Yes, Spider-Man: No Way Home should be nominated for Best Picture. To argue otherwise is like trying to argue that we should stick to VHS tapes for screeners. Or that we should shun wi-fi and stick to dial-up modems. You can’t fight cultural evolution. You only have two choices: adapt or die.
I love the scene in The Insider where Al Pacino is trying to get his story published about Big Tobacco’s effort to cover up evidence that smoking causes cancer. It’s one of those scenes that can apply so liberally across the board. Here, I would say the “cat, totally out of the bag and you’re still debating” scene would reflect the fact that the Oscars couldn’t possibly be in a worse position heading into this year’s ceremony.
Granted, it isn’t a guarantee that many more people will watch if Spider-Man: No Way Home is nominated. Probably they won’t, because it’s hard to woo viewers back to events they gave up on. The Oscars have been slowly bleeding audiences for the last ten years. But it’s gotten much worse in the last five as the country became extremely partisan and the Academy — especially by way of its most outspoken members — made no secret about where their loyalties lie. It wasn’t that they had to show themselves as non-partisan, but to go full-blown Democratic National Convention each and every time was off-putting, even to some liberals.
But that’s not the reason to nominate Spider-Man. The reason to nominate it is that it deserves to be nominated. It is that rare organic entry that lands in the Oscar race every so often. I’ve written about this many times but let’s go over it again. The Oscars are a pre-planned, well-oiled machine. The publicists target certain movies months in advance that they think the Oscar voters will like and they work virtually all year long to get those films nominated. To do that, they have to court people like me with parties, swag, and interviews, free screenings — you get the idea. Think lobbyists in Washington.
If the pundits continue to predict the same movies over and over again they build a consensus without any organic movement necessary. What is organic movement? It’s when audiences spontaneously love a great movie, for instance.
This used to happen a lot. It rarely happens anymore. Had anyone at Sony had an idea of just how AMAZING this Spider-Man would be, they have might have gotten their Oscar publicists on it earlier. But as it is, it stands on its own as the one true organic HIT that has been released this year. With ten nominees, to ignore this movie is ASSISTED SUICIDE for the Academy.
Or to quote Owen Gleiberman, writing for Variety, after explaining that the film isn’t his cup of tea but he still thinks it should be nominated:
Who cares what I think? Audiences adore “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Critics, with a very few exceptions, adore “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The whole world adores “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” So if you really think I’m wrong (and just about everyone does), what on earth is stopping everyone from demanding that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” becomes one of this year’s Oscar nominees for best picture? On what planet would anyone argue that it shouldn’t be?
Ah yes, the ancient logic of middlebrow Oscar snobbery. In the past, the members of the Motion Picture Academy have considered superhero movies to be entertainment, not art, and the Oscars are supposed to be about art. We’ve been through this debate several tedious times, most spectacularly in 2008, when “The Dark Knight,” the greatest superhero movie ever made, couldn’t finagle a best picture nomination.
And then he states what anyone who doesn’t live way up inside the bubble of Twitter knows already:
Now, though, there’s a larger reason to nominate “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” The Oscars are on life support, or at least they’re heading there. They need mainstream cred; going forward, it’s nothing less than the oxygen that’s going to allow them to survive.
And he closes it with this magnificent paragraph:
This year, would it really be such an unspeakable vulgarity for the Oscar slate to include “Spider-Man: No Way Home”? Not as a token mainstream gesture but because it’s a film that honestly meant something to the larger public. Why has this become such an insane idea? What’s actually insane is leaving a movie like that one out of the mix. If the Oscars want a future, it would be a shrewd strategy for them to not inflict the death of a thousand cuts on themselves by using the dagger of elitism.
The whole reason there are ten nominations in Best Picture, which was intended to help them to expand and hopefully enhance their brand, is to include “genre movies.” Why on earth would they not nominate a genre movie that could very well become the highest-grossing film of all time, or one of them, in the midst of a crushing global pandemic? How out-of-touch do people have to be to think this isn’t one of the best films of the year?
You can’t look to Film Twitter to understand this. They are happy with the way things are and why shouldn’t they be? They are treated to the most spectacular experiences of their (our) lifetimes. Not only do we get to be up close and personal with the best and the brightest, but we never have to pay a single dime for anything. We are the aristocracy of film coverage. So, other than help negotiate Oscars for people who want them, what is the purpose of any of it? Seriously, what is the purpose? What is the purpose of the BAFTA re-ordering their nominees to “select” more inclusive nominees? What purpose does that serve? It doesn’t build any momentum for the people who are selected. They are merely stickers to put on their box that says, “See, we actually are inclusive and diverse.” No, you aren’t. Not if you have to override the will of your own membership with outside curators. That isn’t what this is.
The Oscars show the films that supposedly represent their tastes, and the image they wish to project. But the general public, the people movies are ACTUALLY FOR, are often left scratching their heads. The disconnect is only getting bigger. The Oscars are systematically isolating themselves from the broader country and industry. This is not a good thing. Awarding a movie like Spider-Man also raises the bar for the tent pole films to aim that high, to make a movie that good. It is possible to not totally bottom out on the worst films just to make a buck. The Oscars can be the group that says they understand the world has changed, and the film industry has changed, but they still think quality matters. They still can reward the highest achievements of the year, even if some of those exist outside of their comfort zone.
Their counter-argument is that they believe if they endorse this movie that they no longer care about the fight to make art. Emma Stone was made to be the villain in Birdman and we’re meant to mourn the loss of great art in the film.
I have been watching the Oscar race since 1999. Every month of every year since then. I was here when the Oscars were still a popular event. I remember getting excited about them as Spring began in Los Angeles. The jasmine was blooming. The town was readying for the pomp and circumstance. Everyone was excited about them. As the years wore on, things started to change. The Oscars pushed their date back, which meant the race was put in the hands of film festivals and bloggers like me. At the same time, people like me tried to shape the race by what we thought Oscar voters would go for. That meant only a certain kind of movie would even be considered.
Every so often, there would be a popular crossover – like Argo, for instance. But in general, the “Oscar movie” came to represent something very serious, often very depressing, and something that not only did few people watch but no one even remembers after the year ends. So many movies that the Oscars ignored went on to make their mark in culture in a big way. Two that come to mind off the bat would be Gone Girl and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Oscar passed them by, stupidly, based on their own insular rules and ignoring how popular the films were with the public.
That didn’t use to be the case. If Jaws was a hit, the Oscars cared. Even if Fatal Attraction, Love Story, or the Towering Inferno weren’t exactly critical darlings, they were hits and that mattered. They made a cultural impact. They were remembered. The Oscars noticed.
Many will say that Hollywood gave itself over to superhero tent pole franchise movies to appeal to ticket-buyers in China and the lucrative international market. I can’t argue with that. But so what? They are not that different from other genres that were popular at certain points in time, like musicals or westerns. They seem less original, more repetitive, and branded. I agree. But the clock has run out. Now it’s time to change. It’s time to award the best of the year and it’s hard to argue that Spider-Man: No Way Home isn’t one of the best Hollywood efforts of the year.
What will it take? Well, all it needs is roughly two or three hundred Academy voters to put Spider-Man: No Way Home in the number one spot — voters in the Sound or Editing or Animation or Producing branch to say, “I’m going to do my part to save the Oscars and save the industry” — and then it has a fighting chance.
I don’t think the Oscars can survive or should survive if they continue to serve a small group of elites who never have to pay a dime to see any of these movies. With ten nominees, there should be room to include all kinds of movies — genre movies, animated, documentaries and international entries. It can be an extremely competitive category once we figure out that it’s a much bigger world than the one we try to micro-manage from October to January.
GG shocked in the Revenant & 1917 years, against all predictions, propelling those 2 films in the race, although both fell at the last hurdle.
It’s hard to know which way they will go but Belfast seems the safest bet I would think. Could they step outside the box & choose neither Belfast or The Dog. Dune??
Austin noms
TPOTD- 9
Dune- 8
Licorice Pizza- 7
Best Film
Dune
The Green Knight
Licorice Pizza
Pig
The Power of the Dog
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi – Drive My Car
David Lowery – The Green Knight
Denis Villeneuve – Dune
Best Actress
Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter
Penelope Cruz – Parallel Mothers
Alana Haim – Licorice Pizza
Kristen Stewart – Spencer
Agathe Rouselle – Titane
Best Actor
Nicolas Cage – Pig
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield – Tick Tick… Boom!
Simon Rex – Red Rocket
Denzel Washington – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Best Supporting Actress
Ariana DeBose – West Side Story
Ann Dowd – Mass
Kirsten Dunst – The Power of the Dog
Kathryn Hunter – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Ruth Negga – Passing
Best Supporting Actor
Bradley Cooper – Licorice Pizza
Colman Domingo – Zola
Vincent Lindon – Titane
Kodi Smit-McPhee – The Power of the Dog
Jeffrey Wright – The French Dispatch
Best Ensemble
Dune
The French Dispatch
The Harder they Fall
Licorice Pizza
Mass
Best Original Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza
Wes Anderson – The French Dispatch
Vanessa Block and Michael Sarnoski – Pig
Fran Kranz – Mass
Mike Mills – C’mon C’mon
Best Adapted Screenplay
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog
Ryusuke Hamagucki and Takamasa Oe – Drive My Car
Sian Heder – CODA
David Lowery – The Green Knight
Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth – Dune
Best Cinematography
Bruno Delbonnel – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Greig Fraser – Dune
Janusz Kaminski – West Side Story
Andrew Droz Palermo – The Green Knight
Ari Wegner – The Power of the Dog
Best Editing
Andy Jurgensen – Licorice Pizza
Peter Sciberras – The Power of the Dog
Claire Simpson – The Last Duel
Michael Kahn & Sarah Broshar – West Side Story
Joe Walker – Dune
Best Original Score
Jonny Greenwood – The Power of the Dog
Jonny Greenwood – Spencer
Daniel Hart – The Green Knight
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Candyman
Hans Zimmer – Dune
Best International Film
Drive My Car
Lamb
Parallel Mothers
Titane
The Worst Person in the World
Best Documentary
Flee
The Rescue
The Sparks Brothers
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The Velvet Underground
Best Animated Film
Belle
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Best Voice Acting/Animated/Digital Performance
Stephanie Beatriz – Encanto
Abbi Jacobson – The Mitchells vs The Machines
John Leguizamo – Encanto
Danny McBride – The Mitchells vs the Machines
Kaho Nakamura – Belle
Best Stunts
Dune
No Time to Die
Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Spiderman: No Way Home
Raging Fire
Best First Film
Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter
Rebecca Hall – Passing
Fran Kranz – Mass
Michael Samoski – Pig
Emma Seligman – Shiva Baby
The Robert R. “Bobby” McCurdy Memorial Breakthrough Artist Award
Ariana DeBose – West Side Story
Alana Haim – Licorice Pizza
Emilia Jones – CODA
Agathe Rousselle – Titane
Rachel Sennott – Shiva Baby
As far as SPIDER-MAN getting a BP nod… I’d personally love it. It’s not great film as art, obviously, but it’s essentially the perfect example of film as entertainment.
The only issue in what would sort of be a “token BP nomination” is the lack of other nominations it could even achieve. And it’s always odd when any movie gets only 2 or 3 nods (THE POST, SELMA, A SERIOUS MAN). Let alone no other above the line nominations (BLACK PANTHER, FORD V FERRARI).
I suppose it could get both VFX and Sound nominations, which would make it 3. But even those 2 are pretty shaky IMO. And I’m a life long superhero/ MARVEL guy. Maybe if they wanted to be really, REALLY, REALLY generous they could give it an EDITING nomination. But that’s about where it ends.
Honestly other than SPIDER-MAN being so liked if not loved by everyone, the best reason to honor it with a BP nod would be because of it’s massive success in such a difficult time for the world of film (and the world in general obviously)
But MARVEL STUDIOS and SONY have damn near single handedly saved the theater going experience this year with all of their separate and collaborative projects. Some better than others of course.
From BLACK WIDOW to VENOM 2 and of course SPIDER-MAN they have kept what little interest the general public has in going to the theatre alive. And that’s something worth rewarding.
Only die hard awards show fans, like myself, watch awards shows anymore. And even I can hardly tolerate the show to commercial ratio anymore.
The internet has offered such a streamlined version of it that most people would rather just open up their FACEBOOK or INSTAGRAM apps and see constant updates about who the winners are within minutes or even seconds of them happening. Or watch an extremely condensed YOUTUBE video overview covering it the next morning.
TV ratings, for any program, aren’t and will never be like they used to be. There’s simply just too much content to compete in the ratings game anymore. If you can even call it a “game” at this point.
As far as a good way to meet in the middle IMO would be for the OSCARS to have a slightly shorter (if possible lol) “ad free” broadcast. But since there’s obviously set up times needed in between segments/songs etc.
