I am on record as opposing efforts to nominate Wonder Woman—a film, for the record, that I quite liked in large part because it so successfully aped the aesthetic of Zack Snyder—for best picture at the Oscars. It's a fine movie! It's just not, you know, best picture material.
But, if I'm being totally honest, there's a small, dark part of me that kind of wants it to get a nomination just to see Hollywood tear itself apart during the Oscar race. Because—again, if I'm being totally honest—the only reason that Wonder Woman would get a nomination is because a woman directed the film and this represents a step on the long, hard march toward equality and also this is a way to stick it to conservatives. Or, I dunno, something:
The studio will also stump Patty Jenkins for best director, which would also be groundbreaking. No director of a comic-book film — not even Christopher Nolan — has ever been nominated, and only men have ruled the category since (and before) Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for "The Hurt Locker" in 2010. ... The studio’s efforts will include reintroducing the film this fall, to scarce few who may not have seen it. Insiders report strong reactions to the screening of "Wonder Woman" at the Academy, as it’s been championed by a liberal Hollywood and a reinvigorated wave of feminism in response to Donald Trump.
This is aggravatingly stupid and an idiotic measure of a film's artistic merit, the nominal reason for the Oscars.* But it would be vaguely amusing to see how these progressive imperatives clash with this Hollywood Reporter story:
Oh my!
Sources say Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch — who are worth a combined $96.2 billion and wield enormous power in political circles as major backers of right-wing politicians — took a significant stake valued at tens of millions of dollars in RatPac-Dune Entertainment. Now-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin brought the brothers in as investors as part of a $450 million deal struck in 2013 — a move that was never disclosed because RatPac-Dune is a private company.
Though Mnuchin is no longer involved with the slate financing facility, having recently put his stake into a blind trust in order to avoid a conflict of interest, the Koch brothers continue to be stakeholders in such films as Wonder Woman, Dunkirk and Steven Spielberg's upcoming Ready Player One.
You can't help but laugh while imagining the Oscar-season whisper campaigns. Is Wonder Woman Good because it is a light of shining progressive thought tearing down the walls of Man's World? Or is Wonder Woman Bad, Actually, because it is funded by rightwing billionaires? Oh man, just think if director Patty Jenkins won best director: "I'd like to thank Donald Trump's treasury secretary and the Koch Brothers for helping bring this vision to life."
I mean, we could try to avoid all this silliness by restricting discussions about the film to, you know, its artistry or lack thereof.
I know, I know. Idiotic crypto-identity-politics warfare it is!
*Yes, yes, bad movies sometimes win for questionable reasons. That being said, shouting "But Crash!" when someone points out that Wonder Woman is not best picture material is like saying "Of course Donald Trump's behavior is presidential: he's president!" Just because bad movies have won doesn't mean we should accept it. In other words: don't normalize Crash, people.