Academy Awards adding a "Best Popular Film" category. Good or bad idea? Academy walks it back, won't be presented this year

[GirafficPark]

I will say it again, its got nothing to do with not liking it, I do like it. Its to do with the fact that its not a technically proficient enough movie by Oscar standards. If Black panther can win then any Marvel movie should as well, since it wasnt technically any better in any area, in fact its technically inferior to IW, so really that should get a nom and beat it. The only way BP should get a best picture nomination is if all the Oscar bait movies this year fail to live up to expectations, epically.

 

Movies can get a BP nom and not be nominated in many or even any other areas, but its super rare, and no movie has won with less than 5 nominations total in the last 40 or more years. There is no way in hell Black Panther deserves 5 nominations, and I challenge anyone here to make a case for it to do so.

 

Comparisons to Lord of the Rings or The Dark Knight (or even Avatar) dont hold up, since those were vastly better technically, or broke new ground.

Edited August 12, 2018 by GirafficPark

[MrGlass2]

And the Oscar goes to...

 

[CoolioD1]

And the Oscar goes to...

 

[MrGlass2]

5 minutes ago, CoolioD1 said:

And the Oscar goes to...

Nice joke but this new category is only for Popular films, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens or The Meg.

[CoolioD1]

Just now, MrGlass2 said:

Nice joke but this new category is only for Popular films, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens or The Meg.

wow, yet again a troll behind a keyboard trying to put out a hit on GOTTI.

[Kalo]

So assuming there are 5 noms. 

.

my guess would be:

 

Black Panther

Avengers: Infinity War

A Quiet Place 

Mary Poppins Returns

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

 

However If animated films are included those makes this kind of messy considering there is already an animated catagory and most of those are popular films.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Kalo

[Premium George]

I think they will put some limit like film has to be nominated in atleast one category even if tech.

[Kalo]

On 8/8/2018 at 12:14 PM, filmlover said:

Angry Reddit User: "I am so mad that Infinity War will not be nominated for Best Picture. I saw it 30 goddamn times! How could they snub such a perfect movie!"

 

Academy: "Let them eat cake have their own award!"

 

What would be really funny is if Infinity War didn't get the nomination, I almost hope it doesn't just to show how out of touch and snobbish the academy awards voters are. besides last year two of the BP noms made well over $100m. were they not popular? if a film grosses a certain amount will it no longer be eligible for a BP nom? 

 

[The Futurist]

To these people, being popular is like getting a venerian disease.

You don't mix the sick with the healthy.

[CoolioD1]

2 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

To these people, being popular is like getting a venerian disease.

You don't mix the sick with the healthy.

the majority of best picture winners are popular movies. maybe the last five years the die hasn't cast that way but it's just the luck of the draw. la la land and gravity came pretty close and they were popular.

[The Futurist]

Due to the changes in pop culture & modern VFX, oscar movies have never been less popular than today.

But anyway, that s the joke, what will be their definition of the word "popular" ?

What will be the line ?

[Barnack]

7 minutes ago, Kalo said:

if a film grosses a certain amount will it no longer be eligible for a BP nom? 

No it always be eligible for BP, like you can still get a BP nomination when you are an animated, foreign language or a documentary movie.

 

They will never block feature film of a certain length that played in theater.

 

Popular will not be linked only or mostly to a box office threshold I imagine, because of Netflix/Amazon that could have a very popular movie that got only a 100 theater mini release for eligibility and because movie box office run will not be over by the time the list is made.

 

10 minutes ago, Kalo said:

What would be really funny is if Infinity War didn't get the nomination,

That the kind of movie that require to have seen so much stuff before that could still very well miss it.

[aabattery]

3 minutes ago, CoolioD1 said:

the majority of best picture winners are popular movies. maybe the last five years the die hasn't cast that way but it's just the luck of the draw. la la land and gravity came pretty close and they were popular.

 

Saw someone point out how five of the eight Best Director winners this decade have made over 400m. But Futurist gonna Futurist, I guess.

[The Futurist]

6 minutes ago, aabattery said:

 

Saw someone point out how five of the eight Best Director winners this decade have made over 400m. But Futurist gonna Futurist, I guess.

Dom ?

 

[CoolioD1]

Just now, The Futurist said:

Dom ?

 

no vin diesel isn't in any of them.

[Barnack]

1 hour ago, The Futurist said:

But anyway, that s the joke, what will be their definition of the word "popular" ?

What will be the line ?

My guess committee without any clear line and that would be giving a priority to the movies that have an hard time award wise because they are sequels/movie universe type.