In leu of having typical commercials they should simply have production companies fill 100% of the break time with teasers and trailers for upcoming films that year. This would pay for the ads necessary while giving the loyal viewers something interesting to see that they might actually sit through as opposed to taking a bathroom break or going to their fridge for their 13th beer of the evening.
It’s just my opinion, but that would be the ideal OSCARS broadcast.
The film is nice but not a great work of art.
I feel like I’ve said this here several times but let’s do it again because why not: Sasha keeps repeating this idea that eventually all movies are made for the audience, which I think is incorrect. They are perhaps usually made with the hope that they’d be seen (simply because it’s a form of audiovisual expression) but a collection of movies failing to make an impact at the box office doesn’t mean that those movies are of inherently less value. Otherwise the Oscars would not need to exist simply because the list of top films at the box office would create the nominee and winner lists in a way that is algorithmic. And if someone starts describing changes made to a film in order to please a general audience, those narratives are often faced with anger and disdain since the studio is taking away the power of the artist but if the main goal of cinema is always to just please a mainstream audience, wouldn’t these changes be inherently welcomed as heroic acts of saving the entertainment value of a movie? This kind of argumentation would lead to claims like the butchering of The Magnificent Ambersons being a good thing, and thus I can’t support the idea. Instead I’d suggest, a changed version of something Sondheim wrote: entertainment is what you do for others, art is what you do for yourself. And I thought the days of movies being denied the position of art were behind us.
As for the Oscars and their need of saving, if you want an Oscars ceremony like the ones 30 years ago, yes, they absolutely need saving. Whether this saving is genuinely possible is a completely different thing. That is because the cultural context within which the Oscars existed 30 years ago no longer exists (the details of this are complicated and well-explained by many here so I won’t bother to repeat it). This can not be fixed, the inherent value and meaning of the Oscars has to change. I don’t know what this new point of the Oscars will be but attempting to go back is simply pointless because the glory days of the past will not be regained no matter what.
In particular it will not be gained by simple tricks. Nominating Spider-Man: No Way Home or No Time to Die for best picture because they made money rather than because of voters adoring the films read to me more as ploys to attempt to get people to see a ceremony they simply don’t seem to have a need for. It is disrespectful not only to the Oscars but to the movies and the audiences that the Academy would hope to gain by nominating them. If you want to nominate these movies based on their quality (I’d argue No Time to Die is slightly unnotable even if it isn’t bad and I haven’t seen Spider-Man: No Way Home yet as the theaters have been closed here since a little before Christmas), that’s fine, it’s doubtful that even Spider-Man: No Way Home would be the worst best picture nominee in the history of the awards. But if people want these movies to be nominated for best picture, they should discuss them in the same way they’d discuss The Power of the Dog or Belfast or any other contender: with respect and awe for the craft, performances and writing. Start by uttering the following names: Cary Joji Fukunaga and Jon Watts. The way Sasha writes about Spider-Man: No Way Home still makes me unclear whether they have actually seen the film either and No Time to Die was dropped as soon as an even shinier box office play was raised as a possibility. If these films are worthy, treat them with the respect they deserve. And if they’re not worthy, don’t try to force the Academy to make a condescening act to an audience that doesn’t care by nominating a film they don’t care about. You’re not saving the Oscars, you’re keeping them from finding a modern and sustainable identity
I grow wary of the idea that artistic merit is solely contingent on ticket sales. A few years ago, our esteemed host adored Scorsese’s Silence, which was a deeply complex film about faith. So complex that the bumper sticker theology crowd ignored it in droves. If Silence were in the mix in 2022, the new and improved AD would make it Exhibit A in their never ending quest to declare such films as insults to “real America”. Ironically this bizarre push to make the third movie in a third reboot that is the 27th film in a franchise the pinnacle of American filmmaking only proves Scorsese’s point about cinema vs. product.
I actually don’t think that Sasha would argue that Silence isn’t worthy. The approach they take seems to me more like one where the big box office players are separated from their quality and the films they consider to be of immense quality are separated from their box office. Thus there were for example no complaints about Mank not being massive on Netflix or The Last Duel being considered a “box office bomb”
Don’t get me started on Mank. Beyond surprised no one here has connected the dots there
Speaking of comics and Best Picture:
12 noms/7 wins Dances With Wolves
——> 7 noms/3 wins Dick Tracy
7 noms/0 wins The Godfather III
6 noms/1 win Goodfellas
5 noms/2 wins Ghost
3 noms/0 wins Awakenings
Isn’t it likely that the comic adaptation would have gotten a Best Picture nomination in a field of 6-10?
And this was 14 years before Spider-Man 2 (3 noms/1 win) and The Incredibles (4 noms/2 wins); 18 years before The Dark Knight (8 noms/2 wins); 28 years before Black Panther (7 noms/3 wins) and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (1 nom/1 win); and 29 years before Avengers: Endgame (1 nom/0 wins).
Houston Film Critics noms:
The Power of the Dog – 9
Belfast, CODA, Dune – 5
Licorice Pizza – 4
Don’t Look Up, Flee, King Richard, Nightmare Alley, Parallel Mothers, The Tragedy of Macbeth – 3
Winners will be announced February 19.
Picture: “Belfast”; “CODA”; “Don’t Look Up”; “Dune”; “King Richard”; “Licorice Pizza”; “Parallel Mothers”; “The Power of the Dog”; “tick, tick … Boom”; “The Tragedy of Macbeth”
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”; Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast”; Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”; Guillermo del Toro, “Nightmare Alley”; Denis Villeneuve, “Dune”
Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Power of the Dog”; Peter Dinklage, “Cyrano”; Andrew Garfield, “tick,tick…Boom”; Will Smith, “King Richard”; Denzel Washington, “The Tragedy of Macbeth”
Actress: Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”; Olivia Colman, “The Lost Daughter”; Penelope Cruz, “Parallel Mothers”; Alana Haim, “Licorice Pizza”; Emilia Jones, “CODA”; Kristen Stewart, “Spencer”
Supporting actor: Andrew Garfield, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”; Ciarán Hinds, “Belfast”; Troy Kotsur, “CODA”; J.K. Simmons, “Being the Ricardos”; Kodi Smit-McPhee, “The Power of the Dog”
Supporting actress: Jessie Buckley, “The Lost Daughter”; Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story”; Ann Dowd, “Mass”; Kirsten Dunst, “The Power of Dog”; Aunjanue Ellis, “King Richard”
Ensemble cast: “Belfast”; “CODA”; “Mass”; “Nightmare Alley”; “The Power of the Dog”
Screenplay: “Belfast”; “CODA”; “Don’t Look Up”; “Licorice Pizza”; “The Power of the Dog”
Animated feature: “Encanto”; “Flee”; “Luca”; “Raya and the Last Dragon”; “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”
Cinematography: “Dune”; “Nightmare Alley”; “The Power of the Dog”; “The Tragedy of Macbeth”; “West Side Story”
Documentary feature: “Flee”; “The Rescue”; “The Sparks Brothers”; “Summer of Soul”; “Val”
Foreign language feature: “Drive My Car”; “Flee”; “Parallel Mothers”; “Riders of Justice”; “The Worst Person in the World”
Original score: “Dune”; “The French Dispatch”; “The Harder They Fall”; “The Power of the Dog”; “Spencer”
Original song: “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto; “Guns Go Bang” from The Harder They Fall; “Just Look Up” from “Don’t Look Up”; “No Time to Die” from “No Time to Die”; “Wherever I Fall – Pt. 1” from “Cyrano”
Visual effects: “Dune”; “The Matrix Resurrections”; “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”
Stunt coordination: “Black Widow”; “The Matrix Resurrections”; “No Time to Die”; “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”; “Spider-Man: No Way Home”
The way I see it, pre-pandemic Spider-Man : No Way Home would not have been considered for Best Picture for three reasons :
– it would have been released in a not-Oscar-friendly summer month
– it would have been one of several smash hits of the year
– its good not great reviews (70s range on Metacritic) would not have cut it in the BP race usually dominated by unanimously acclaimed films.
The three reasons why it IS considered for Best Picture right now :
– it is probably the first Marvel movie with a very Oscar-friendly mid-December release date and any film that over performs with critics and audiences in December, automatically gets Oscar talk regardless of genre
– it is not one of several smash hits of the year, it is THE first proper smash hit in 2 years that could garner it considerably more goodwill from voters than any other Marvel film before it
– its good not great reviews (71 MC) don’t stand out all that much this season with half the top contenders having similarly good-not-great (or even worse) MC scores, from Gold Derby’s top20 BP contenders we have Belfast (77), King Richard (76), Dune (74), Coda (75), Don’t Look Up (50), tick tick BOOM! (74), Nightmare Alley (68), Being the Ricardos (60), Spencer (76), Cyrano (70).
Long story short this film is uniquely and considerably better positioned for awards season than all its Marvel predecessors. It doesn’t mean it deserves a BP nomination, it also doesn’t mean it will get one, but nonetheless it definitely has a much better shot.
That’s all.
P.S. Let the record show that there is also some genre bias happening here. Granted, 9 out of 10 Marvel films bore me to death but this one I liked. Not because it was a cinematic masterpiece (very obviously it wasn’t) nor because it reinvented its genre (it didn’t) but the thing is, can pundits and voters REALLY hold those things against this film when they are on track to give half their BP slots to films that are ALSO not cinematic masterpieces and ALSO didn’t reinvent their respective genres ?
Well, it didn’t work for Star Wars which had more critical acclaim, bigger box office and released in December. It has zero precursors so far. The only angle I can see is that some might claim it save Hollywood because of its huge box office taking when everything else has struggled. Will that be enough? There’s little indication of that so far. Not even a hint. If it happens it will be one mighty shock.
Not sure that comparison works when The Force Awakens was one of five 1B+ grossers that year and No Way Home is the first one in 2 years, also former was the first chapter of a new trilogy while latter is the third and last chapter of a new trilogy.
I finally got to see Drive My Car on the big screen yesterday, and absolutely loved it. But it’s taken me a full day to appreciate the film. And I need to see it a second and third time to truly appreciate everything going on in the film. Similar to Lee Chang-dong’s adaptation of a Murakami short story, Hamaguchi’s adaptation gives you a lot to chew on, and I haven’t stopped thinking about the movie in the 24 hours since I saw it. I highly recommend seeing this if you get a chance. Clear your schedule and make it a priority if it’s playing near you.
For those who have seen it, I have one major question that I can’t seem to answer and I’m interested in hearing your interpretations… What is happening in the final 2-3 minutes after the stage performance? Watari is obviously in South Korea, and she’s still driving Kafuku’s car, but is he alive? Did he die and leave her the car? Are they living together as non-genetic father and daughter? Did he just give her the car as a gift? Is this some years later, as time has passed similarly in other parts of the film? Is it in the recent future after the stage production? The dog is clearly an indicator of happiness, based on the scene earlier in the film, but is it hers? Is it the couple’s from the production company? Have they all gone back to Korea? I also tried looking closely for signs of her scar when she took the mask off, and I thought it was still there, but was it actually gone, signaling her moving on from her past? Is the whole scene a COVID thing, or was it a ploy to reveal her scar or lack thereof? So many questions!
I watched it in the theater and loved it too. It’s special cinema rarely achieved. And I too look forward to watching it again, when streaming is available.
As for the ending. I think it’s deliberately unclear and leaving it up to the audience to interpret. In an interview, Hamaguchi said someone told him that the film would have been perfect without that final ending. He said the reason he has that ending b/c he wanted to make it imperfect.
My guess is Kafuku gave her the car and she moved to South Korea — him letting go of his car and her of Japan as a way of both moving forward from their past. They can’t be romantically involved because he considered her as a daughter, the same age as his late daughter if she were alive.
Anyway, it would be great to watch it again and figure it all out.
Totally agree about your points, especially the end being left open for the audience to make up their mind. Beyond that I have to admit that my first impression seeing the final scene was actually that she ended up being in a relationship with Kafaku and he lended her the car to do some shopping – and they both got a family dog. Maybe it was the presence of the dog that led my to this interpretation because a dog is sometimes the companion of a couple. By maybe I was completely wrong… LOL Anyway, your interpretation also makes sense to me, even though it´s for sure something the film allocates to the audience to make up their mind. And by the way, I have to confess that I didn´t even realize that the final scenes takes place in South Korea (and not Japan). Is this explained with the help of the Hyundai automobiles at the parking lot? (I checked this scene again after I read Art´s comment, since I had no clue about this issue)
My initial reaction was the same as yours. But I remember the scene where he pointedly said that she would behis daughter’s age if she were alive. Furthermore, there was no inkling of romance between them before that. We (perhaps as Western movie watchers) are conditioned to feel that there would be some romance between the two main characters were opposite genders. For them to be a couple now would be rather left field, but not entirely impossible.
