the Golden Globes, “The Hangover” won the award for best picture (comedy), which was great to watch and deserved it, but no nominations or love at the Oscars.
Now last year, I really had faith in my Oscar folks that The Social Network would win this one or, at the very least, Inception would have been in a serious fight for the award. But instead, we had to see “The Kings Speech” accept the award. Trust me when I say that no one will be talking about that movie for a few years, heck, have you heard anyone talk about it recently?
My point is simple, change who can vote for the grand prize. I’m not that worried about all the other awards, yes, I have my serious acting awards issues, but I’ll rant about that another time. Perhaps the way forward is to let the industry narrow the films down to five and let some kind of public opinion vote among the five finalists. This would keep movies like Twilight out, but it would give some of the blockbusters a chance to win Best Picture.
I don’t see this happening any time soon, but I will say that if you don’t change this soon, the public will lose interest in the Oscars, I personally prefer the Golden Globes these days and that saddens me.
