The Oscars new unpopular popular film category
Oh, my.
It’s rare that an organization makes a decision and I just have an immediate, visceral reaction that it’s wrong.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced in a
tweet
tweet post recently that it is going to give out a new award for “achievement in popular film”.
Creating a new category is rare for the Oscars…people have argued for new categories for years, such as one for stunts, but the last major addition was Best Animated Feature, first awarded in 2001.
With any carefully considered change (especially an institutional one), it is reasonable to ask this question: why?
The first obvious requirement is that the new category is comprised of something different from the old category (unless it contains entirely novel items, which is not the case here). After all, imagine this conversation:
You: “What’s in category A?”
Them: “Polka dots.”
You: “What in category B?”
Them: “Polka dots.”
You: “What are the differences between them?”
Them: “There aren’t any.”
At that point, you’d no doubt be left wondering why there were two categories.
So, what makes a popular movie different enough from other movies that it needs a separate category?
We can assume by “popular” they mean that more people went to see it in the theatres, and the easiest measurement of that is box office (probably specifically domestic box office, what I call “dogro” for domestic gross). We have a category on this blog for that
Box Office
and keep quite a close eye on it.
Let’s just arbitrarily set the dividing line at $100 million dogro. That or above and the movie falls into the “popular” category, below, and it stays in the main categories (unless they are going to create an “unpopular” category, which seems unlikely). 😉
If we look at last year’s Best Picture nominees and their dogros, we can perhaps discern a pattern:
- The Shape of Water | $68.0m
- Call Me by Your Name | $18.1m
- Darkest Hour | $56.5m
- Dunkirk | $188.0m
- Get Out | $176.0m
- Lady Bird | $49.0m
- Phantom Thread | $21.1m
- The Post | $81.9m
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | $54.5m
It’s obvious that the vast majority (80%) of the Best Picture nominees made under $100m, and some have suggested that has something to do with declining viewership of the Oscars telecast. Wouldn’t more people watch the Oscars if they were familiar with the movies in the category that gets the most coverage? They might want to see if one of their favorites wins…and it’s hard to have a personal favorite amongst movies you most likely haven’t seen.
That 80% figure…how does that compare to the movies which were released?
According to
Box Office Mojo
33 movies released in 2017 dogroed more than $100m, out of 740 movies.
That’s about 4.5% meaning that $100m+ movies are disproportionately more often nominated for Best Picture…something like five times as much as would be expected.
However, that assumes that all movies released are intrinsically equally good…and that seems unlikely. Is it possible that movies which are equally as good as those which do get nominated do not get nominated because of a prejudice against popular movies?
For this, we’ll use the critical review scores from the
Movie Review Query Engine
We’ll look at the ten nominees, then the ten highest dogroing features:
- The Shape of Water | 79
- Call Me by Your Name | 85
- Darkest Hour | 75
- Dunkirk | 85
- Get Out | 80
- Lady Bird | 83
- Phantom Thread | 79
- The Post | 80
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | 86
Average: 81.3
Highest dogro (may have been released in 2016, but was on this table for 2017):
- Star Wars: the Last Jedi | 82
- Beauty and the Beast | 68
- Wonder Woman | 74
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle | 64
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 | 70
- Spider-Man: Homecoming | 72
- It | 66
- Thor: Ragnar | 71
- Despicable Me 3 | 55
- Justice League | 54
Average: 68
The average doesn’t suggest an anti-blockbuster bias. However, The Last Jedi does average out high enough to be a nominee…but there are obviously more factors than just what the critics think.
If such a prejudice did exist, that might be a reason to create a separate category. Arguably, that was the purpose of introducing the Best Animated Feature category…an animated movie might not be nominated for Best Picture, because of reluctance to recognize “a cartoon”. Only one (Beauty and the Beast) had been nominated prior to the introduction of the category (although there had been other special recognition).
Some people have suggested that the purpose of creating the Best Animated Feature category was to make it less likely that they would be nominated for Best Picture…and the same argument is being made for a possible “Popular Film” category.
It may be worth noting that two animated features (Up and Toy Story 3) have been nominated for Best Picture since the introduction of the Animated Feature category…twice as many. Certainly, arguments can be made that some others “should” have been nominated (notably WALL-E, which has an 88 at MRQE), but contrary to my initial gut feeling, I’m not seeing clear evidence of prejudice in my admittedly small sample.
I don’t think the pushback I’ve seen would all have come about because the category simply wasn’t needed, though.
There is also this:
It smacks of elitism, with the idea that the general populace doesn’t like the best movies…perhaps because they prefer less challenging movies?
That one is harder to analyze, but it seems like that would be flawed logic on the Academy’s part. Great movies can never be box office hits? The King’s Speech won a lot of Oscars, and eventually dogroed close to $140m. The two categories of “Best Picture” and blockbuster don’t appear to be self-exclusive.
I do think the point of creating a category like this would be more about increasing viewership (and other public acceptance) than genuinely recognizing value. It’s not like blockbusters are particularly unrewarded. I mean, gee, if there was only some way we could reward movies based on how many people see them. You know, like have each person who goes to see a movie could indicate that somehow…maybe by paying some money? I don’t know what we might call that, but that seems like that’s “the ticket”. 😉
Is there some advantage to the Academy in appearing to be the elite? Perhaps, yes…there are other awards more based on popularity, so it might remove some of the Oscars’ uniqueness if there was also a popular film Oscar.
The Oscars already expanded the possible number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten, starting with the awards given in 2009, again, presumably to increase viewership by providing more diversity in the titles.
Personally? I don’t think an “achievement in popular film” Oscar is a good idea…I also didn’t like the expansion of the number of nominees. It does seem to dilute the value of the award.
I would like to see some changes. I’d like to go back to five nominees for Best Picture. I’d like to see that Stunt category happen, which certainly might interest the general populace.
I’d like to see the elimination of gender separation in the acting categories (which MTV has done). It doesn’t really make sense to me. Is the argument that Gal Gadot’s lauded (but not nominated) performance as Wonder Woman is more comparable to, say, Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond because they have a similar chromosome structure than it is to Chris Evans’ performance as Captain America, another principled, fish out of water superhero? If the thought there is that prejudice (again) would keep women from being nominated for Best Actor, why aren’t there separate acting categories for other protected employment groups? People would definitely not be happy if those were introduced! That’s a topic for another time, though…
What do you think? Would it be a good thing for the Academy to recognize achievement in popular films? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.
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