there are 17 movies this year that will cross 100M domestic and at least 5 of them are being heavily considered for major awards at the Oscars. the Oscars are largely populist, they always have been, and the idea that they aren’t is patently absurd. even when the winners don’t gross that much it’s usually very easy to see why they would appeal to the majority of voters that, you know, actually saw them.
well if you wanna stretch the definition of blockbuster from “popular movie that was financially successful” to “it has to make 300 million domestic or else no one saw it,”
yeah i guess movies tend to flop when a studio gives up on its release after one weekend and sends it to a streaming service two weeks later. but the movie itself is absolutely a crowdpleaser
if i can’t bring up Marvel movies broadly as a means to illustrate my point (really you can just substitute that for most franchise movies in general if you so prefer) then i guess the CBM fans deserve to be “gaslit” (?????)