The nominees have been announced and the time is near when we will find out what Hollywood considered the best of the best from last year. And inevitably, the complaining has already started, from who got snubbed to what isn’t deserving of a nominee in the first place. But one cry seems to resonate louder than the rest; that the Oscars have gotten to independent, that they don’t take into account what people actually go to see. These cries seemed to reach pinnacle mass last year when only one of the best picture nominees made more than $100 million in US box office receipts (Juno), while three of the remaining four netted just fifty million or less domestically (the winner, No Country for Old Men, finished up with just over $74).
Fast forward a year and we’re hearing the same things again with this year’s crop of best picture nominees. Now I know that monetary return does not equate to great art, but what if these critics are right? Has the Academy forgotten the average film goer? Are they trying to dictate what we should like instead of what we pay to see? To find out, I’ve looked at the last few years of best picture winners and nominees (going back to 2000, including this years crop) to see if there is any truth behind this claim. All numbers are from boxofficemojo.com and I’ve used the benchmark of $100 million domestic as the number for a “runaway hit.”
As I briefly went over the numbers for last year’s ceremony before, let’s start off with 2006, when The Departed took the award. Grossing over $130 million that year and finishing up just below Mission Impossible 3 in total gross that year (and ahead of Borat), this was hardly the little critical darling that could. It’s closest best picture competition? Little Miss Sunshine at $59 million. Ok, while the best picture that year was both a critical and commercial success, the other four weren’t exactly box office smashes. One film out of five is hardly keeping in line with the public, you might say. Fair enough, so let’s go back another year with Crash’s controversial victory.
The Oscars for the year 2005 might be the best case that the box office folks have, as none of the best picture nominees cracked the one hundred million dollar mark (the closest, Brokeback Mountain, pulled in $83). But like most entertainment these days, success is not just measured in how much one makes, but the buzz created by it, and the buzz created by Crash and Brokeback was immense. Crash, filmed on a budget of just $6.5 million, managed to pull in over $54 million here in the States. And other films, such as Munich, more than made up for their domestic shortcomings with very strong overseas performances (63.6% of Munich’s gross came from outside the US). Still, none of the nominees that year seemed to capture the attention of US audiences. Fair enough, a point which I’m willing to concede (the crop of films nominated that year, minus Crash and Brokeback, was also subject at best, but that’s an argument for another time).
However, going back any further on the Oscar timeline basically ruins this argument. Going back to 2000, when Gladiator won, every movie winning best picture has grossed over $100 million domestically, and there have been at least two $100+ pictures nominated each year. Not to mention that the Return of the King was the number one grossing movie that year. So is Hollywood becoming increasingly insular with its picks? The last two years of data seem to support that. So how do this year’s nominees fare?
As of this writing, only one of the best picture nominees this year has passed the $100 million mark, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The only other one that comes close is Slumdog Millionaire, with a current take of ~$61 million. Neither of the other three nominees have yet breached the $25 million mark, which would be a first in recent Oscar memory (the previous domestic low was Capote which pulled in $28 million, this year the Reader sits at $11 million). This seems pretty damning evidence. No one really cared about the movies that Hollywood thought were the best this year, making the ceremony mostly irrelevant. But my question is, what commercially successful movie would have replaced any of these films? Looking at the top twenty grossing films released last year (Benjamin Button is currently nineteenth and Gran Turino is sitting at 23rd but with a nine figure gross as well), only two pictures, The Dark Night and Wall-e really stand out to me. Is Se and the City deserving of a best picture nominee? Quantum of Solace? Four Christmases? And of the two that I mentioned, I can only make a serious case for Wall-e, which I blame the Academy’s arcane rule for not allowing animated films to garner a best picture nod.
So does this put us at odds with the Academy’s picks? I don’t think it does, or at least it shouldn’t. We don’t need anyone to tell us to go see the Dark Night or Sex and the City, those are mainstream projets that you couldn’t help not hear about. While they still may have been good films, there are ones that slip through the cracks and picking those films up and getting them recognition, I believe is the Academy’s job. If these movies are truly deserving of a best picture nomination (I have only seen tow of the five this year), then they deserve the nomination, regardless of how much they make at the box office. Good films will get the recognition they deserve, sometimes through box office returns and sometimes through nominations from their peers. While some people see the Academy as shutting out mainstream audiences, I see them as trying to expand horizons. That, and there is already an wards show that listens to the people and it’s called the People’s Choice Awards, whose favorite movie category was exactly the same as the favorite action movie category. As for my pick this year? My money’s on Slumdog, you can take that to the bank.
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