A New Category For 'Popular' Films Is Coming To The Oscars — What Could They Mean By 'Popular'?
If, like me, you hoped everyone could at least wait until after the Emmys before getting mad about Academy Awards bullshit, I've got some bad news for you. Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that, on top of a major reworking of the Oscars telecast, the upcoming 91st Academy Awards on February 24, 2019 will feature a brand-new category for "outstanding achievement in popular film." You don't need to be an industry pundit to figure out what this turn of events means: this year's Oscars were the lowest rated telecast in the show's history, and in hopes of drawing in more viewers, they're going to throw an Oscar at a well-liked movie that made a lot of money. Or, as film critic David Sims put it:
For so many reasons, adding a consolation prize category for movies the Academy won't nominate for Best Picture is, excuse me, a terrible fucking idea. At the very first Academy Awards ceremony there was a parallel-to-Best Picture category for "Unique and Artistic Picture," which the Academy immediately ditched the next year. Though the eligibility requirements for this new "popular film" category are currently under wraps, we all know there's a 99% chance it becomes the fantasy/sci-fi action blockbuster category (congrats to 2020's inevitable winner, "Avengers 4"). Is the viewer who's deeply upset at snubs for movies like "Wonder Woman" or "Star Wars" going to be fooled into thinking that the Academy has changed its ways by creating the awards show equivalent of a kid's table at a dinner party? Not likely.
We could be here all day if we wanted to bat around all the artistic, commercial and equity reasons against adding a "popular films" category, but let's narrow our focus to films released this year. Here are four films released in 2018 that I personally think are worthy of a Best Picture nomination but unlikely to receive one1, and why getting punted to a "popular film" category instead would be worse for them than simply not being nominated at all.
'Black Panther' Did Much More Than Make A Lot Of Money
"Black Panther" is a really good movie, full-stop. You don't need to qualify that with modifiers: yes, it's a really good superhero movie, a really good action movie, etcetera, but forget that. It is far and away the best suited Marvel film to make real run at the Oscars, including Best Picture. A slew of nominations for "Black Panther" would at least be a small victory in some of the ongoing struggles plaguing the Oscars: it'd a thumb in the eye to voters and viewers who'd rather pretend #OscarsSoWhite isn't an incredibly trenchant critique, there's diversity behind "Panther's" camera too (hello again, first woman nominated for cinematography just last year Rachel Morrison) and it'd prove the Academy isn't totally averse to honoring superhero films when they do more than make piles of money.
Instead, this category is most likely being created for "Black Panther" and its box-office smashing brethren. The Academy might think minting a new category for top-grossing blockbusters is just as or more respectful than seriously considering them for Best Picture, but assuming the new "popular films" category has five nominees like most others, then ask yourself: is a five way race between the year's five highest-grossing blockbusters really that interesting? Last year, a "popular films" race constructed that way would've been between "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," "Spider-Man: Homecoming," "Despicable Me 3," "The Fate of the Furious" and "Beauty and the Beast." As psyched as I'd personally be to see Dominic Toretto vie for an Oscar, a category based purely on earnings would be a disservice to films like "Black Panther," which would easily trounce its money-maker peers while being excluded from the conversation concerning its artistic peers.
If you think that Damien Chazelle's upcoming Neil Armstrong biopic "First Man" will inherently occupy a totally different plane of cinema than superhero movies, then you're either willingly ignoring the actual filmmaking craft on display or putting too much stock in box-office returns. Academy voters getting stuck in either or both ways of thinking about film is why we're getting this category in the first place.
'Annihilation' Can't Be Dismissed As A Genre Movie
Let's imagine a version of the "popular films" category where, rather than just picking the highest grossing movies, the Academy defines some stylistic rules regarding eligibility. I hope the Academy's wise enough to avoid trying to pin down a stylistic definition for a category — if they're going to have this terrible separation, they may as well stick to box-office returns — but if they do, I only see one way it turns out: the "popular films" category becomes the genre dumping ground.
That means that superhero blockbusters on the level of "Black Panther" are shoo-ins, but it'd open the door to nomination for well-reviewed but underperforming films like "Annihilation"… while simultaneously slamming the door to Best Picture shut for it and its ilk. The bias against sci-fi and fantasy films in the Best Picture category is absolutely one root cause for the creation of a "popular films" category. Genre perception has hindered the nomination and win potentials for so, so many movies ("The Dark Knight," "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Get Out" come to mind from the last decade). The decision to expand the Best Picture category to a potential ten nominee slate was supposed to help make room for genre films, and it has. If the Academy doesn't want "popular films" to just be the money-makers while carving out space for "Black Panther," then good luck to any horror, fantasy or sci-fi films that want to make a run for Best Picture regardless of their returns — Academy voters could easily damn their chances by deeming them a better fit under the "popular films" umbrella.
