The list is out!!! Are you as excited as I am? I’m referring of course to the list of Oscar-nominated best pictures. Ya, four exclamation marks are probably five too many. I can’t say I’ve ever really cared about which picture won. Actually, now that I think of it, I was peeved that the original Star Wars didn’t win in 1978, but I was 10 so I wasn’t aware best didn’t mean most popular.
Since that horrible year when Star Wars was snubbed in favor of such classics…as checks internet…An Unmarried Woman, a timeless classic staring the immortal…checks internet…Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates, I’ve paid little attention to the ceremony. I did tune in a few years ago when Bill Chrystal hosted a couple of years running. What? That was 32 years ago?! Seriously?
Ok well I do remember watching it when Amy Poehler and Tina Fey hosted it. What? That was the Golden Globes? Ok, well you can’t tell me that Ricky Gervais sticking it to all the stars wasn’t brilliant. Also, the Golden Globes? Ok, so maybe I don’t pay too much attention to the “spectacle” after all. I wonder why that is.
On a completely unrelated note, let’s get back to the list of Best Picture nominees:
Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Perez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked
I’ve seen Conclave and Dune: Part Two, so two out of 10. I will admit to having heard of A Complete Unknown, Emilia Perez, The Substance, and Wicked before the list came out. I have no interest in seeing any of them but at least I’ve heard of them. That leaves Anora, The Brutalist, I’m Still Here, and Nickle Boys. Would it surprise you to know that I’ve looked them up on several occasions and still can’t remember what any of them are about? Am I alone or does anyone else recall a time when the Academy recommended movies that people watched?
Anecdote isn’t evidence as the saying goes but I can’t help thinking that the 1994 nominees:
Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption
Were more popular with the viewing public than the 2020 nominees:
Nomadland
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Since I was curious (and am a giant spreadsheet nerd), I decided to look at Rotten Tomatoes to compare Critic scores to Audience scores to see if that would tell us anything. I started in 1990 because prior to that I worked in a movie theatre and probably saw pretty much every movie that came out and didn’t want that to affect my judgment.
Can Rotten Tomatoes tell us anything?
The scores on Rotten Tomatoes weren’t as revealing as I thought they’d be. There were differences between the critics’ take on a movie and that of the audience on numerous occasions, but it hasn’t been increasing very much since the 90s
1990s – 7.0%
2000s – 8.4%
2010s – 9.6%
2020s (excluding this year) – 9.9%
Sometimes the audience likes something more than the critics and vice versa. Each decade has at least one standout:
1990s
Forrest Gump (1994) – Audience +20%
Babe (1995) – Critics +30% (this was a surprise)
2000s
Chocolat (2000) – Audience +20%
3 Movies in 3 different years – Critics +21% (ask in the comments and I’ll give you the list
2010s
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) – Audience +25%
The Tree of Life (2011) – Critics +25%
2020s (excluding this year)
Don’t Look Up (2021) – Audience 22% (never heard of it)
Licorice Pizza (2021) – Critics 25% (never heard of this one either)
There is a lot of interesting info in this analysis (ex. no one seems to have thought much about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and yet there it is amongst the competitors in 2011) but it doesn’t really answer my question.
Was there ever any broad-based support for Oscar nominees?
As I noted with Star Wars, the best picture was never about making the most money.
However, when you look at the nominees and how they did at the box office a pattern starts to emerge. In the 1990s 40% of all movies were nominated for best picture and 80% of the winners were also in the top ten for budget earnings in that year. The exceptions were Braveheart (1995) and The English Patient (1996) and neither of these films could be said to have been unknown to the viewing public.
In the 2000s only 11% of nominated films and 20% of winners were in the top ten box office earners in their respective years. In fact, between 2004 and 2008 not one top 10 movie was nominated for best picture. The next 10 years were even worse. Only 8% of the top movies of that decade were nominated for best picture and not one won the award. The 2020s appear to be a little better so far with 13% of the nominees being in the top 10 and one winning so far but 2025 looks to be a setback, even if Dune: Part Two shocks and wins the award.
It’s only when you look at the nominees and how they did at the box office that a pattern starts to emerge. As I noted with Star Wars, Best Picture was never about making the most money, but at one time the Oscars nominees seem to have had more broad-based appeal.
No one expects the Best Picture to go to the movie that makes the most money, but a more broad-based appeal couldn’t hurt the Oscars. At the very least the Academy could pretend to care what the viewing public likes, if for no other reason than it might help stop the decline in viewership.
The Academy will, of course, do whatever it wants. Their purpose is to celebrate the film, not the people who pay their salaries and put them in big houses (ya, that’s sarcasm). People will continue to pay to see movies, even if those movies don’t win awards. The danger isn’t even that no one will watch the Oscars; there will always be people who tune in to see what people are wearing and to be lectured on politics by the deep thinkers who get paid to play make-believe (I’m kidding about the second point).
The danger is that a disconnect between what critics watch and what the average person watches will turn the film industry into the art industry. Once upon a time, if I can borrow a phrase, what people thought about art mattered. That is no longer the case. The critics have taken over and instead of this being art:
Now this is:
One shudders to think what the movie version of a lobster phone would be. On second thought, never mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve already watched it (well, half of it at least).
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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Tom Wolf's funny short book "The Painted Word" is a great primer for the divide between movies people want to see and 'art.' As for the movie Wicked, I read the author's take on Snow White years ago, hated it, so going to see Wicked is a no.