Hamaguchi did say in a conference that if the audience really wants to interpret the coda, the clue is in the title. Okay. 🙂
No, there was no inkling of romance between them, but certainly a very deep bond based on their similar dark experiences in the past and their feelings of grieve and guilt. But to be true I guess I like it better when a film has an open end because it allows us to think about the meaning and interpret it in the way that makes most sense to us individually. Too often, films are kinda expressing themselves to death and leave no open questions for the audience to reflect upon. To me, this is really an exciting end that is doing justice to the rest of the film.
Of course. It would be the one I didn’t see.
Black Panther and Joker (deservedly so) were nominated for Best Picture, so why not Spider-Man
The truth is neither should have been. Black Panther was nominated bc of its cultural significance rather than being a good movie and Joker was a box office juggernaut that tried to pay homage to better films and make a statement about mental health and failed. Bubblegum movies aren’t deserving of the Oscars
All I can think of is the line from “They Live.” Something like “I came to kick a– and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubblegum.” What makes it better is that I am sitting here laughing after school in my writing team meeting. 🙂
Well, I think if Black Panther shouldn’t have been nominated then no superhero film should ever have been nominated. I am as allergic to them as many of you are, but I am even more allergic to mediocrity. For example, let’s take a look at the year Black Panther was nominated for BP. There were films that were mediocre in that year and Black Panther towered above them (Black Panther’s competition that year were Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book, Vice and A Star is Born). Now, are you saying that it should not have been nominated simply because it’s a superhero film but those mediocre films should have? ( A Star is Born wasn’t mediocre, but it’s a fourth iteration of a Hollywood classic. It was fine, but it had some issues.) Black Panther was way better than them. In fact, i think it was my favourite of all the nominees, which was extraordinary, to say the least. You guys know that I am not a fanboy of these type of of films. I don’t get what’s the point of them and dislike them really. But this film is different. This one film talks to me and appeals to me on a different level to any other superhero film.
I’m glad it did that for you but it didn’t for me lol
Yes, it’s great when you get great surprise. It confounded my expectations. I was resisting seeing and only gave in when it was nominated for BP. Now I am so glad i stopped resisting it.
BP’s cultural significance was almost zero. It was blown up by marketing. White men’s fantasy of a developed African civilization. At least Marvel had the wise choice of making it with prominently an African American crew and cast.
I don’t know about cultural significance. That’s for others to judge. I only judge the film. Every film has a narrative and they will use it to get nominated for awards and generate publicity. But the big Black Panther had was that it could ask the WHAT
IF question rather than doing the same rubbish you see in superhero films.
Black Panther had a terrible last third… the CGI underground fight was as cringy as A Beautiful Mind’s make up at the Nobel Prize scene… it had a lot of great stuff going for it, though, specially asking the right questions for those who paid attention (why Wakanda wouldn’t leave its isolation and use their tech to improve the rest of the world? That’s a question that is asked, but not really answered, and not clearly translated to why the Western capitalist society doesn’t do it with the 3rd World, which would have been the interesting point). It was a mild attempt to have a conversation, that was drowned in good action set pieces and CGI (most of it was good, but that final fight… ugh). It shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Picture… specially the very same year in which the absolutely amazing “Infinity War” was also in contention… a film that made the impossible, and had a daring, shocking ending, that probably was the best of the year, and among the best, in film history…
CGI does not make or break a film. It’s really a minor issue. Actually, Black Panther did win Special Effects award at BAFTA. So, go figure. In fact, it is the only superhero film to win Special Effects at either BAFTA or Oscars. But that’s understandable because it usually goes to a BP nominated film, or at least films that have an above the line nomination.
Wakanda had its own internal problem, or rather the troubles of the world came to it in the shape of Kilmonger. It was being destabilised by an outsider, as it turned out. That was occupying them for them to really get into that question. But this is a very complex question and I think it’s unfair to expect any film to answer it, let alone a superhero film. But the first step always is to ask those big questions. That’s the first step and should commend Black Panther for that. Also, you must know that Wakanda might be in similar powerful position to the West, but it doesn’t play the same role. They are reticent about interfering in others internal affairs. And we see that they are scared of destroyed their country by having close relationship with the rest of the world. The simple answer is that they are worried their technology will be misused. However, destabilisation and almost on the brink of collapse comes from internally, though, the person who’s doing that comes from the outside world. That’s the question the film focuses on and answers it brilliantly.
And may I remind you that Black Panther has the highest Metacritic score of any live-action superhero films. It has 88 on Metacritic.
so what? For me, Black Panther is a 70, max. Remember, the zeitgeist of its release was heavily playing the cultural significance card, and there was a will to support the film, for that.
So, your opinion doesn’t matter as much as the opinions of leading critics. I mean, they have more expertise on film than you and me. And what has the cultural significance got to do with the critics? It also made huge box office, does that mean the general public was giving it the cultural significance narrative when they went to see in droves? I mean, yes, this was played by the people promoting the film or whatever, but to say that influenced the critics to give it a high score or the general public to see it is ridiculous. Sure, they used this narrative to get Best Picture nomination, because it probably wouldn’t have been nominated otherwise. But that’s because the Academy cares about those things, but the critics don’t. There are tons of films by minority filmmakers but they didn’t get similar high score, even when they’re not superhero films. There’s this constant insinuation that films made by minority filmmakers aren’t as good as they’re claimed to be because critics are fabricating their scores. It’s just total nonsense. Two films directed by and about poc that win Best Picture are also the highest rated winners at 99 and 96 on Metacritic, yet some people insinuate they didn’t really deserve it and that there were some other factors in play and so on. I accept the Academy always had and always will like narratives, that’s the way they do things. However, critics are much more analytical people and give reasons why they like or don’t like a particular film and so forth. You can read their analysis or ask them about openly it, and they will explain it. They are very open, which is completely different from the Academy who are a closed shop. You can disagree with someone’s views, but accept that that’s their true view and don’t think they are being dishonest because they happen to not align with your views. Just accept the fact of its high Metacritic score. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. You can still have your opinion. If you don’t see the merits of the film and why it’s rated so highly, that’s fine. That’s just the way it is. It is what it is.
I happen to be a trained film critic? I did 3 years of history of arts, 1 year of philosophy, 1 year of literature and 1 year of film and photography at the University…
You can be world renowned expert and still be wrong. For example, Roger Ebert was championing Crash as a great film and backed it for Best Picture over the likes of Brokeback Mountain. Also, a few experts in a particular field have broken with their colleagues and spoused some weird things or supported abhorrent causes, such as climate change denialism, anti-vaccines, Reaganomics/trickle down economy and so forth. What matters most in highly respected groups is the consensus opinion especially if it is overwhelming. A single person on their own can be right, of course, especially in theoretical areas, but they are usually wrong when it comes to known subjects. And since you claim to be a trained critic I would have thought you would be less cynical and more understanding of their work. It’s one thing to disagree with them and go your separate way, but to make baseless claims against them is dreadful. It means you more than it demeans them. Also, I noticed that you are taste in films is in conflict with critics as your rarely pick their top picks. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just saying you have a different taste and that’s OK. My taste is different to yours and more in line with the critics. Perhaps that’s why our opinions differ on films like Black Panther and The Social Network. But we are in agreement on Furious Road. That’s an awesome film. It’s at worst top three best action film behind Die Hard and Terminator: Judgment Day. I wouldn’t argue if you say it’s best ever because it probably is, but I’m just attached to the other as I grew up with them and loved them so much since I first saw. What I am definitely sure is Furious Road is the by far the most artistic action film ever. It’s a feast for the eyes.
no, it’s not the point of being right or wrong. That’s not criticism. Criticism is to offer a valid analysis built on your resume and also your personal experience and perception. Every film could be perceived as good or bad, hence why The Thing got terrible reviews at the time (or Blade Runner, for the matter) and now sits as an undeniable classic and one of the best sci-fi / horror films of all time (and in my book, my fave).
A good example is the terribly panned “2012” by Roland Emmerich. I approach it in a different fashion than most critics, because I am geographer, historian and development expert (with clear knowledge of social and political subtext that it is seen through the film). I had a blast with that film, and loved the satire that was going on, from beginning to end… the film isn’t perfect by any means, but it is way, way better than reviews pointed out… they simply didn’t “get” the actual meaning of the film, and dismissed it as “another boombastic Emmerich apocalyptic extravaganza”… the scene in the Vatican, had me laughing to tears, for example. Or the shot of Queen Elizabeth II with her dogs. Or that speech by Eijofor’s character which both Emmerich and I, know it would never happen in the real life, or would have been dismissed by everyone around, with a “f*ck them all, let’s go”. The whole destruction of L.A. scene – which is a surrealistic hilarious marvel, by the way, in which Emmerich perfectly balances the horror of the apocalypse, with dark sense of humor and sense of wonder – should probably be studied at film schools as the perfect blend of horror and comedy, to keep the audience engaged. But I understand that 99% of the critics did NOT pay attention to the satire, less in your face that it may look, at the beginning. Emmerich is quite underrated as director, by the way. He’s more of an author, than Spielberg is… Spielberg was, at his beginnings, but then became this indusrial artisan.
Emmerich has never interested me, I am sorry. He and Michael Bay are two directors who are the opposite of what great directors should be . I find their films to be too loud and cluttered. They could do good spectacle, but it’s not controlled and not deep.
Bay wishes to be half the director that Emmerich is… Emmerich is kind of a Cecil B. deMille of the last 50 years… meaning, his movies are pulp, spectacular, and with some spectacular and greatly directed VFX heavy set pieces. It’s pulp, and half the times it’s really fun. Bay is unbearable (his only good movie, to my taste, is The Island)
I am not sure if you have seen this or. I’ll post it just in case.
I am not claiming critics are infallible, far from it. Nobody has monopoly on the truth. Films are subjective, all art is really. There was an implied criticism of film critics by your insinuation that Black Panther does not really deserve its high Metacritic score. Questioning their integrity and assuming ill motives. I don’t question people’s motives unless its very obvious. This is a subjective thing, after all. And it happens sometimes that people don’t like something you like and vice versa. It happens to all of us sometimes.
Who knows what they are really about.I consider Stanley Kubrick to be the greatest director, and he has introduced me to the power of great art as a young boy when I saw three of his masterpieces: The Shinning, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. I consider him to be the direct who most connects with the mind. Essentially, he creates new thoughts in your mind. The director of psychology.
When I was young I was only interested in three directors: Kubrick, Hitchcock and Spielberg. Kubrick made you think; Hitchcock tried to deceive you and shock you; and Spielberg tried to give you joyful entertainment and magic. I call Spielberg childlike director because he has the imagination of a child. He’s a a favourite of kids everywhere. He’s like the Roald Dahl of directors. I call Hitchcock the greatest stager because no one can make better film sequences than him. Nobody has more unique and stunning shots than him. I think his shots have been ripped off more than other director. The Vertigo shot being the famous. ( Scorsese combines Vertigo shot with the shower scene knife attack in Psycho to create his own famous great boxing sequence in Raging Bull.)
Although, I am shocked how much my taste is aligned with critics, at least those on Metacritic. I wondered whether I was drawn to films because of their high scores and influenced by them, rather than liking them on my own. But then I looked at the films i liked before I really started to pay attention to Metacritic scores about 6 or 7 years ago. And it’s consistent, even if I still think I have become more into esoteric and slower paced films. I prefer films that speak quietly and are not certain about things. I don’t mean leave things unanswered, but to not be so sure about the big questions and leave a room for doubt. Allow the audience to see alternative sides and to say what you want to say as quietly as possible. Some of the best filns and directors have the ability to deceive even Eagle-eyed film fans. They can be misinterpreted because they’re not obvious and sometimes can be the opposite of what they seem on surface. I mean, have you tried watching David Lynch films?
You need to start chewing better bubblegum.
I don’t chew bubblegum I chew cinema
Huh?
Yes.
I understand chewing cinema if it was shot on film but how do you chew it if it was shot digitally?
Don’t you know computers ingest files
Yes but do they chew them?
Shh. Don’t think so hard
Honestly, who gives a shit about the Oscar ratings?
Honestly, who actually gives a shit about the Oscars other than us tragics?
Sadly, I care less about the Oscar show than about being right in my predictions. I only really watch so I can have firsthand witness to my brilliance (or lack of).
Middle America I guess
https://media0.giphy.com/media/P2h11L1m7dOlq/giphy.gif
After two disappointments with Licorice Pizza and The Tragedy of Macbeth (amazing performances), I watched Parallel Mothers and really enjoyed it. I hope Cruz can get a nomination for actress.
