Once upon a time not long ago, I was a massive cinephile who had a list of interesting indie releases that I was just as hyped for (if not moreso) than major blockbusters.
And while it’s unlikely that I would have seen literally everything that was up for an Oscar even back then, most of the nominees would have been intimately familiar to me and you could bet I had some strong opinions about what deserved to win.
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But as the years have gone by and more and more streaming services have joined the fray to fight for world domination, there have simply been more movies coming out each year than I can keep track of.
So not only is it super uncommon for me to see a given year’s nominees before they’re announced, but I’m more likely to have never even heard of most of them.
And while my first assumption was simply that I’m losing touch with that part of pop culture, I’m still plugged in enough to notice that a year’s Oscar nominations aren’t as representative of either its hyped up major releases or its underground darlings as I would have expected.
I don’t have an answer for you if you’re wondering why that is. Instead, I want to go into why you’re not crazy or alone if you’ve been noticing the same thing in recent years.
If you’re like me, you saw a lot of unfamiliar titles when the Oscar committee announced their list of Best Picture nominees this year.
Granted, some of them didn’t come as surprises since Belfast was a hyped-up prestige film and Don’t Look Up and Dune obviously had a lot of buzz surrounding their releases.
But if you asked me whether I had seen The Power Of The Dog or Licorice Pizza, you would have only received a confused look in response. That’s not to say that they don’t deserve to win because the point is that I don’t know that, but I can’t be the only one who never even heard about these movies coming out.
The list of movies that fall under that category seems to get longer and longer every year.
And it’s hard not to suspect that the Oscars committee is quietly aware of this phenomenon given how they appear to try and counter-act it in their nomination lists.
This year’s examples of obscurity counter-measures are Dune and Don’t Look Up , but the Oscars have snuck widely popular movies that seem out of place among their fellow nominees into their final lists for years now.
We saw them bait the attention of audiences with Toy Story 3 in 2011, and the years since have given us other high profile examples like Mad Max: Fury Road and Black Panther .
But on all of these occasions, these gambits to capture people’s interest come off as precisely that rather than a result of their serious consideration. Because with the exception of The Shape of Water , you’re far more likely to see something a little more obscure win Best Picture than any of these fan favorites.
And by the way, that’s not necessarily a bad thing as it theoretically gives an overlooked masterpiece a chance for an audience that it may not otherwise receive.
Sure, fans of more underground movies and particularly of Korean cinema would have long been familiar with Bong Joon-ho by the time Parasite won Best Picture.
But the fact that it was the first foreign language film to do so opened the door for a much wider audience to have an excellent first taste of a masterful director’s work.
At the same time, the word “theoretically” is bearing quite a load in that optimistic sentence.
Because it’s hardly uncommon for the lesser-known movie that finds itself winning Oscar gold to seem like an odd choice for Best Picture.
For instance, films like Nomadland or Spotlight feature stories worth telling and encourage more familiarity with an underrated contemporary subculture or an important historical event. But at the same time, it’s also hard to identify what they do with the art form of film itself that’s so new and different.
And while the occasional underdog like Birdman or The Artist can fit that criteria better, the Oscars’ track record tends to favor more typical award show fare like The King’s Speech or Green Book than any of those more groundbreaking examples.
So are we seeing an era where more great films than usual are falling by the wayside or simply one where people have far less time for Oscar bait?
I guess we’d have to see what wins to find out…and then actually see that movie.
