THE OSCARS – DO THEY ACTUALLY REPRESENT THE ‘BEST’ FILMS?

Not to brag but I got my 20 out of 24 of my Oscar predictions correct, that you can see here.

The Oscars were last week, and we have all just got over La La Land not winning. But, as the Oscars drew closer and the more publicity I saw for it, the more I began to question the Oscars. Looking at the films that were nominated, most of those  films will go onto lose money – if any prior films are used as an example. Taking last years’ ‘Best Picture’ winner Spotlight as an example. $45,000,000 is the amount of money it drew, whilst this year – Moonlight has drawn around 22 million so far. Hidden Figures has taken the most so far this year – with 154 million (domestically). But even if we were to take La La Land’s worldwide gross – it is at 370 million – a respectable amount of an Oscar film. But just to put that into perspective, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage (that film with Vin Disel) has made 330 million and it was released a month after La La Land. But those statistics are the size of peas to ‘The Kings’. Of course by ‘The Kings’, I mean the Summer Box Office homerunners. 

So my question is, do the Oscars actually represent the people? Or does it at least represent the best films of the year? Should there be another set of awards during the summer, for the summer box office films? It seems as though Studios are given two options: Release it in the summer and makes lots of money. Or release it in the winter and gain a lot of awards. And that is the problem with the Oscars, they do not represent or celebrate the films of the year. Of course, it could then be argued that the best films aren’t neccesarily the ones that make the most money, and that is something I completely understand, but it cannot be a coincidence that the same films that are getting overlooked are those that are released during the summer. Taking Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as an example – why wasn’t it nominated? Some say because it uses mo-cap, but surely if it was released in October or November, the studio would at the very least acknowledge it.

The Oscars sadly do not represent the best films of the year but rather the best films of the winter period, and thus – studios who plan to make multiple sequels to a film – are pressured into a situation, where they can either make money or win awards – and sadly only one of those options benefits them. 

I thought it would just be funny to point out that only one Summer movie won an award this year – Suicide Squad.

AZ