Parallel Mothers is still my #2 of the year, right after that AMAZING Bo Burham’s Inside, which should had been pushed by Netflix as a film, and released in theaters… one of the most creative films I’ve ever seen.
Inside is a brilliant distillation of society in 2021, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the absurd. No film this year has better captured the insanity of our times. Quite frankly, I think it’s the defining film of this epoch.
Oh no! How can anyone be disappointed in The Tragedy of Macbeth?
I was.
I was disappointed as well. There’s something…off-putting about the film. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it since I saw it (on a big screen) in November. It’s beautifully shot with some great performances and design elements, but I didn’t love it. I initially thought it was because I have issues with the play, but I’m not sure that’s the entire reason.
I am so excited to see this since I taught it in my high school English class for 10 years. I was always looking for a version that I could show them. The only one I liked somewhat was the Playboy production, so I was always fast forwarding so they wouldn’t see the naked woman. (I think Lady Macduff was naked in several parts in the movie.)
I’m seeing The Tragedy on Sunday on the big screen, but I was also a bit underwhelmed by Licorice Pizza. It’s just inside my top 25 for the year right now, and will probably fall out once I see more stuff. I respect PTA’s filmmaking and the technical aspects of the film, and I thought there were some solid performances throughout, but the final product was less than the sum of its parts.
Also, it would be awesomely awkward if Spider-man is nominated for Best Pic and then Benedict Cumberbatch has to choose what table to sit at when Jane Campion has said comic book movies aren’t cimema and Tom Holland tried to publicly say Cumberbatch would back comic book movies over Martin Scorsese type films. Delicious!
he’ll be at Campion’s table as likely nominee for her movie, however, he needs to pose with Holland and Spidey’s team, as Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness has already started its promotion…
Cumberbatch knows that a working actor accepts an offer for a big Marvel payday in order that they can then comfortably choose to also do the smaller realistic movies that interest them. It doesn’t have to be an either/or, one-camp-or-the-other decision. If Holland doesn’t know this, he’s even dumber than he looks.
Something happened to The Power of the Dog’s Rotten tomatoes audience score. It was sitting at 62 percent with over 500 ratings and now it was reset and has an 82 percent with less than 50 ratings. Wtf
Verified ratings.
Right?! It had over 500 before the change now just less than 50. They were always verified ratings. It’s like they wanted a reset, so they just did it. Something’s not right.
They started doing that after Captain Marvel
Something is very wrong. Didn’t they think anyone would notice!
I’m amazed anyone thinks anyone cares about RT user ratings
haha! Nothing could feel more pointless!
Well, Sasha had written several articles about it and this. Wet one about Spider-man is touting its populist response and reception.
The only people who go out of their way to post RT user reviews are film bros with an outsized opinion of their own preferences
RT’s verified ratings are bullshit. For example, if I see a film that hasn’t been released yet in the USA (look no further than when I rated Parallel Mothers, in its Spanish release), they just don’t count it.
The previous one was suspiciously low even for a “divisive” film so maybe they removed some ratings they thought were fake?
Besides, Dog is on Netflix and has been since the beginning of December. Not hard to “verify” a rating considering the access.
Are they gonna change Nightmare Alley’s too then?
CHICAGO INDIE CRITICS NOMS
TPOTD- 9
Wait for it..
SPIDER-MAN- 5 noms including FILM LOL
BEST INDEPENDENT FILM (budgets under $20 million)
CODA
NINE DAYS
PIG
SPENCER
SUMMER OF SOUL
BEST STUDIO FILM (budgets over $20 million)
THE HARDER THEY FALL
LICORICE PIZZA
THE POWER OF THE DOG
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
TICK, TICK… BOOM!
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
BENEDETTA
DRIVE MY CAR
FLEE
A HERO
PARALLEL MOTHERS
BEST DOCUMENTARY
FLEE
THE RESCUE
ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN
THE SPARKS BROTHERS
SUMMER OF SOUL
BEST ANIMATED FILM
ENCANTO
FLEE
LUCA
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES
RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON
BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson – LICORICE PIZZA
Kenneth Branagh – BELFAST
Jane Campion – THE POWER OF THE DOG
Pablo Larrain – SPENCER
Edson Oda – NINE DAYS
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
THE FRENCH DISPATCH – Wes Anderson
A HERO – Asghar Farhadi
LICORICE PIZZA – Wes Anderson
NINE DAYS – Edson Oda
PIG – Michael Sarnoski
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
CODA – Sian Heder
DRIVE MY CAR – Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
PASSING – Rebecca Hall
THE POWER OF THE DOG – Jane Campion
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH – Joel Coen
BEST ACTOR
Nicolas Cage – PIG
Benedict Cumberbatch – THE POWER OF THE DOG
Andrew Garfield – TICK, TICK… BOOM!
Will Smith – KING RICHARD
Denzel Washington – THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
BEST ACTRESS
Jessica Chastain – THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE
Olivia Colman – THE LOST DAUGHTER
Alana Haim – LICORICE PIZZA
Emilia Jones – CODA
Kristen Stewart – SPENCER
Tessa Thompson – PASSING
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Ben Affleck – THE LAST DUEL
Colman Domingo – ZOLA
Mike Faist – WEST SIDE STORY
Troy Kotsur – CODA
Kodi Smit-McPhee – THE POWER OF THE DOG
Jeffrey Wright – THE FRENCH DISPATCH
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Ariana DeBose – WEST SIDE STORY
Kirsten Dunst – THE POWER OF THE DOG
Aunjanue Ellis – KING RICHARD
Marlee Matlin – CODA
Ruth Negga – PASSING
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
BELFAST
CODA
THE FRENCH DISPATCH
THE HARDER THEY FALL
THE POWER OF THE DOG
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
BELFAST
DUNE
THE GREEN KNIGHT
THE POWER OF THE DOG
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
DUNE
THE LAST DUEL
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
WEST SIDE STORY
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
CRUELLA
DUNE
THE GREEN KNIGHT
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
WEST SIDE STORY
BEST MAKEUP
CRUELLA
DUNE
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE
HOUSE OF GUCCI
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
BEST EDITING
DUNE
THE HARDER THEY FALL
NINE DAYS
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
WEST SIDE STORY
BEST MUSICAL SCORE
DUNE
ENCANTO
THE HARDER THEY FALL
THE POWER OF THE DOG
SPENCER
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Be Alive” – KING RICHARD
“Guns Go Bang” – THE HARDER THEY FALL
“Just Look Up” – DON’T LOOK UP
“No Time to Die” – NO TIME TO DIE
“So May We Start” – ANNETTE
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
DUNE
FREE GUY
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
BEST STUNTS
BLACK WIDOW
DUNE
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
NO TIME TO DIE
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS
SPIDER-MAN NO WAY HOME
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..
I didn’t know Wes Anderson wrote the screenplay for Liquorice Pizza. It would be very interesting if Wes PTA worked. But it’s unlikely to ever happen because their films are are so different from each other.
Affleck for The Last Duel … but no Comer? (and over Driver, for that matter??)
People who keep talking about the “good ol’ days” of the Oscars should stay in the “good ol’ days”.
Make a GREAT show and more people will come. They may not show up in the same DROVES that they used to for the LIVE show. But they will keep watching and rewatching clips of the show, the BTS, interviews, the speeches, the music performances, the dresses, the makeup tutorials…. all in small bytes seen for weeks after the live show on YT, TikTok, instagram etc. At their own time. Because this is the generation of viewers who don’t care for appointment viewing around a good ol’ TV set at home anymore.
Does it mean less people are watching the Oscars? Not necessarily. The TOTAL viewership of all facets of the show on live TV, delayed clips on social media, and potentially simultaneous and delayed streaming in the future (?), PRE AND POST, could easily surpass the 40+M who used to watch the show only on network television. Keep harping on LIVE ratings for the show’s “success” and the Academy becomes the vintage species it so desperately wants to steer away from. The Oscars has the great potential to attract much bigger audiences on all platforms, pre-show, live and delayed, if it plays its cards right and stop harping on declining live ratings.
And… stop producing that drivel of a crap show that they did in 2021. One of the worst slog of a show I have ever seen in my entire life. And I am one of the few who actually care to watch the Oscars live. Don’t blame this entertainment disaster on Bad Boys for Life or Tenet not getting nominated for Best Picture.
Agreed. I understand folks chafing at the idea of box office determining what gets nominated. But guess what? It’s not just about box office. The reviews for Spider-man are ecstatic. The movie is one of the best the genre has to offer. It’s up there alongside The Dark Knight. So yes, it would be absolutely appropriate to nominate it in Best Picture.
I wouldn’t exactly consider 71% on metacritic to be ecstatic . Black Panther had 88%, The Dark Knight 84%. Many of the other Spidey films actually had higher scores. Into the Spider-verse, in particular, had 87%. Metacritic is not the be-all and end all of everything. My point is the fans LOVED it, but to say the reviews are ECSTATIC for everyone else is a bit of an overkill. So vote it by all means, but I wouldn’t consider NOT voting it for Best Picture to be inappropriate at all.
Metacritic is irrelevant outside of Film Twitter. I prefer it myself, but most folks (including folks in the industry) only look to RottenTomatoes
(Film) Twitter means nothing to me, and I rely on Metacritic rather than RT, which I just don’t trust.
Metacritic isn’t Film Twitter. Most people who look at Rotten Tomatoes don’t vote for the Oscars. Some of the most renowned film critics don’t whine endlessly on Twitter. Ironically, the people who whine endlessly on Twitter also tend to be the ones most critical of Twitter.
A system that judges films based only on Good or Bad isn’t really much of a reliable system. Just because something isn’t crap doesn’t mean it’s great. 100% red tomatoes only meant 100% of audiences think the film is better than 5/10. Kudos to Spidey for not being crap. That’s not “ecstatic”. That is just… “not crap”.
Actually it’s more like 6/10 for RT since rotten starts at 59%
Black Panther had politics going behind it, the critical rating was distorted… it was an average MCU film (which means, good, not great) and their Awards campaigned was based on a phallacy, that it was a vindication of Africa, when Black Panther was created by white men… for a white superhero comic-book (as a Supporting player for the Fantastic Four, back in the times when Reed used to mistreat both physically and psychollogically, his wife). And I love the Fantastic Four, but their origins were “troubling” with our eyes.
I personally don’t think Black Panther is all that great either, but I don’t mind it at all. I get the acclaim for it and the people who really loved it. I think the work speaks for itself whatever the origins are. It doesn’t matter if it’s created by white or black men to me at all. The end result is what matters.
No one thinks Steven Spielberg’s interpretation of The Color Purple is whitewashing the black experience even though I genuinely disliked that film. I don’t have to hate it because it’s a white man hired to take the helm. The characters might have started as “troubling” supporting players but they have been elevated into leads with inner lives and dimensions in their own right. They had the last laugh. Begrudging a film for the troubling politics of its history is I feel very misleading. Like saying we should now despise all the films Roman Polanski and Woody Allen have made in their lives because people now start reading into parallels of those stories with the directors’ own scandalous personal lives. Even GONE WITH THE Wind had troubling origins that probably felt right at the time, and some people now want it banned from the ether of film history. Totally ridiculous and more clickbait and faux outrage in my opinion.
That said, don’t count on me to defend Black Panther. I certainly didn’t think it was one of the greatest superhero films ever made.
Wow, I love this post. Well done Sasha! I used to come to this site all the time and I’ve started to decrease over the years cause I felt like I didn’t see eye to eye with you anymore, but this post really connects with me and I haven’t even seen Spider-Man yet.
I also liked Art Vandelay’s response where he brought up American Sniper. Art, I think you and Sasha are seeing more eye to eye on this subject. Look if the academy awards was to go off broadcast and just be for cinephiles it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I agree with you that going more popular with the nominees won’t increase viewership or interest BUT it can’t just be that 3-7 best picture nominees each year are mediocre or good but not great dramas that were catered for the Oscar’s to begin with. That’s the key difference when we talk about foreign films (and I’m not just saying which ones get picked by their country) they aren’t produced with the specific purpose of getting academy award nominations. Neither are best animated features, and best documentary will sometimes get distribution by companies that have sway, but most of the time those are still being made by artists who applied for grants and worked at it for years upon years. Even “prestige” or “indie” comedies/horror/science fiction are trying to occupy a space of the public consciousness that is independent from their award season presence.
I’m 33 years old, back when the Oscar’s had 5 nominees they were most of the time a very solid 5, it was hard, or at least harder to squeak in, I’m not saying it never happened but it happened less. So I used to watch all 5 and then I’d curate other players for other categories that I wanted to get to. Now so many Oscar’s seasons feel like a slog, where movies that get 50-80% on rotten tomatoes, and where I have friends or family that see them and say it was so-so become required viewing to keep up,
That’s what needs to decrease regardless. If it’s truly an award show for people with good taste then it shouldn’t be a slog to keep up with the best picture nominations.
