Oscars add Best Popular Film category

It's the Academy's typically half-assed approach to change. The impetus for this is The Dark Knight, which was critically hailed and massively successful but was... ew... a superhero movie, so it would never get Academy recognition and didn't, except for Ledger and who knows if that was because the award ended up being posthumous? So, now they've realized that younger people don't give a shit about the Oscars anymore because all they do is rave about a bunch of art films that no one has seen, in many cases because they CAN'T see them because they're not profitable enough for theaters to carry them. Granted, Amazon and cable services are now trying to solve that to some degree by releasing them for the small screen while they're in the theater, which means the Oscars would actually have to pay attention to something that came out on... ew... TV. Good fucking luck waiting for that to happen.

So this is them essentially saying they're meeting popular opinion halfway while everyone outside the Academy says: "Halfway to where?" You're correct in that it's essentially like being seated at the kiddie table of the Oscars. "Well, you're not good enough for us, but since the idiot public thought you were... here. Now remember that children are best seen, not heard." The previous band-aid to this was opening the best picture category to like 10 films every year. All that did was allow them to nominate more films that no one had seen. This won't solve anything, either.

The L.A. Times ran a piece several years ago about how the voting pool for the Oscars was very skewed: 94% white, 77% male, and 54% over the age of 60. I've heard that they have diversified somewhat since then, but is probably still not at all representative of moviegoers in general.

Black Barney wrote: Can't wait to hear all the chatter this will cause as Hurt Locker will once again get thrown under the bus for beating Avatar. Which it absolutely should have done.

I would happily drive the bus over both of those movies. I hate the expression "Hurt Locker" and I consider Kathryn Bigelow to be an unconventional mediocrity. Avatar was a 3D ripoff of Dances With Wolves, with aliens that gave off a creepy Furry vibe. I bet Avatar was a huge hit in particular with Furries.

Here's hoping the first winner doesn't show up to accept the award.

The Oscars are a relic from the mid 20th century. They don't know they're dead yet.

I consider the Oscars to be similar to skin color: only matters because a critical mass of people arbitrarily decided that it matters.

Correct. People interested in movies. Why would we want some type of recognition metric for quality of film after all the hard work these artists do? Actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, art directors.... it's nice to hang your hat on something other than just a paycheck.

I work in group retirement and even we have an awards system in place to recognize achievement.

I think some people just resent other people telling them what is good. People should still feel free to like whatever they like, I don't know what's so threatening about an awards ceremony but my goodness is it ever a lightning rod.

I have nothing against the Best Popular Film award as I don't think the Oscars are really meaningful anyways. The voters don't even watch all the movies and the studios basically buy the nominations. Similar to the Walk of Fame where any celebrity can buy a star on it. Its all just Hollywoodland stroking its ego.

Let’s not pretend that the Academy has EVER handed out awards to truly maverick, challenging, non-mainstream art films. Kubrick never won one. Mother! won’t get nominated for anything. By and large, Best Picture winners are also massively popular movies, and almost always they are hugely successful at the box office. Many times, they have also been truly great, important films.

There are two things going on with this.

One is genre films becoming contenders, like Jack suggested. But this doesn’t start with The Dark Knight or Avatar, it starts with Return of the King. Suddenly, you had what used to be considered B movie fare taking home Oscar and being feted alongside Schindler’s List, Dances With Wolves and any number of other serious drama films that celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, etc. And now we have billions of dollars coming from superhero movies. So this is a sort of outlet valve for the Academy to appease Joe Popcorn, who can’t believe that A Biscuit to His Liking beats out Bald Dudes 2: Crash City Crashers. It’s a way to put those movies and stars into the broadcast. And there are still old Hollywood types that think that genre film is not “real” film, that a movie is only artistically valid if it is human drama. So this lets them shove the genre stuff into the corner.

