Seems as though the movies which win Oscars lately aren’t the talk of the town. As a movie lover, I haven’t seen an Oscar-winning best picture since “12 Years a Slave” won back in 2014. Even family and friends I have talked to say they haven’t seen the most recent movie that just won an Oscar, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” So why are these movies winning Oscars? And are these movies true and deserving of an Oscar?
What makes an Oscar-winning best picture? Well this is how the whole voting process goes down. Only members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are permitted to nominate and vote for candidates for the Oscars. The academy is separated into different categories and branches, and the nominees in each award category are chosen by the corresponding branch members. For example, directors vote for directors, writers vote for writers and so on.
There are specific rules and guidelines for a movie to even up for nominations. To be eligible for an award in a given year, a film must be publicly exhibited for paid admission for at least one week at a commercial theater in a Los Angeles county between Jan. 1 and midnight of Dec. 31 of that year, according to Britannica. However, unless the film is a foreign language film, it can be submitted by their country of origin and not needed to be shown in the U.S.
Typically, the best picture Oscar can most likely always go to the film with the highest box office earnings. This makes complete sense in some aspects because people went to see it the most. But this doesn’t mean the film is the best. The movie could have just had a really good marketing team that displayed some amazing trailers, or had specific actors that people enjoy watching, but the movies could be completely horrible. For instance, the 2017 best picture Oscar winner “The Shape of Water” got a 72% on rotten tomatoes. Although the score isn’t terrible, there were other movies that year that had received much higher ratings, like Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” with 98% rotten tomatoes.
Not to throw shade to any of the past Oscar-winning movies, but I just don’t see how movies that are not widely known or talked about are receiving the award. Seems as though the older Best Picture Oscar winners are a little more deserving or did people just have better taste in movies in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Huge movie titles like “Silence of the Lambs” won in 1991, “Forrest Gump” in 1994, “Titanic” in 1997, “Gladiator” in 2000 and “A Beautiful Mind” in 2001. All of these are top movies even today and that’s what should make a movie Oscar-awarded.
Photo Credits: Marca
