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

[That One Girl]

breaking: after facing backlash, the best popular film category will now be replaced with best Christopher Plummer film.

[grim22]

I wonder if the Academy thought this announcement would be greeted with cheers

[Hades]

Academy Awards are in Disney back pockets....Disney just bought Black Panther an oscar....🤣

[Cap]

3 minutes ago, Rebeccas said:

 

I get that the Oscars need to reconcile with the fact that traditional Oscar movies are no longer popular with audiences the way they used to be.

But this is what I call the Harvey Weinstein effect. Before the 2000s popular movies were nominated: Star Wars, Titantic, Forest Gump, etc. 

 

It wasn’t really until 1998 with Shakespeare in Love v Saving Private Ryan did we enter the modern era of the Academy Awards. Where movies are made for Oscar Bait. Where partying and smoozing matter just as much as the performance. (That stuff has always been there, like with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford). But since 1998 it has been turned up to 11. 

[75Live]

Just now, Hades said:

Academy Awards are in Disney back pockets....Disney just bought Black Panther an oscar....🤣

 

and the show is aired on ABC so you may be onto something 😛 

[Jake Gittes]

Just now, captainwondyful said:

But this is what I call the Harvey Weinstein effect. Before the 2000s popular movies were nominated: Star Wars, Titantic, Forest Gump, etc. 

 

It wasn’t really until 1998 with Shakespeare in Love v Saving Private Ryan did we enter the modern era of the Academy Awards. Where movies are made for Oscar Bait. Where partying and smoozing matter just as much as the performance. (That stuff has always been there, like with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford). But since 1998 it has been turned up to 11. 

That's a weird example given that a lightweight romantic comedy that happens to be about Shakespeare would seem much less likely to win BP than a gritty Spielberg WW2 drama. Also they both made lots of money. 

 

And popular movies still get nominated. The number of big hits that get snubbed is much lower than of those that get recognition (Get Out, Dunkirk, Mad Max, The Martian, Gravity, The Help, Inception, half of the 2012 nominees, etc)

[IronJimbo]

10 minutes ago, Jandrew said:

2020's will be an interesting decade. Personally I don't see it being a good one for us traditionalists/purists...but oh well. Some things I think will happen:

 

- superheroes and disney remakes will continue to rule. There's just no sign of slowing down.

- Maybe something else will come back like PG13 comedies, romantics, and penguin movies, but they won't reach superhero heights

There is one.

 

[That One Girl]

 

[Barnack]

12 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

Stunt work should be a category.  It's just as if not more important than costume design, make-up, VFX, sound design etc - but since it's not something a  dramatic indie or costume drama has it's not awarded.

I think the best stunt issue is hurting the movies, you do not want audience to know when it was a stunt person and when it was not.

 

The reason giving are:

Niche industry too few stunts coordinator.

Ceremony too long (that does not explain why not do it during the untelevised ceremony they have 2 week before)

Keeping the action actor aura alive is an important one, imagine having Cruise stunt double from a movie getting nominated that destroy the magic a little bit.

 

[Jake Gittes]

The actual cool thing to do would be to add a Best Film That Made Under $10m category. That would cause them to actually watch/recognize/promote some good under-the-radar stuff. 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Jake Gittes

[grim22]

 

[MCKillswitch123]

So this is totally gonna end up like the Best Animated category, where the Oscars can say "yeah, we REALLY don't care about you, but here's a token trophy for your attempt either way".

 

Get the fuck outta here.

[Barnack]

7 minutes ago, captainwondyful said:

It wasn’t really until 1998 with Shakespeare in Love v Saving Private Ryan did we enter the modern era of the Academy Awards. Where movies are made for Oscar Bait.

That sound like a myth, oscar bait movies are in expression since what the 40/50s and them made and released to take advantage of the award season is really old.

 

What changed with the VHS and got bigger with the Dvds is non studios being able to do it better, non studios movies becoming bigger in general and bigger with the Oscar at the same time.

[Rebeccas]

4 minutes ago, Jake Gittes said:

That's a weird example given that a lightweight romantic comedy that happens to be about Shakespeare would seem much less likely to win BP than a gritty Spielberg WW2 drama. Also they both made lots of money. 

 

And popular movies still get nominated. The number of big hits that get snubbed is much lower than of those that get recognition (Get Out, Dunkirk, Mad Max, The Martian, Gravity, The Help, Inception, half of the 2012 nominees, etc)

SiL is what solidified Weinstein as the king of Oscars though and he basically used that cloud in the subsequent decade getting a lot of mediocre Oscar bait movies nominated for a lot of awards that a) did not have the critical acclaim to warrant a huge Oscar tally and b) were not huge box office hits either. You got the occasional box office hit like The King's Speech or The Imitation Game a lot of them were just meh movies that didn't make a lot but only got it cause Weinstein would literally commit murder to get nominations.

[filmlover]

13 minutes ago, grim22 said:

I wonder if the Academy thought this announcement would be greeted with cheers

They're probably just happy that they are a topic of conversation on a day that isn't either the announcement of nominations or the day of the ceremony itself.

[grim22]

3 minutes ago, MCKillswitch123 said:

So this is totally gonna end up like the Best Animated category, where the Oscars can say "yeah, we REALLY don't care about you, but here's a token trophy for your attempt either way".

 

Get the fuck outta here.

The Best Animated Category has become so much of a default that when something like an Inside Out or Coco come out, no one even thinks "This can make it to Best Picture" instead thinking "We have our Best animated pic winner"

[CoolioD1]

my guess is it'll be like the foreign language award where they get a committee of god-knows-who to pick out a shortlist of ten movies (they probably won't even say what the specific barometer for popular is, just that they'll pick ten big tentpole-ish films that they wouldn't usually nominate) and have voters pick 5 nominees based on that.

[IronJimbo]

1 minute ago, grim22 said:

The Best Animated Category has become so much of a default that when something like an Inside Out or Coco come out, no one even thinks "This can make it to Best Picture" instead thinking "We have our Best animated pic winner"

Did Jim just get robbed of 4 best pictures?

[Rebeccas]

1 minute ago, CoolioD1 said:

my guess is it'll be like the foreign language award where they get a committee of god-knows-who to pick out a shortlist of ten movies (they probably won't even say what the specific barometer for popular is, just that they'll pick ten big tentpole-ish films that they wouldn't usually nominate) and have voters pick 5 nominees based on that.

You have to actually show up to screenings to vote for the foreign language nominees even. The whole membership votes on the winner though.

[CoolioD1]

Just now, Rebeccas said:

You have to actually show up to screenings to vote for the foreign language nominees even. The whole membership votes on the winner though.

i just mean that the "who" of the committee that picks the shortlist of the 9 movies that get shown at those screenings is unclear.