WMAL's Larry O'Connor was kind enough to have me on his show yesterday to talk about the Oscar nominations, and he ended the segment with a pointed complaint about the lack of top-grossing films among the best picture contenders. You can listen here:
Larry highlighted past Oscar favorites such as The Sting and wondered why good movies that weren't necessarily high art couldn't get nominations any more.
And the answer to that question is relatively simple: the movies that gross a lot of money these days tend to, quite frankly, not be all that good.
This isn't to say that they aren't entertaining; I liked Rogue One and Captain America: Civil War and Deadpool fine. I gave them all "fresh" ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. I didn't pay for them, but I wouldn't have minded paying for them if I had. There are far worse ways to spend a couple hours.
But you know what I haven't done? I haven't thought about those movies once, period, since I had to write about them. There isn't an interesting idea in a single one of them, no reflection of the world or consideration of the way we live our lives. There isn't a memorable performance, something that sticks with you for weeks or months or years. In other words, they don't do what great art does: they don't hold a mirror up to our lives and help us order our universe.
A lot of people are whining about the fact that Deadpool—at once amusingly vulgar and far more in love with its own sense of cleverness than it really has any right to be—didn't get a best picture nomination. "But so many people saw it! It was so popular!" Who cares how many people liked it? I mean, seriously: WHO CARES? A lot of people saw Suicide Squad too, and that movie was slapdash horseshit. A lot of people eat at Five Guys on a day-to-day basis and consider it better-than-average fast food, but we're not clamoring to give them a James Beard Award or a Michelin star, you know?
Look, there's nothing wrong with movies that are entertaining. Entertainment is great, I love to be entertained! And sometimes these hugely entertaining films can transcend their limitations; you won't get any argument from me if you were to suggest that The Dark Knight, one of the few great films about post-9/11 American life, was snubbed back in 2009.
But the Oscars aren't supposed to be a measure of entertainment—we have Box Office Mojo and CinemaScore to handle that. The Academy Awards are meant to measure artistic achievement. Entertaining an audience is certainly a sign of artistry, but it's neither the only nor the dominant one. True artistry helps illuminate aspects of the human condition, be they the power of grief or love or hope. It allows us understand the tensions between morality and duty, love and identity. It sheds light on the social conditions that helped give way to Trump's rise.
But hey, who needs all that crap? After all, Deadpool had a great pegging joke.