 

Quote

 

Due to the changes in pop culture & modern VFX, oscar movies have never been less popular than today.

A lot into how many movies get made and distributed and how little % of movies are studio made has a lot to do with it. When studio were making a lot of movies and independant did little of them and had an hard time to show them to voters a studio movie had more chance ending up at the year end top. Now that you have 100 little movie for any big one, chance of a big one being the best is getting thinner and thinner. Now consider how logically it is harder for a sequel to succeed in award voting and how much popular they are.

 

Has for popularity it is hard to tell because of how little box office is in term of actual movies popularity, specially for the Oscar movies type, but if you look at say 1978-1981 popularity at the box office of the best picture movies), 1$ in 1978 is 3.87$ now, 2.77$ for 1981 (wow the inflation)

 

1978:

Heaven Can Wait (1978)	Paramount	$81,640,278
The Deer Hunter	Universal	$48,979,328
Midnight Express	Columbia	$35,000,000
Coming Home	United Artists	$32,653,905
An Unmarried Woman	Fox	n/a

 

 

1979

Kramer Vs. Kramer	Columbia	$106,260,000
Apocalypse Now	MGM	$78,784,010
All That Jazz	Fox	$37,823,676
Norma Rae	Fox	$22,228,000
Breaking Away	Fox	$16,424,918

 

1980

Coal Miner's Daughter	Universal	$67,182,787
Ordinary People	Paramount	$54,766,923
The Elephant Man	Paramount	$26,010,864
Raging Bull	MGM	$23,334,953
Tess	Columbia	$20,093,330

 

1981

Raiders of the Lost Ark	Paramount	$212,222,025
On Golden Pond	Universal	$119,285,432
Chariots of Fire	Columbia	$58,972,904
Reds	Paramount	$40,382,659
Atlantic City	Paramount	$12,729,675

 

-------------------

Under 100m adjusted at the box office Oscar movies were not uncommon back in the days, you had the Rain man, Kramer Vs Kramer box office giant, but many of them were not more popular than your today Dunkirk, La la land, Hidden Figures, Martian, Revenant, The Post, etc... type.

 

Edited August 13, 2018 by Barnack

[Barnack]

7 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

Dom ?

No but King Speech (414m), Life of Pi (609m),  Gravity (723m), Revenant (532m), La la land (446m), Shape of Water (195m) were all very popular movies.

 

Birdman doing only 103m and The Artist (133m) being the least popular best director winner of the 2010s, neither being obscure title either.

[The Futurist]

Anyway , I remember crushing the numbers and if you look by decades, less and less Oscar movies are making the TOP 20 in the USA or let alone be true pop cultural phenomenons a la Forrest Gump.

Fact.

Plus it s not like we can compare the box offices of a 5 field category with a 10 field one since the expansion.

So yes, Oscar movies have never been less popular  than this decade and the creation of this new categoy is pretty much the answer to that.

 

It s not very hard to understand ya know, since the advent of CGI, you basically have :

 

on one hand, you have the sci-fi-fantasy-action-VFX heavy, superhero, very expansive franchise movies that are considered ART one time every three year by the AMPASTARDS.

 

on the other, you have the "ART" movies with politics and moral lessons for the dummy, the AMPASTARDS favorite flavor.

[Barnack]

26 minutes ago, The Futurist said:

It s not very hard to understand ya know, since the advent of CGI, you basically have :

 

I think you make it even more complicated then that.

 

No sequel almost ever got in in the history of the award.

Top 20 in the USA is filled with them.

Top 20 in the USA is filled with title everyone could have predicted they would be in the top 20 a year before they even started to shoot, them being in top 20 has for the most part nothing to do with the quality, for many it could have been a black screen for 90 minutes and they would have made the list with the pre-sales.

 

The more you disconnect the TOP 20 from the movie quality, most of them being there from the OW-franchise connection, more likely that you would not have a strong correlation between them an awards.

 

Look at all non-sequel/franchise movie reaching the top 5 domestic, how many are excluded from the best picture, even when they are giant CGI/fantasy affair a la Avatar, Martian, Inception, etc.... ? How many missed the BP nomination ?

Edited August 13, 2018 by Barnack

[The Futurist]

The Oscar/Popular movie debate is not new, the separation between the two only got worse.

Oscar movies were never the most popular, maybe a very long time ago, before the 60's.

Plus I blame Harvey for creating cancer, or at least marketing it and making it a brand and a genre unto itself :

 

the "indie" movie.

Edited August 13, 2018 by The Futurist