HOW THE OSCARS ENDANGERED, AND THEN SAVED THE FILM INDUSTRY

Last June, the announcement was made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) that they would be changing the number of films nominated for Best Picture category of the Oscars from the traditional 5 to 10. While it is true that this was common practice between 1931 and 1943, it is fairly clear that this decision was no throwback to a simpler time.

Popular opinion, substantiated by comments by the then-president of AMPAS, would have it that this is is no small way related to public backlash after neither The Dark Knight, nor Wall-E, two of the biggest movies of the year, received nominations for Best Picture. The solution, then, appears to have been to pacify the audiences by widening the gyre of nominations.

The nominations, therefore, included not only the more traditional nominations of The Hurt Locker, An Education, or Precious – small drama films, but also Avatar and District 9, fantasy blockbuster movies. Also to be mentioned is the nomination of Up, an animated feature. This all seems to be in response, once again, to previously mentioned controversy – the science fiction an apology for not including The Dark Knight, and the hotly contested inclusion of an animated feature, which, by the way, has it’s own category. All this is, of course, fine. We all love a good adventure, and I’m certainly no snob when it comes to movies. That being said, the sad reality of the situation is that the award season is one of the few reasons certain films ever get made. It’s not called a film industry for nothing. The reason the studio system makes movies like The Hurt Locker is because they know that, come Oscar time, those are the ones that get noticed.

Well, then, lets see what exactly at stake here. In the blue corner, we have Avatar. The movie cost US$237 million to make, and made over US$2 billion, rivaling the gross domestic product of some countries. This is certainly no flaw in the film itself, but the fact remains that the greatest merit of the film is the technology that was showcased in it. In the red corner is The Hurt Locker, almost certainly the most critically acclaimed film of the past year. The film is an earnest look at war from a very specific, but very interesting perspective, namely that of someone who is addicted to war. It grossed about 100 times less than Avatar. The reason I’m pitting these two movies against each other is because I feel they were the two polar opposite ways the award may have gone. So here’s how I feel the consequences of the duel may have gone. The victory of the more independent film insures that for at least another year, studios will continue making these sort of films.

Think about it this way: what motivation does a studio, the purpose of which is, after all, is to make money for itself and its shareholders, to make a film that, while making money, only does so from a small slice of the audience? The answer is, of course, critical acclaim and awards. In the past, it’s been nearly impossible for big blockbusters to win Best Picture awards, unless the biggest-selling movie of the year happens to coincide with what the Academy sees as artistically best of the year. I’m not trying to portray AMPAS as a singular beacon of light in the darkness of Hollywood here, but the record shows that relatively small-budget, high-quality movies tend to win the big awards, particularly as of late. The consequences of breaking this trend could have been drastic. If a film like Avatar had won, the studios would, naturally, merely low-quality rip-offs, expecting the same result. When you can have money and awards all in the same package, what studio would choose to make movies that would win them only one?

From one point of view, The Hurt Locker was the usual, boring Oscar pick. The audience at large, sadly, will not be prompted to see the movie because of this, and the studios will certainly not start paying more attention to more independent films because of it, because picking the highly critically-acclaimed movie is nothing new for the Academy. However, in face of potential elimination of interesting cinema from American industry would be almost too great a tragedy to bear. This is one case where I would gladly take the status quo over the alternative. |