Why the Oscars Are Irrelevant
30,000,000 people were foolish enough to waste their Sunday evening watching a self-congratulatory wankfest where a bunch of people worship themselves for their belief that they're better than you. Ostensibly this was to determine the best movies of the year.
Now, I love movies, and am certainly interested in which ones are the best. But the fiction that this is what the Oscars determine is flat-out silly.
Here are the twenty nominees from 2004 - 2008:
Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Ray
Sideways
Crash
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Good Night and Good Luck
Munich
The Departed
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
No Country For Old Men
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
How many of these movies do you think people will still be watching and caring about in 20 years? I would argue that the answer is zero. If you disagree, feel free to make a counter-argument. But pretty much all of these movies fit into one or both of the categories of "Forgettable," or "stuff nobody watched or cared about even when it came out."
(I enjoyed The Aviator and Finding Neverland, but don't feel any need to see them again and really don't remember any more than their basic subjects. I thought The Departed and Slumdog Millionaire were okay, but certainly not great.)
Compare this to the top five movies by year for each of those years:
Shrek 2
Spider-Man 2
The Passion of the Christ
Meet the Fockers
The Incredibles
Star Wars Episode 3
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
War of the Worlds
King Kong
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Night at the Museum
Cars
X-Men: The Last Stand
The Da Vinci Code
Spider-Man 3
Shrek the Third
Transformers
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the incredibly shitty fan-fic
Hancock
WALL-E
Now, clearly there's a lot of crap on that list. But I'd say there are 13 movies that will still be watched in 20 years: Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2, Passion of the Christ, The Incredibles, Star Wars 3, Harry Potter 4, Cars, Da Vinci Code, Transformers, Harry Potter 5, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and WALL-E.
Note that I'm not saying all these movies are great. (Obviously Star Wars 3 isn't. Duh.) But they were enjoyable or notable enough that people will keep watching them for decades.
So the "experts" in the Academy have a success rate of 0% over a five year period, while just mindlessly copying a box-office list has a success rate of 65%. But really, that list isn't mindless. It's determined by millions of moviegoers choosing what to spend their hard-earned dollars on.
Quality of movies is subjective. Everyone defines it differently. But I would say the best way to define a "good" movie is as a movie that people thought was good. Certainly people can be tricked into seeing movies that leave them unsatisfied. They can also enjoy a movie that won't hold up over time. And I'm not claiming my standard of "Will be people still care about it in 20 years" is the only way to evaluate film.
But it's certainly a better method of evaluation that seeing which pretentious wankfest a bunch of self-congratulatory glitterati decide to pat themselves over the back for.
(I'll discuss this year's nominees in a separate post)
Now, I love movies, and am certainly interested in which ones are the best. But the fiction that this is what the Oscars determine is flat-out silly.
Here are the twenty nominees from 2004 - 2008:
Million Dollar Baby
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Ray
Sideways
Crash
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Good Night and Good Luck
Munich
The Departed
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen
No Country For Old Men
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
There Will Be Blood
Slumdog Millionaire
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
How many of these movies do you think people will still be watching and caring about in 20 years? I would argue that the answer is zero. If you disagree, feel free to make a counter-argument. But pretty much all of these movies fit into one or both of the categories of "Forgettable," or "stuff nobody watched or cared about even when it came out."
(I enjoyed The Aviator and Finding Neverland, but don't feel any need to see them again and really don't remember any more than their basic subjects. I thought The Departed and Slumdog Millionaire were okay, but certainly not great.)
Compare this to the top five movies by year for each of those years:
Shrek 2
Spider-Man 2
The Passion of the Christ
Meet the Fockers
The Incredibles
Star Wars Episode 3
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
War of the Worlds
King Kong
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Night at the Museum
Cars
X-Men: The Last Stand
The Da Vinci Code
Spider-Man 3
Shrek the Third
Transformers
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the incredibly shitty fan-fic
Hancock
WALL-E
Now, clearly there's a lot of crap on that list. But I'd say there are 13 movies that will still be watched in 20 years: Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2, Passion of the Christ, The Incredibles, Star Wars 3, Harry Potter 4, Cars, Da Vinci Code, Transformers, Harry Potter 5, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and WALL-E.
Note that I'm not saying all these movies are great. (Obviously Star Wars 3 isn't. Duh.) But they were enjoyable or notable enough that people will keep watching them for decades.
So the "experts" in the Academy have a success rate of 0% over a five year period, while just mindlessly copying a box-office list has a success rate of 65%. But really, that list isn't mindless. It's determined by millions of moviegoers choosing what to spend their hard-earned dollars on.
Quality of movies is subjective. Everyone defines it differently. But I would say the best way to define a "good" movie is as a movie that people thought was good. Certainly people can be tricked into seeing movies that leave them unsatisfied. They can also enjoy a movie that won't hold up over time. And I'm not claiming my standard of "Will be people still care about it in 20 years" is the only way to evaluate film.
But it's certainly a better method of evaluation that seeing which pretentious wankfest a bunch of self-congratulatory glitterati decide to pat themselves over the back for.
(I'll discuss this year's nominees in a separate post)