I’d say there have been equally mediocre films that repeatedly get Oscar nominated for decades. It certainly is not a “recent” phenomena. The Oscars is known for questionable decisions that drove remorse years after. The reason why we see more mediocrity is because the mediocre simply expanded from 5 to 10.
By far the worst movie I’ve sat through in decades.
Couldn’t be worse than A Very Country Christmas
There has only been one Spider-Man film that deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, and that’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Totally agree. That one was criminality overlooked just because it was animated film. I have it second best superhero film after The Incredibles. It just pips Black Panther.
Spider-man is not happening because it has missed big precursors. Superhero films or films the Academy doesn’t usually like need a big push from major Oscars precursors in order to make them acceptable and a viable option. Black Panther and Joker got BFCA, GG, AFI and PGA. And Joker got BAFTA as well. The last hope remaining for PGA, but I don’t see that happening either. So, can we drop all these Spider-Man nonsense? It’s not happening.
It’s bizarre that someone like Sasha who likes to analyse stats would totally ignore that SpiderMan has mo stats in its favour. None
I think the point of Spider-Man BP debate is just that. The debate is the point. It doesn’t matter if it’s going nowhere. At least people are talking about it.
“If the pundits continue to predict the same movies over and over again they build a consensus without any organic movement necessary. What is organic movement? It’s when audiences spontaneously love a great movie, for instance.”
Well, this is the moment when the whole thing collapses on itself. What is organic about Spider-Man: No way Home, an 8th film instalment of a popular comic book character? You’ve got a point about pundits, but there’s nothing organic about superhero films and mega franchises. There’s little risk in making them because they all make money. The top ten box office is dominated by these films every year.
TPOTD leads Columbus Critics with 12 noms including Plemons!
Licorice Pizza- 8, Belfast- 7, WSS & Dune- 5
Best Film
Belfast
C’mon C’mon
Dune
Licorice Pizza
Pig
The Power of the Dog
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
tick, tick…BOOM!
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh – Belfast
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog
Steven Spielberg – West Side Story
Denis Villeneuve – Dune
Best Actor
Nicolas Cage – Pig
Benedict Cumberbatch – The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield – tick, tick…BOOM!
Will Smith – King Richard
Denzel Washington – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Best Actress
Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter
Alana Haim – Licorice Pizza
Taylour Paige – Zola
Tessa Thompson – Passing
Best Supporting Actor
Colman Domingo – Zola
Ciarán Hinds – Belfast
Troy Kotsur – CODA
Jesse Plemons – The Power of the Dog
Kodi Smit-McPhee – The Power of the Dog
Best Supporting Actress
Caitriona Balfe – Belfast
Jodie Comer – The Last Duel
Kirsten Dunst – The Power of the Dog
Aunjanue Ellis – King Richard
Marlee Matlin – CODA
Ruth Negga – Passing
Best Ensemble
The French Dispatch
The Harder They Fall
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Actor of the Year (for an exemplary body of work)
Timothée Chalamet (Don’t Look Up, Dune, and The French Dispatch)
Bradley Cooper (Licorice Pizza and Nightmare Alley)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, The Mauritanian, The Power of the Dog, and Spider-Man: No Way Home)
Adam Driver (Annette, House of Gucci, and The Last Duel)
Andrew Garfield (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and tick, tick…BOOM!)
Breakthrough Film Artist
Janicza Bravo – Zola (for directing and screenwriting)
Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter (for producing, directing, and screenwriting)
Alana Haim – Licorice Pizza (for acting)
Rebecca Hall – Passing (for producing, directing, and screenwriting)
Jude Hill – Belfast (for acting)
Woody Norman – C’mon C’mon (for acting)
Best Cinematography
Bruno Delbonnel – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Andrew Droz Palermo – The Green Knight
Greig Fraser – Dune
Dan Lautsen – Nightmare Alley
Ari Wegner – The Power of the Dog
Haris Zambarloukos – Belfast
Best Film Editing
Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn – West Side Story
Andy Jurgensen – Licorice Pizza
Peter Sciberras – The Power of the Dog
Joe Walker – Dune
Andrew Weisblum – The French Dispatch
Best Adapted Screenplay
Jane Campion – The Power of the Dog
Joel Coen – The Tragedy of Macbeth
Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter
Siân Heder – CODA
Tony Kushner – West Side Story
Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth – Dune
Best Original Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson – Licorice Pizza
Zach Baylin – King Richard
Kenneth Branagh – Belfast
Julia Ducournau – Titane
Mike Mills – C’mon C’mon
Michael Sarnoski – Pig
Best Score
Alexandre Desplat – The French Dispatch
Jonny Greenwood – The Power of the Dog
Jonny Greenwood – Spencer
Nathan Johnson – Nightmare Alley
Hans Zimmer – Dune
Best Documentary
Attica
Flee
The Rescue
The Sparks Brothers
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The Velvet Underground
Best Foreign Language Film
Drive My Car
Flee
A Hero
Titane
The Worst Person in the World
Best Animated Film
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon
Best Overlooked Film
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
CODA
Cyrano
Nine Days
Riders of Justice
Together Together
If “The Oscars can be the group that says they understand the world has changed” they wouldn’t air their show only on live network television.
Spiderman No Way Home should be nominated because it’s a terrific movie. That said, no one is naive to think that it’s going to win the main prize with just a token blockbuster nom so that will not lure people to watch the telecast. You know very well that, from CC and Globes onward, winner(s) will be low key movies such as TPOTD (which did well on Netflix for what it is but wasn’t Squid Game of movies that’s for sure), Drive My Car, etc. So while nom would acknowledge a great blockbuster, in terms of ratings it wouldn’t do anything. They are going to go slightly up by default of a live show rather than zoom nonsense. Spidey or not.
I apologize in advance for the long post. You’ve been warned. This is a preposterous argument to make, and here are some statistics that tell us why…
TV viewership has been in steady decline across the board for years, with minor spikes here or there.
-Last year’s Super Bowl had the lowest ratings since the early 90’s.
-Last year’s NBA finals averaged 9.9 million viewers
-Last year’s MLB World Series averaged 9.8 million viewers
-Last year’s Prime Time Emmy Awards had a viewership of 6.4 million (compared to ~10 million for the Oscars)
-Last year’s Grammy’s had a viewership of 8.8 million (compared to ~10 million for the Oscars)
This is NOT an Oscars problem. It’s a TV problem. Sasha’s argument is so myopic because the logic doesn’t hold up. Nominating the biggest box office hit and “most popular” movie of the year is not going to “save the Oscars.” Case in point, the 2019 People’s Choice Awards gave their top prize to the second-highest grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame. That award ceremony had a viewership of 1.8 million people. The general public just do NOT care about awards shows anymore. Nominating Spider-Man: No Way Home for Best Picture is not going to change that. Might there be a negligible increase in viewership? Sure. But it’s not going to fundamentally change the way awards shows across the board fare with the general public.
I’m a high school teacher, and I see first-hand how celebrity status has changed in the last decade. Movie stars, television stars, and rock stars matter less and less with each passing year. Rappers on soundcloud are more popular than the people who get nominated for Grammys. TikTok influencers and YouTuber’s are more famous than movie and television stars. Nominating Spider-Man for Best Picture is not going to convince any of my students to watch the Oscars. If they really care, they’ll watch 60 second clips of the awards on social media the next day.
There are sooo many other ways for them to consume awards show content. There’s no need for them to tune in to watch the live broadcast. The world has fundamentally changed since the days of Ben-Hur, Jaws, E.T., Titanic, and even LOTR: Return of the King. It used to be that you HAD to watch the live broadcast if you wanted to be “in the know” and a part of the water cooler talk the following morning. These shows played a more central role in the general American psyche. They don’t anymore. The definition of celebrity has changed. They way people consume content has changed. And it’s not because the Hollywood boogeyman has become too insular.
American Sniper was the highest grossing domestic film in 2014, and it was nominated for Best Picture and a slew of other awards. This is a movie that appealed to middle America and folks on the right. Guess what happened with that year’s Oscar broadcast… it decreased by over 6 million viewers!
In summation, if the definition of “saving the Oscars” is to increase TV viewership, nominating Spider-Man: No Way Home will not save the Oscars. Nothing will. The Oscars should focus on appealing to the people who still care, the cinephiles and Oscar nerds. Everyone else is spending their time on social media and binge watching true crime shows on streaming services.
Like I said below – absolutely no one is going to tune in to a live 4 hour show just because their favorite movie is nominated. When it comes to younger audiences especially, the problem isn’t the nominees – it’s the medium, the format, and the concept itself of “awards” … period. Billie Eilish could host the entire awards and her most die hard fans aren’t gonna “turn on the TV”, they’re just gonna wait for the highlights on twitter, insta, and tiktok
I would.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/350360997be6cc6506d08c86ec99a5cab94e90c9a3ffd4c8e187a245d5e3e24b.gif
Wow, that´s cute.
I wish I never clicked on that gif. It’s going to give me nightmares.
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for years. You just say it far better.
Perfectly said. Thank you!
https://media4.giphy.com/media/3jGJWLDrbCamA/giphy.gif
Nothing to add that I haven’t been yelling these past few weeks…
You have the cheques. That’s the difference between a serious argument and an unserious one. It’s clear to some of us that Sasha wasn’t being serious, but we just played along.
While I don’t disagree with Sasha on several points in her article, and while I think Spider-Man: No Way Home is a thrilling entertainment … I completely agree with what Art says, here. I have family members and know friends’ children who are teenagers and in their 20s and, I can ASSURE you that they would never think to tune-in because Spider-Man: No Way Home was nominated for BP.
It really is true that the “stars” of today are on TikTok, YouTube and the like for these audiences. Young people (and anyone) CAN find out what happened the next day … if they care. The culture of watching Live television for something like an awards show has changed. I don’t know if it will ever come back. And nobody seems to know how to fix it.
The film industry and Hollywood can honor film and art til the end of time and I (along with millions of others) will be right there to obsess and love it all. But the interest has waned, pure & simple.
Yes, people who keep talking about the “good ole days” of the Oscars should stay in the “good ole days”.
I’m not at all opposed to Spider Man being nominated – although as I wrote below, I don’t think it’d do jack sh*t for ratings, especially among younger audiences – but I am interested: has anyone who is not caught up with Marvel (except I suppose for the first two Holland Spideys) seen it, and think it’s really that excellent? The only Marvel movie I think I’ve seen since the first Avengers is Black Panther. Does Spidey really stand on its own outside its Holland trilogy? It honestly just seems intimidatingly insular at this point – in fact watching any Marvel movie feels completely daunting. (Not that insularity is an immediate disqualification for being nominated at the Oscars. Mank, which I think was the best movie of last year, was also one of the most esoteric movies I think I’ve ever seen, and I think it would have been fully deserving of a BP win, though it would have been far more disastrous for the Oscars’ image than Nomadland).
I haven’t yet seen it, but the only thing I have seen and heard both superfans and casual fans talk about was the fan service, never how the film was actually good.
Well, fan service often (usually?) backfires, especially if the film/TV show/etc is bad, so if there are no/few complaints, we can assume the film is actually pretty good.
I’m sure the film itself is also fine, but in my experience, fan service very rarely backfires, at least in the short term. What I’m pointing out is that pretty much nobody is saying “oh wow this and this is so good in this film” and pretty much everyone is saying “omg I can’t believe they did THAT”, which to me doesn’t scream that anyone would think the film Oscar-worthy.
Me: “The sound mixing/editing, visual effects and supporting performances are soooo good in No Way Home, truly Oscar-worthy.” 😉
But seriously, as I’ve stated elsewhere in these comments, No Way Home doesn’t have to be God’s gift to cinema to be worthy of a Best Picture nod. It’s very successful at what it does, both artistically and financially, more so than any number of previous BP nominees.
I think it would work on its own, which is impressive considering how much history is involved in all Marvel projects at this point.
It really is a trilogy, so of course there will be moments that will ring more true to viewers who have seen the previous ones. In some cases, its just emotional beats that will pay off more for you if you’ve spent more time with the characters. And I definitely think Peter Parker’s evolution, especially where he end sup at the end of this film, has incredible resonance if you’ve seen the other Holland films and appreciate where the actor and writers have taken this character.
But the movie is remarkably successful at what it sets out to achieve. Not only entertaining, but surprisingly moving.
I see. One of these days I do want to catch up with Marvel – at least the more mainline movies – and I’ll have to start up Spidey from the first one.