"Annihilation" comes to mind because it's a sci-fi film that was financially kneecapped by its studio for being "too smart" before it even reached theaters. For its strengths (a great ensemble cast that's mostly women, a mesmerizing score, an undeniably arresting ending), I could see "Annihilation" being championed for a Best Picture nomination the way the similarly-scoped "Arrival" was in 2016. Since some kind of box-office threshold will likely factor into the "popular films" category, I doubt "Annihilation" will have a shot at all — but it'd be a shame to see it nominated there by virtue of its "popular" genre while being passed over in Best Picture for, say, forgettable historical drama Oscar-bait.
'Sorry To Bother You' Can Start Its Own Revolution
If Academy voters bothered by "Get Out's" musing on race dismissed the movie on those grounds last year, then they probably won't even open a DVD screener of Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You" come awards season. A satire as bracing as a slapshot that skewers the absurd ways capitalism dictates our ideas of race, class, labor and the arts, "Sorry to Bother You" is probably too spicy for large swaths of the still mostly white and male voting body of the Academy. Since international distributors are ignoring its box-office chops while insisting "black movies don't travel," the film isn't likely to bring in much more money than it has — it's made $14 million so far, which looks great until you realize how a big chunk of those earnings would need to go to an Oscars campaign for the film to even have a glimmer of hope in a Best Picture race.
But, let's really stretch our imaginations on how the "popular film" category could take shape — if viewership numbers for the Oscars are hurting, then what better way to reinvigorate viewer interest than letting viewers influence the results of a category? What if the "popular films" category nominees were up to a vote of the people?
Well, the People's Choice Awards are fairing even worse ratings-wise than the Academy Awards, but clearly the Academy hopes its new category will at least give the illusion of recognizing movies that "the people" like. "Sorry to Bother You" seems destined to become an all-time cult film, but if the movie's fanbase were given the opportunity to vote it onto a list of "popular film" Oscar nominees, at least some of the stodiger Academy members might learn that, yes, "the people" really do think unapologetically funny, political and diverse films deserve space at the Oscars. Then again, if an incredible film's nomination could only come via a faux-democratic bone the Academy throws to the masses, it would arguably be better to give the Oscars the finger and work towards a revolution that'll challenge the Academy's power.
'Paddington 2' Is The Greatest Film Of The Decade
Okay, maybe not the greatest, but I'm being completely un-ironic when I say that "Paddington 2" is a great film and deserving of consideration for Best Picture. It also did pretty damn well at the box-office, so if the "popular films" category sets a lower-bound gross for nominees, it'd probably have a chance.
Here's the thing: productions like the "Paddington" films are never going to have a serious chance at the Oscars without a major rethinking of how the categories work. Since "Paddington 2" is a "live-action animated comedy" where only one main character is animated, it'd definitely fall short of consideration for the Best Animated Feature category. Wholly animated features already have a difficult time cracking the Best Picture nominees — "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Up" (2009) and "Toy Story 3" are the only three to ever be nominated. Both "Up" and "Toy Story 3" were released after the creation of the Best Animated Feature category and managed to cinch nominations in Best Picture, but it's a simple fact that the very existence of separate categories for animated films, documentaries, foreign language films ultimately hurts the Best Picture chances of films that fall under those categories.
So, a movie like "Paddington 2" could conceivably find room for recognition at the Oscars under the "popular films" umbrella, but it's worth asking why that has to be the case. So Paddington's CG animated — well, so are nearly all of the Marvel heroes when they're in-costume and fighting. Plenty of "conventional" Best Picture nominees rely on animation and visual effects tricks to achieve certain ends, so "Paddington 2" isn't without company there. Ultimately, if "live-action animated comedies" find their way into this new category, its an implicit admission from the Oscars that the way their current categories are sectioned off creates situations where entire kinds of films slip through the cracks.
If "popular films" becomes more than just a catch-all for superhero movies and other blockbuster fare, the nominations will likely stand as a record of the films that the Academy doesn't know what to do with, but knows well enough that they'll be dragged by critics and commentators if they ignore completely. There are already plenty of great new categories the Oscars could create without further muddying the Best Picture waters, but instead… we're getting whatever this ends up being. Oh, and this is on top of the other major news contained in the day's press release: that in an effort to streamline the awards show, many of the awards that do exist for undersung categories are going to be presented during commercial breaks and then edited down to air in the telecast after the fact.
The Academy already has major issues with how it represents and honors the output of the industry its supposed to be celebrating at the Oscars. No matter how this appeal to "popularity" is implemented, it'll come at the expense of deserving films' Best Picture chances, against the backdrop of a telecast that's going to make tons of nominees in already-obscured categories feel under-appreciated. At least one thing hasn't changed: people are going to remember a great film regardless of whether it wins an Oscar. If anything, that might be more true than ever.