The other reason is politics- years of “Oscars so white” have caused the Academy to once again do some stupid old white man thing to try to fix it. Look at Get Out and Black Panther. Here we have a rather squirrelly and touchy film about race beyond “slavery- it was real bad” or Crash- “racism- it’s real bad” and a highly Afrocentric superhero movie. Both were TREMENDOUSLY successful and in many ways were among the definitive films of their respective years. But should the Academy award any of these with Best Picture...then the Trumpistan audience tunes out and declares that Bald Dudes 2 got robbed. Then we had a movie about being black AND gay win...while Bald Dudes 2 remained unawarded.
So this is a way to try to pacify everybody and get them to tune in even if they are racist homophobes.

And this year a sex movie about a fish man won...not really subject matter for middle America.

It’s a stupid thing...but this march toward complete irrelevance started with having TEN nominees for Best Picture.

Anyway, I expect the Turner Prize to follow suit and give a special award for “best painting of a pretty beach sunset”.

Bald Dudes are Best Dudes!

The real reason is ratings. The Oscar ceremony last year had the lowest ratings yet. The Academy is hoping that a Popular category will get more people to watch. They don't care whether the people agree with the "Best Picture" winner or not. It's irrelevant to The Academy.

From my unscientific observation, there seem to be a metric butt-ton of music awards shows on every month. I wouldn't be surprised if The Academy tried to copy that somehow and maybe have a second awards show in the summer that's all about popular movies (kinda like the MTV Awards, if they still have those).

I agree with Barney that good work deserves recognition. However, there are plenty of industry awards that don't get publicized or televised. The Oscars is more about feeding the egos of the talent and giving their agents bargaining chips for future contracts.

Hahaha, what a sad award. But it's the Oscars so kind of expected, actually.

Michael Barnes wrote: Let’s not pretend that the Academy has EVER handed out awards to truly maverick, challenging, non-mainstream art films. Kubrick never won one. Mother! won’t get nominated for anything. By and large, Best Picture winners are also massively popular movies, and almost always they are hugely successful at the box office.

Huh?

Moonlight - Whose seen this besides Barney?
Birdman?
The Hurt Locker had terribly low box office numbers
I don't know anyone who saw The Artist in theater.

Not sure I know anyone who's seen 12 Years a Slave either.

That’s true, but it also shows a recent trend for the Academy to award “somewhat” more daring films than are popular...and there again, that ties into this bid for ratings.

But remember too...Silence of the Lambs, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, Braveheart, Dances With Wolves, Return of the King...

Birdman and The Artist might be good arguments FOR this category...yech.

charlest wrote: Moonlight - Whose seen this besides Barney?
Birdman?
The Hurt Locker had terribly low box office numbers
I don't know anyone who saw The Artist in theater.

Not sure I know anyone who's seen 12 Years a Slave either.

Moonlight - Check. Really great.
Birdman - Check. Didn't like it.
Hurt Locker - Check. Liked it.
The Artist (in theater) - Check. Really liked it, but didn't think it deserved Oscar.

(Just to show my bona fides, ya know.)

Yeah, I saw all those. I did see The Artist in theaters and wanted to see it again. It was a tremendous breath of fresh air and it's hard as balls to get a B&W movie to work in the 21st century.

Right at the core of this conversation, if we need an analogy, is basically who should win between Return of the King and Mystic River. That type of situation is exactly what this is all about. I loved Return of the King, but I do think Mystic River should have taken it. It's just simply a much better movie, that's all. Better performances, better screenplay, etc. Peter Jackson did a monumental achievement and deserves some recognition for that for sure. I just don't know if Return of the King as Best Picture is the best way to recognize that.

One thing that many people (Barnes did it above) seem to imply is that the Academy Awards are supposed to represent middle America. They don't have to do that at all! It's the elite award for filmmaking and all aspects of filmmaking. Middle America should barely be interested in it and even put off by it since they don't know most of these movies which won't play near them.

I'd even be hesitant to say the ceremony and broadcast are for movie-lovers. I think it's more for lovers of motion pictures.

But if ratings are important cuz it's a business, well... i guess they need to compromise somewhere between keeping it authentic and dealing drugs.


And I do think the Oscars are getting it more and more right. Hurt Locker beat Avatar. Mad Max got much love! I couldn't believe it. yay