I liked the first one. It’s not serious, but it’s a fun ride. Holland is a boy superhero and that’s about right. There a few funny moments in it and Holland wins you over with his enthusiasm. It’s almost childish look at what it takes to be a superhero. Let’s face it, it’s not deepestfilm. I mean, it’s no Black Panther, or even TDK which I am not a big fan of but to be fair, does tackle big themes. However, I find Black Panther does it better. But more importantly, it does it more subtly. TDK uses its big themes as major plot points and it’s so obvious and over the top that I thought it was as loud as Zimmer’s score. On the other hand, Black Panther tries to hide it or be as subtle as possible, at least for a superhero. And I think it has succeeded in that, because many people sem to have missed it. The moment I saw the scene where the camera was rotating as Kilmonger sits on the throne, I knew I was watching a great film and knew I would love it. It’s a simple thing yet it has so much meaning. For me, Black Panther has the deepest meaning of any superhero film and also Best acting. That’s why I rank it among the top three best superhero films ever.
Childlike look.
Here’s the scene I am talking about. It’s great that people have recognised how great this scene is. I remember first time I watched it and grinning from ear to ear. A single shot is used to defined a lot of the film.
https://youtu.be/Xt20A2L0Djw
As others have mentioned, nominating Black Panther didn’t save the Oscars. Neither did Joker being the most nominated film of its year. The film grossed $1 billion worldwide, it won Best Actor for the most talked-about performance of that year, and no one gave a shit. Nominating Spider-Man: No Way Home will not make a difference.
Can you imagine that I will go to my grave never having seen the feature-length digital video masterpiece ‘Spider-man: No Way Home”? Good people, I feel your collective sympathy, and I appreciate it
For some historical context, in the Oscars’ 93 year history, AMPAS has nominated the highest grossing domestic film of the year for Best Picture 38 times, and they’ve awarded that film with the top prize 17 times. The greatest overlap between the industry and what the American movie-going public deemed “popular” was in the 60’s and 70’s. In my mind, there was a significant shift in 1983. Action and adventure films, and superhero and franchise films became the highest grossing films at that time, with rare exceptions. Of the 38 nominees for Best Picture, 11 have happened in the last 40 years (1980-2020), just over 25% of the time. In the preceding 40 years (1939-1979), 23 of the highest grossing films were nominated for Best Picture, over 50% of the time. In my opinion, this data proves that this shift away from what’s “most popular” with the public is not the result of an insular left-wing Hollywood filled with elitism. The shift happened in the 1980’s, when big budget productions started to change.
1932- Shanghai Express
1934- It Happened One Night
1935- Mutiny on the Bounty
1938- The Adventures of Robin Hood
1939- Gone With The Wind
1941- Sergeant York
1944- Going My Way
1948- The Snake Pit
1951- Quo Vadis
1956- The Ten Commandments
1957- Bridge of the River Kwai
1959- Ben Hur
1961- West Side Story
1962- Lawrence of Arabia
1963- Cleopatra
1964- My Fair Lady
1965- The Sound of Music
1967- The Graduate
1969- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1970- Love Story
1971- Fiddler on the Roof
1972- The Godfather
1973- The Sting
1975- Jaws
1976- Rocky
1977- Star Wars: A New Hope
1979- Kramer vs Kramer
1981- Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982- E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial
1988- Rain Man
1991- Beauty and the Beast
1997- Titanic
1998- Saving Private Ryan
2003- Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
2009- Avatar
2010- Toy Story 3
2014- American Sniper
2018- Black Panther
Wonderful research, Art. Small side note: I hadn’t realized that The Snake Pit had made that much money. I guess with some of the scars and disruptions of WWII growing more apparent, an interest in the cold facts about “mental illness” began to rise. And it got seven Oscar noms (won for Sound), including de Havilland’s fourth, this time for Best Actress. So it seems to have been quite a hit.
In the 30’s 40’s, actors were under contract to studios and could only work for them unless loaned out. Most performers voted for their studio’s releases, which was their employer. Voting for what they thought best overall didn’t necessarily occur.
Kramer vs. Kramer was the biggest b.o. of the year? Today, such a movie could only thrive on an Apple TV+ streaming. Time’s a changing.
Terribly sad, for me.
Weekend domestic estimates:
1. No Way Home: $52.7m/$609.9m (10th place all time domestic boxoffice, 12th globally)
2. Sing 2 $19.6m/$89.7m (will be top animated earner of 2021 next weekend)
3. The King’s Man $4.5m/$19.5m
4. American Underdog $4.1m/$15m
5. The Matrix: Resurrections $3.8m/$30.9m
6. West Side Story $2.1m/$29.6m
7. Ghostbusters: Afterlife $1.4m/$123.4m
8. Licorice Pizza $1.2M/$6.3m
9. A Journal For Jordan $1.2m/$4.7m
10. Encanto $1.1m/$91.3m
Others:
Nightmare Alley 972,000 ($7.58m)
House of Gucci 788,000 (49m)
Anders Danielsen Lie should’ve received more recognition for his performance in The Worst Person in the World.
He was fantastic.
Remember that sketch at Oscar night when they said that White chicks should’ve been nominated? Looks like nobody is laughing now…
Don’t really care if Spiderman gets nominated. Streamers are in the game considering a success films, or contents as they call them, that people stop after twenty minutes. How could be a Marvel movie more vulgar than that?
Maybe Spiderman is good, maybe it isn’t, idk, but if it gets nominated, two things are for sure:
1. Nobody new will turn up to watch the Oscars because of it
2. It will look ridiculous in a year’s time
Would it be nominated for Palm d’Or at Cannes? No, it would not so why should it be nominated for Oscars? Marvel isn’t film art so… Even nomination for “Black Panther” was ridiculous.
Oh and Sasha did u advocate for Avengers Endgame the real innovative breakthrough for mcu b worthwhile consideration for Oscar contenders in past as much u doing Spiderman? Maybe horse bolted for mcu but u do make compelling impassioned case ..but shouldn’t this advocacy passion been there fir Endgame
“Ah yes, the ancient logic of middlebrow Oscar snobbery. In the past, the members of the Motion Picture Academy have considered superhero movies to be entertainment, not art, and the Oscars are supposed to be about art. We’ve been through this debate several tedious times, most spectacularly in 2008, when “The Dark Knight,” the greatest superhero movie ever made, couldn’t finagle a best picture nomination”
Well said spot on right on the money Sasha!! And to those very few who in vain dismiss legacy of the Dark Knight still having a influence on role of high quality mainstream cinema being worthy if appealing enough.. critical acclaimed enough, talked about enough beyond it initial release all I say is ” ha ha ha to you!” .
Are you feeling okay? This was less than 10,000 words.
I totally agree that Spider Man should be nominated for Best Picture. Historically and Culturally it already is the film of the year. The film people embraced. The film people defied a pandemic to watch it at the movie teather. This is history being made and it simply can not be ignored. But it is not only about that. It is an acclaimed piece of filmaking – by public and the critics. It has a bigger Rotten Tomatoes ratings than the supposed Oscar frontrunners ” Belfast” (87%) and “King Richard”(91%). It also has a bigger Rotten Tomatoes ratings than “Dune” (83%), “Nightmare Alley” (80%), “Don’t Look Up” (55%), “West Side Story”(92), TICK, TICK… BOOM!(88%). So, by the metric of the critics – and supposedly the meritocracy of the Best Picture nomines relies on that – “Spider Man” would be above all of these movies. It makes no sense not nominate the film. More than never, it is time to stop these bias with blockbusters and genre films.
I dont have a bias against blockbusters just the mcu, the fast and the furious and the transformers which I consider as very low tier comfort food blockbusters. Rotten tomatoes just means 94 percent thought it was just slightly above average at a minimum, I far prefer metacritic as a general measure, with rotten tomatoes no matter how low a score you give it you can choose whether you consider that rotten or not, so 5 out of 10 could be rotten or fresh.
This headline is a joke right?!?!
The idea that a film should be nominated for Best Picture simply because it appeals to the masses and would represent a snapshot in history is preposterous—neither of those reasons are why the Oscars exist.
For the record, I do not believe the yarn that the snub of The Dark Knight is why the Academy expanded their ballot either.
I’m so tired of super hero fanboys whining about their comic book heroes being overlooked.
..I’m so tired of people who use their bias like uslf against certain genres as their most unconvincing to fabricate irrefutable facts such as timing and circumstance is indisputable..the proven on record reason for expansion of best pic categories from 5- 10 contenders..is as consequence of the Dark Knight snub. That films snub was the generational defining catalyst for one significant relevant needed change from 5 – 10 best pic contenders…
I agree with that, but the entire mcu is far beneath the dark knight, so either way no way home definitely should not win, and its questionable whether it should be nominated
Proven? Proove it.
Why didn’t Black Panther’s 7 nominations save the Oscars?
I suspect when you have a big ticket intelligent blockbuster, the audience realizes they’ll only get the usual suspect awards; VFX, sound, art direction. They figure rightfully, they’ll be frozen out of the big 7 (picture, acting, director, screenplay).
So does it mean the Oscars will not be saved unless Spidey actually WINS instead of, gawd-forbid, getting NOMINATED for 7 Oscars including Best Picture?
The year “Black Panther” was nominated, the Oscar had it biggest ratings since 2014, reverting a sequence of declines. So, it did helped the ratings significantly.
That’s not true. The 2019 show had the 2nd lowest ratings in history at the time. How did you get biggest ratings since 2014?
2018 (the year “Shape of Water ” won) was an all time low – until 2021. The 2019 cerimony with Black Panther and Lady Gaga was a rise, reverting 5 years of decline. You need to check the data more acurately.
https://www.businessinsider.com/2019-oscars-gets-ratings-bump-2019-2
2018 was an all time low – until 2021. 2019 cerimony – with Black Panther and Lady Gag was a rise, reverting 5 years of decline. You need to check the data more accurately. Just google it.
2013: 40.4
2014: 43.7
2015: 37.3
2016: 34.3
2017: 32.9
2018: 26.5
2019: 29.6
Reversing 4 years of decline, yes.
Biggest ratings since 2014, no.
2nd lowest in historical ratings at that time, yes.
I guess it depends on what people dying to save the Oscars mean when they want to save the Oscars.
It significantly shows that Black Panther indeed improved the ratings that year – as well as the more populist approach of the nomines, with A Star is Born (Lady Gaga) and BR. So, it proves the point. And it was the first time in 5 years – because you have to count the 2015 cerimony (2015,2016.2017,2018,2019) that we have a reverse in the decline of the ratings. That is why it is considered a reverse in five years. This is not me saying. This was the media saying. Just read the articles that were published at that time. And most important, let’s not forget that, the monination of Black Panther and A Star is Born, and probably BR had to do too much with the pressure that the Academy was suffering to nominate more populist approach films. 2019 was the year AMPAS decided to create the Best Popular Film Category – just to give up about the idea some time later.
Yes. All valid points. I just want to say 2019 was not the “biggest ratings since 2014”. This was not what the media, and Google, was saying. I love Google.
My point is: does it mean Oscar saviors will be happy with a 10.5 rating in Oscar 2022? That would mean the first time in 3 years when Oscar ratings see a rise – reversing 2 years of declines, bravo! But still 2nd lowest rating in the history of the Oscars. What does “saving the Oscars” mean?
We should probably take a page from the Emmy rule book, 16% increase for their 2021 show, the first rise in 4 years stemming 3 years of declines. What did they do different – considering there was no DC, Marvel, Game of Thrones or some show “Middle America” adores?
So true so perhaps we should see this happen in future Oscars once again from now on..as it was in Black Panthers era
2013: 40.4
2014: 43.7
2015: 37.3
2016: 34.3
2017: 32.9
2018: 26.5
2019: 29.6
Reversing 4 years of decline, yes.
Biggest ratings since 2014, no.
2nd lowest in historical ratings at that time, yes.
I guess it depends on what people dying to save the Oscars mean when they want to save the Oscars.
No, actually. I don’t care for NWH. There will be only one genre slot in BP and that’s going to Dune 1.
So it’s actually about you, not really about “saving” anything.
If the Academy members truly believe ”Spider-Man: No Way Home” is a top-tier quality film, they should nominate it for Best Picture. I don’t think superhero movies should be automatically shut out due to genre bias. In the past, I would’ve agreed if ”Superman” (1978), ”The Dark Knight” (2009) and ”Wonder Woman” (2017) had been up for Best Picture. But I don’t believe in nominating ”Spider-Man: No Way Home” for Best Picture primarily to ”save” the Oscars or to boost its sagging TV ratings.
I could see this ”Spider-Man” getting a PGA nomination, but it wouldn’t meet my Oscar criteria.
Wonder Woman?!?
The first one, yes, not the train wreck that was WW84, which was a half hour too long.
SMNWH is certainly Best Picture calibre. It’s a “must-see” film for a number of reasons. Any “must-see” is a deserving BP nominee.
