There's an idea that's creeped into the movie industry over the past decade or two. An idea that I would say is the number one discrepancy between the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (The Academy of "I'd like to thank The Academy" fame) and the general movie going public. That idea is that film as an art form and film as a source of entertainment don't intermingle. I'd heard the complaint before, but I was curious if there really was an issue, or whether people were complaining about something that's always been there, you know, like most complaints about modern film (no one has any original ideas, there's too much reliance on special effects, etc.).
Well, I decided to determine once and for all if there really was a growing division between the films people want to see and the films the critics faun over. Turns out, there is.
I started by just cross referencing all the top grossing films from each year and the best picture winners. I wasn't surprised to see most of my hits. Return of the King, Titanic, Rocky, The Sound of Music, and Gone with the Wind were ones I already knew would hit. The next step was to see how many years we went without having a hit. From The Broadway Melody to It Happened One Night was 5 years, as was the next gap to Gone with the Wind and another 5 year gap until Going My Way. Though the largest gap for a while happened next with an 8 year wait until The Greatest Show on Earth, there's another 5 year gap until a nearly back to back run of The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957 and Ben-Hur in 1959. So far there's an average of about 5 years between top grossing film that are also best picture winners all the way through the 30's, 40's, and 50's. Not bad.
After that, however, we see a 6 year gap until The Sound of Music, a 7 year gap to The Godfather, a redemptive 4 year gap to Rocky, but then followed up by a massive 12 year wait for Rain Man. A 9 year and 5 year gap for Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, respectively, bring us to the present drought of 14 Oscars without a top grossing film winning best picture. So, there's definitely a trend to have fewer films taking both honors, but maybe it's just a fluke, after all, one movie a year is a pretty small sample set.
So, I started looking at all the best picture nominees for top grossing films. The following years were all years where the top grossing film was nominated for best picture.
1934, 1935, 1938, 1938
1941, 1944, 1945, 1948
1951, 1952, 1956, 1957, 1959
1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1969
1970, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977
1981, 1982, 1987, 1988
1990, 1997
2002, 2003, 2009
2010
Well, that pretty well sealed for me the conclusion that the Academy is really less in touch with the American audience at large. The longest we'd ever gone without a best picture nominee of a top grossing film was three years, that is, until the 80's, when we didn't have anything from 82-87, a 5 year spread that has been met or exceeded three more times in the past 3 decades and that's not including the current 8 year famine we're in right now. Here's hoping Black Panther breaks the trend and gets a nod (unless Fantastic Beasts or something somehow pulls into the lead late in the year), which would basically come down to a toss up if the Academy is more interested in honoring diversity to get away from #OscarsSoWhite or whether their more set in making sure the superhero genre doesn't get recognition outside of the technical awards.
So, what really needs to happen to get things back on track? Well, I'm probably crazy, but maybe we could take a tip from the 1927 Academy Awards. The very first Academy Awards had not one, but two top prizes. One for the most amazing movie and one for the most artistic movie. Wings and Sunrise: a Tale of Two Humans are both excellent films, and they both got top honors that night. What if we'd been awarding a most amazing movie award every year? Star Wars and Jaws might have something more prestigious to brag about, but at the same time, Rocky might have won in the entertaining category, allowing Taxi Driver to get the artistic recognition it probably deserves.
Call it a crazy idea, but I think we need to recognize as a movie watching community that there is merit to a film being entertaining and just telling a great story. We share that with studios every time we buy a ticket to our favorite franchise film, but there's no reason the film critics and experts of the world shouldn't be hearing the message as well. Yeah, there are some blockbusters that are pure garbage, but there are some that are just pure gold as well. Let's honor entertainment like we honor art. Let's recognize those that tell great stories in a consistent and reliable manner that connects with us and makes us feel like we're on familiar ground. We love movies that entertain and at the end of the day, is there really anything greater a film can do than make our lives just a little more wonderful?