Plus the original 1989 Batman
Its a shame that we are not talking about that Jodie Comer for The Last Duel will not be in the final 5 nominees and we are talking about if NWH will get in BP contention or not. Stop pretending that this film just because “SAVED” cinemas must or should get a nomination. It doesnt even deserve a VFX nomination! I didnt like it as much as other people but imo if endgame couldnt get a nomination then NWH in any universe in the multiverse mustn get one!
Sold on Spidey in for BP… Can we now start loudly talking about a companion nod for Willem Dafoe for Supporting?
actually, this huge Spider-Man spoiler here…helps A LOT Andrew Garfield to score a Best Actor nomination this year, with this one, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, helping his body of work year to score a richly deserved Tick, Tick, Boom nomination for Lead Actor
I said this same thing right after I saw the movie, but the truth is it doesn’t hurt Cumberbatch either.
For nightmare alley?
For No Way Home!
(I think Supporting Actor is an incredibly weak category this year…)
For The Card Counter? 😉
Sigh…
young people will literally not watch a 4 hour non-streaming broadcast (half of which is just commercials and not even the fun Superbowl kind) on television just because Spidey’s nominated
Zendaya and Tom Holland could f*ck on stage uncensored for half an hour straight and literally no one will go through the trouble of going to their TV to go watch it live
no one under 25 knows what “ABC” or “channels” are and I don’t blame them because it’s been literal years since I’ve had to watch one or flip through the other myself
when it comes to younger audiences, the problem isn’t the nominees, the problem is that the entire concept of an “awards show” is pure cringe
and the other problem is accessibility. Stream the Oscars on TikTok I promise ratings will go up, tho maybe not by a whole lot
Sadly, this is true, but I gotta disagree with “Zendaya and Tom Holland can f*ck on stage uncensored for half an hour straight and literally no one will go through the trouble of going to their TV to go watch it live.”
For that they would find ABC.
or they’d just find the streamer posting it to Twitch or TikTok via twitter in under like, four seconds
and when it comes to right wing audiences, literally who cares
I literally had to google “what channel shows the oscars” to even write this comment . and I’ve been a regular on AD since 2009
hahaha absolute truth!
They will only watch if it is assured that Spider-Man 8 will win. I predict we will see the “it better win or else” columns by the end of the month.
people is going to be excited for having Spidey – who is a Best Picture winner character already (in Animated) – nominated for the Big One.
As others have pointed out, Joker and Black Panther didn’t move the needle
it doesn’t matter… some people, will. The problem with awards show ratings is not limited to Oscars. And the whole point many of us are making… is that it will be better than some of the actual nominees… and most winners of the last 20 years!
I think its a bad idea to nominate films primarily with TV ratings in mind.
me too. But the thing is… again… Spider-Man is one of the best films of the year, and if it is not nominated, it will be purely genre-bias, again. Because industry, critics and audiences have spoken already 2 of them love it to death, and the critics give it favorable ratings and even raves.
Would it be genre bias, or specifically Marvel-bias, and even more specifically, one-movie-out-of-a-franchise-of-30-interrelated-and-narratively-linked-movies-bias? Especially when most of these movies (at least from what I can remember between Iron-Man/Thor/Avengers/Black Panther and the other two or three of these I’ve seen) share a certain similarity and consistency of style (in terms of narrative, comedy, appearance, etc.). I can’t really speak because I haven’t seen the movie; I’m sure it’s very good, but I can understand why many voters either haven’t seen them, or simply think they’re too … diluted at this point to merit special attention (Black Panther being a bit of an outlier), especially when this is the third movie in its own sequence within Marvel (not to mention the third movie in the third iteration of the same Spidey franchise within 20 years).
it’s actually the 6th movie of this iteration… Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home, Spider-Man: No way home (and soon, the 7th, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, if buzz is correct)
I doubt ANYONE among the voters, vote with that idea. What we all of us are saying… is that AMPAS and Oscar would benefit tremendously of not ignoring popular films. Hence, why AMPAS studied to create that category, which would just take the industry and AMPAS back to their origin, when both Sunrise and Wings won Best Picture.
I think the idea was canned because they already realized it would just be the Marvel award much like Animated is the Pixar award.
I am extremely unsure, that would happen. This year, it could perfectly go to Dune, Part I. I made a list of what I thought it would have won, from 1970 till today, at my website, when the idea was announced… these were my guesses…
1970 M*A*S*H
1971 Bedknobs and Broomsticks
1972 The Godfather (Cabaret would have then won Picture)
1973 The Exorcist
1974 The Towering Inferno
1975 Jaws
1976 Rocky (Network would have taken Best Picture)
1977 Star Wars: A New Hope
1978 Superman (or Heaven can Wait)
1979 Alien
1980 Airplane! (Empire strikes back as alternative, but it was a “downer” for many)
1981 Raiders of Lost Ark
1982 E.T. the Extraterrestrial
1983 Return of the Jedi
1984 Ghostbusters
1985 Back to the Future
1986 Aliens
1987 The Untouchables
1988 Who framed Roger Rabbit? (or Die Hard)
1989 The Little Mermaid
1990 Ghost
1991 Silence of the Lambs (and J.F.K. taking Best Picture)
1992 Basic Instinct
1993 Jurassic Park
1994 Forrest Gump (Pulp Fiction winning Best Picture)
1995 Babe (or Apollo XIII)
1996 Jerry Maguire (or Independence Day)
1997 Titanic (this year I think it would have won both awards)
1998 Saving Private Ryan
1999 The 6th Sense
2000 Gladiator (Traffic for Best Picture)
2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Lost in Translation in Picture)
2004 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban (but it was an open year, with The Incredibles, Shrek 2, The Passion of the Christ and Spiderman 2 being huge)
2005 Batman Begins (but also King Kong and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith could have won it)
2006 Borat (but Little Miss Sunshine could have upset)
2007 Hairspray (a no brainer: it was snubbed from so many nominations, but it wouldn’t have missed this one, so it would probaly have won it, by default)
2008 The Dark Knight (Wall·E was taking animated)
2009 Avatar
2010 The Social Network
2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (Bridesmaid a longshot, but also viable winner)
2012 Skyfall (but Avengers and Django Unchained, could also win)
2013 Gravity, no contest
2014 The LEGO Movie (similar reasoning than 2007 and Hairspray… there was an uproar it was nominated only for Song, so snubbed from Animated, Adapted Screenplay and more, this should have been an easy win)
2015 Mad Max: Fury Road
2016 La La Land (Moonlight won Best Picture, anyways)
2017 Get Out
2018 Bohemian Rhapsody… but having popular could have had a side effect that Green Book would have split votes and lose Best Picture to something else… Black Panther and A Star is Born could also have taken it… but BR took Actor and Film Editing…
2019 Avengers: Endgame
2020 Borat 2 (before anyone complains… it was a blockbusterless year, and it got 2 very important nominations, plus it would have been a way to send a message)
2021 it seems it would have been Spiderman: No Way Home, at this point.
If you look back… i think only ONE Marvel movie would have won (Avengers: Endgame) even if some would have been close or nominated. SMNWH would just be the 2nd… and superhero films? Superman, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Avengers: Endgame and Spiderman No way Home… 5 in 51 years.
Sure why not. Nominate Spider-Man.
It won’t do anything to help the ratings, younger generations largely don’t care about award shows, older generations have moved on a long time ago and consider the show a chance for “clueless actors” to ramble about politics, the nomination will probably give the beloved Spider-Man a backlash, defeating the purpose. But hey Tom Holland and Zendaya presenting a category together will light up social media.
Oscars are really nothing but a publicity stunt anyway. So sure nominate it.
I just watched Licorice Pizza and I find it so overrated. It’s a cute film but that’s it …. I don’t find anything special about it, especially for the reviews its getting.
It is interesting when the membership was smaller they used to nominate popular, though true crap like The Towering Inferno, Love Story, Cleopatra, Hello Dolly, Airport, etc. which used to piss off film buffs, but the general public liked it, but as the membership grows, voters collectively are not all that interested in what sells tickets. One would think it would almost be the opposite.
If not for Godfather 2, Towering Inferno could’ve WON best picture of 1974. And that was the guiltiest of all guilty disaster movie pleasures. It was also a kickass extravaganza that will never have the star power like that ever again.
Chinatown would have won if not The Godfather Part 2, not The Towering Inferno.
“could” is the key word. I am unsure that it was that clear… Chinatown, The Conversation and Lenny would have appealed to more or less the same kind of voters, and the ending of Chinatown was a huge downer. The movie substituting The Godfather, Part II would have been “Day for Night” probably (amazing and my winner for that year, by the way), and The Towering Inferno would have stood out from the competition too much – kind of winners like “The Greatest Show on Earth” or “Around the World in 80 Days”, so it really could have been the winner, specially after winning Best Editing, which we all know is a key award in consideration for Best Picture.
Nah. Without directing and writing nominations, no chance in hell. If the key word is “could”, any of the 5 nominees “could” have won, but most of them would not and should not.
I agree that “Day for Night” was even more likely of a winner (Director+Acting+Writing) than The Towering Inferno… however, the film was just too big and with a gigantic cast full of stars. And it had one acting nom!
Screw all you guys, Lenny’s the best and Dustin Hoffman should’ve won Best Actor for it, along with Bruce Surtees for Best Cinematography. ^_^
Day for Night is a film worth the 100 best in film history (the best film lesson ever shot, probably). Just in case you never saw it, or forgot about it.
Oh God, please no. At least nominate a semi-original movie?
Agreed it absolutely should. Certainly enjoyed it more than many so called Oscar contenders.
Tom Holland should say, “If Spider Man get’s nominated, I will host.” At least it will get people talking. Maybe the nod will actually happen.
His monologue would be ten minutes of Scorsese jokes. Hard pass.
I like Tom Holland but he wouldn’t make a good host. He’s no good without a script
Do we all feel the same about nominating, Don’t Look Up?
Don’t Look Up will sweep nominations. Film Twitter needs to get over being delusional and recognize its true.
That’s unfortunate.
I wouldn’t nominate ”Don’t Look Up.” The satire isn’t sharp enough or funny enough.
It’s no ”Network.” And Adam McKay is no Paddy Chayefsky, who deservedly won the ’77 Oscar for his Original Screenplay. Chayefsky’s vision was much more biting, insightful and prophetic.
Doesn’t matter it’s loved and populist
Don’t Look Up is a great film. Any movie that shakes up the establishment is worth nominating for Best Picture.
I’m a bartender in a big city so I hear a lot of chat from a lot of people and Don’t Look Up has by far been the most mentioned movie this past month. More so than spider man even.
All of my social media feeds were flooded with people praising the film for DAYS after it came out. I still don’t get it.
Sure thing. One of the most enjoyable movies of the year. Great experience watching it. Go Spidey go!!!
Nop https://media2.giphy.com/media/gJEWhG3f3zszu/giphy.gif
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
By the by, why would Spider-Man 8 being nominated for BP increase ratings unless the audience supposedly swayed by that believed it would win. That’s why I predict the sky is calling crowd will quickly pivot towards demanding it be awarded BP.
Exactly. If it won’t win, why nominate it? Do we think an extra ten million viewers would watch the show if it’s nominated? I don’t. Only a couple extra million tuned in when Black Panther was nominated, and it’s debatable whether that was even the reason (and having won the top SAG award, Panther probably came closer than Spider-Man ever will to actually winning).
By the way2009 was the year after The Dark Knight was overlooked for Best picture . Ten films were nominated that year Hurt Locker , Avatar , Blind Side , District 9, An Education , Inglorious Bastards , Precious ,, A Serious Man , Up and Up in the Air , Zach Snyder’s Watchmen should have been up in several categories including Picture , Director , Adapted Screenplay , Supporting Actor , Art Direction , Costume Design , Cinematography and Visual Effects !
That Watchmen the TV series was so well-made and acclaimed tells you all you need to know about how inferior the film was. Zach Snyder should stay away from directing any (superhero) films for all of eternity.
Watchmen was embarrassingly incompetent
Watchman was, but watchmen was great if you watch the ultimate cut
Snyder is a tracer. I corrected my spelling, does that meet with your approval?
Watchmen is an amazing film… the Ultimate Cut is a treasure.
I didn’t even like the Dark Knight, sue me. It was a horror film plain and simple and the performance of the Joker (while excellent) was a distraction from all the morality stuff it tried to teach. I preferred Batman Begins and the DKR.
And actually, you make a very good point: Blind Side, District 9, Up, Inglorious Basterds were all #1 films and it’s possible Hurt Locker was too. They’ve course-corrected plenty.
Martian, Black Panther, American Sniper, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The Help, Toy Story 2, Inception, Dunkirk and the Big Short have all been #1 films IIRC.
The idea that a film should be nominated for Best Picture simply because it appeals to the masses and would represent a snapshot in history is preposterous—neither of those reasons are why the Oscars exist.
For the record, I do not believe the yarn that the snub of The Dark Knight is why the Academy expanded their ballot either.
I’m so tired of super hero fanboys whining about their comic book heroes being overlooked.
The idea that a film should be nominated for Best Picture simply because it appeals to the masses and would represent a snapshot in history is preposterous—neither of those reasons are why the Oscars exist.
For the record, I do not believe the yarn that the snub of The Dark Knight is why the Academy expanded their ballot either.
I’m so tired of super hero fanboys whining about their comic book heroes being overlooked.
The same goes for animation. There’s so much Disney and Pixar worship going on that they don’t realize there are other types of animated features that could help the Oscars be relevant:
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/box-office-report/the-3-top-grossing-films-in-japan-in-2021-are-all-animated-211979.html
I assume the Nick Fury movie should be the favorite for the 2023 Oscars?
Avatar 2? It’s been 13 long years. Can Cameron somehow duplicate the four-quadrant magic of the original? He’s got Kate Winslet. He also has Stephen Lang’s Quarditch, who bought it back in the day. How will they explain away his return?
It would be great if the ten nominees were diverse movies people love like Spider-Man, Flee, Drive My Car, Worst Person in World, Coda instead of Oscar movie we don’t really love as much but we have five extra slots so Nightmare Alley it is. With ten The Dark Knight may not have even been nominated and we’d get Doubt.
But under what standard is Nightmare Alley worse than the others? Nightmare Alley is made by a populist director who is known among the public for Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim. Those films have done pretty well at the box office. Nightmare Alley failed at the box office but that’s because movie goers are just dumb as s–t these days. Martin Scorsese wrote a very good letter about that.
It’s not like Nightmare Alley is as esoteric as Power of the Dog or Belfast
I guess it’s an okay movie in its own right, one that keeps self-regurgitating for two and a half hours so its fans can chuckle as if they were part of some inside joke. But honestly, the more people try to push it into contention the less I want it to happen. Marvel will have all the money and screens in world, it doesn’t need this (and in this case it doesn’t deserve either).
No no no no no no no no.
The Oscars can only survive as an elite organization. (He said for the umpteenth time.) All the “legacy” televised awards shows have been crashing and burning for several years now–not just the Oscars–because the mainstream audience’s tastes and viewing habits have evolved. And there’s no going back–the premise of these articles is as much out of step as they pronounce AMPAS to be.
Many commenters here have been watching the race far longer than that, and many of us are aware of the event’s history before it was a “popular event.” It doesn’t have to be a ratings chase nor does it need “mainstream cred.”
RE: Spider-Man: No Way Home. Nominate it, sure, but not to “save the Oscars.” Nominate it because it’s at least as worthy as Skippy (1931 nominee), State Fair (1933), Crossfire (1947), Around the World in 80 Days (1956 winner), Cleopatra (1963), The Towering Inferno (1974), The Accidental Tourist (1988), The Fugitive (1993), The Blind Side (2009) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
I do NOT look forward to easy to see coming over the hill columns declaring that in order to “save the Oscars”, Spider-Man 8 MUST be given Best Picture.
Why did you pick those films?
The highest grossing Oscar nominated films have been Gone with the Wind, Black Panther, Titanic, Gravity, Blind Side, Up, Inception, Rain Man, Ghost, LOTR 1-3, etc
I picked them “randomly” because they were all nominated for Best Picture, all were “popular,” some “genre,” none particularly “classy,” none “better” than Spider-Man… (Crossfire is considered the first B movie nominated for Best Picture.)
The hell it is even close to Once upon a time in Hollywood.
It REALLY should be nominated.
As long ad it doesnt win
2000 to now winners that aren’t as good as Spider-Man: No Way Home
Gladiator (but barely, it’s a great film)
A Beautiful Mind
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
The Departed
Slumdog Millionaire
The Hurt Locker (as Gladiator, a great film anyways)
The Artist (also, great film)
Argo
Birdman
Spotlight
Green Book
so, I would be extremely comfortable with it winning. It would rank among the best Best Picture winners in the last 21 years.
I just hope that some would just put their MCU / Superhero bias aside for once and start aprecciating the sense of awe and the quality of the films… Superheroes are just a canvas into which paint different genres… comedy (Thor: Ragnarok), heist (both Ant Man films, but also in some way, Endgame), horror (the upcoming Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness), etc.
Well shoot why bother making any other type of film, Marvel’s got it covered
you miss the point completely… but completely… Marvel isn’t the end of cinema. Cinema has changed. Big budget films are an animal on their own. That is not going to stop authors like Almodovar, von Trier, van Sant, Zhao, etc. to make their own films… it happened before… you name it: Cecil B. de Mille, Ben Hur, Cleopatra, etc… the huge epics of the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s… we still have Dune, this very same year. Tenet. Dunkirk. Etc. The big budget films get made… what pisses many off, is that people, the audience, prefers normally the big pop icon taken into the screen… before complaining, think of how many Dracula, James Bond (and the likes!), Sherlock Holmes films have been made… there’s room for Spidey and The Power of the Dog in top 10 lists. SMNWH is an inmediate landmark for so many reasons, and it would be unfair to drown it just because of the superhero bias.
In a few years that film will be forgotten no matter how much money it makes. It’s product. Disney doesn’t even let the “directors” film the action sequences.
The esteemed founder of this blog relentlessly argues that “real America” despises any and all films that deviate from the cookie cutter superhero formula. How many films for grown ups lost screens in the last week so Spider-Man 8 could get more showings? The funding for films for adults will dry up faster in the next few years.
I wrote something to that affect
https://orrinkonheim.medium.com/2021-great-year-for-movies-terrible-year-for-the-box-office-8872c5da15f4?source=user_profile———0——————————-
Is it better than Black Panther or Avengers, Thor Ragnarok or Logan (let’s hypotehtically say those are the four best superhero films)? If not, it’s not up to the standard.
You already have Dune, you don’t need Spiderman to make it margianally more relevant. I think it’s best to just have a host.
it is better than Avengers, on par with Thor Ragnarok and Logan
Yes but you would get those maybe once every couple of years, now were getting five 9r six from disney a year, and all the children will see those and their parents forced to see them with them.
And no way home is in no way a landmark film, it’s a crappier live action version of into the spiderverse with the same old mcu paint by numbers paint.
I see you’re Marvel illiterate (and comic-books in general)… this is just another iteration of – for example – the sublime story arch that Chris Claremont elaborated in the late 70s/early 80s for Uncanny X-Men and that changed the whole Marvel in general, with “Days of the Future Past”, opening the door to the alternate realities and parallel universes, also featured in the series “What If?” and also in DC with “Crises on Infinite Earths” among many other stories… but in this case, what Marvel has done is a tribute to everything that came before, and it’s more than a wink to they loyal audience that has been on this ride for decades…
It’s not your thing, we got it. But do not diminish what is important for enough people to propel this film to join the billion club, in the middle of a pandemic and with plenty of countries with cinemas closed… good to great reviews, some raves, audiences love it, and the industry as well, so… what’s the problem?
Surely this is just Clickbait?
Not at the expense of Dune, Sasha. Jon Watts v. Villeneuve? Uh, no. Hopefully there will be room for two genre movies this time. Wish they’d hat-tipped Marvel 2 years ago with Avengers: Endgame.
Speaking of MCU v. DCEU, the latter may be having a Justice League universe reboot with Batgirl and Supergirl replacing Batman and Superman. That would, of course, totally nuke any plans for future Snyderverse stuff:
https: // comicbook. com / dc /news /zack-snyders-justice-league-not-canon-rumors-the-flash/
Zack Snyder has no business making films, let alone superhero films.
More on this; the Flash movie will retcon the Justice Leagueverse. Man of Steel and BvS? Gone. Affleck and Cavill? Poof.
Yes, children’s movies should be duly considered.
I’m on board with the idea of including more genre films in the discussion. But my problem here is one of legacy. If Avengers: Endgame, a far superior film in virtually every single way, a landmark achievement in terms of what a film can be, (and it made more money than SMNWH) didn’t make it in, I don’t see it happening. I’m a huge Marvel nerd (who also just watched Drive My Car and Flee… we exist) and I’m not even rooting for this one to happen.
And I’m so, so tired of the people on this site acting as if their opinion of what “film” is matters more than that of literally hundreds of millions of people. You don’t like superhero movies? FINE. But painting with a broad enough brush to put them all in the same category of quality reflects more upon your inability to discern quality than it does on the merits or demerits of the film itself.
Exactly
I saw Heaven Can Wait, don’t need to see Spidey 8
OT: Happy New Year! Here’s my 3rd annual list of non-Oscar related stuff I’ve seen last year (may include older films, TV programs, short movies, recorded plays or spectacles…).
Warning: I didn’t watch a lot of stuff so the list is shorter and not as good as usual. I invite everyone to post their own lists as I’m sure they’ll be infinitely better.
1. Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990)
2. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
3. The White Lotus (Mike White, 2021)
4. Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987)
5. The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997)
6. Sunrise (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1928)
7. Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982)
8. Shaun The Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (Steve Cox, 2021)
9. Bridget Jones Baby (Sharon Maguire, 2016)
10. Mamma Mia ! Here We Go Again (Ol Parker, 2018)
11. A Shaun the Sheep Movie : Farmageddon (Will Becher, Richard Phelan, 2019)
12. The Man Who Came To Dinner (William Keighley, 1942)
13. Sayonara (Joshua Logan, 1957)
14. The Human Beast (Jean Renoir, 1938)
15. Beating Heart (Henri Decoin, 1940)
16. The Tenant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
17. Belgravia (John Alexander, 2020)
18. The Bride Wore Black (François Truffaut, 1968)
19. Bianca (Nanni Moretti, 1983)
20. Angel (François Ozon, 2007)
21. Wandavision (Matt Shakman, 2021)
22. Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011)
23. Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
24. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby, 1971)
25. Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)
26. I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2017)
27. King Charles III (Rupert Goold, 2017)
28. The Land of Smiles (Wolfgang Gussmann, Michael Beyer, 2017)
29. After the Wedding (Susanne Bier, 2006)
30. The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
Wanda Vision is a TV show.
What did you think of Lady from Shanghai?
Too many to list here, but I watched these for the first time in 2021:
1) Shame (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
2) The Eloquent Peasant (Shadi Abdel Salaam, 1970)
3) Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939)
4) King of the Hill (Steven Soderberg, 1993)
5) Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982)
6) Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)
7) Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933)
8) Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)
9) America America (Elia Kazan, 1963)
10) The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Ray Muller, 1993)
11) The Executioner (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1963)
12) No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa, 1946)
13) Claudine (John Berry, 1974)
14) The Only Son (Yasujiro Ozu, 1936)
15) Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1961)
16) The Silent Partner (Daryl Duke, 1978)
17) Lacombe Lucien (Louis Malle, 1974)
18) The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi, 1995)
19) The Cameraman (Buster Keaton, 1928)
20) The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)
21) Mandabi (Ousmane Sembene, 1968)
22) Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)
23) Jean de Florette (Claude Berri, 1986)
24) Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)
25) The Demon (Yoshitaro Nomura, 1978)
26) Thieves Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)
27) Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
28) Closely Watched Trains (Jiri Menzel, 1966)
29) The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Buñuel, 1974)
30) One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnes Varda, 1977)
31) Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006)
32) Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)
33) Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951)
34) The Devil Probably (Robert Bresson, 1977)
35) Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1953)
36) Tea and Sympathy (Vicente Minnelli, 1956)
37) Sankofa (Haile Gerima, 1993)
38) A Taxi Driver (Jang Hoon, 2017)
39) Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman, 1997)
40) Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
For the First time:
La Bamba (1987)
Finnian’s Rainbow (1968)
Caged (1950)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Joker (2019)
Uncut Gems (2019)
Wild Oats (2016)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2016)
I Am Sam (2001)
Prestige (2006)
Stupid and Futile Gesture (2018)
Prozac Nation (2001)
Gunfight at the OK Corrall (1957)
The Shootist (1976)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Away We Go (2009)
17 Again (2009)
I think La Bamba might have been my favorite apart from the Westerns I watched
Nice! I love Dances with Wolves! (And The Full Monty and Sunrise…)
Emma Stone wasn’t the villain in Birdman, the critic was.
When Marty correctly called Marvel “product” four years ago, it so enraged the losers and mediocrities in the Marvel fan base so much they still whine about it to this day.
Fine. If we are going to Oscar it up to try and suck up to people who wouldn’t know a real film if it bit them in the ass, then put the director and screenwriter in your top five predictions. Granted, as I’ve said before the Marvel stanners couldn’t name either without checking their phones. Product indeed.