by Nathaniel R
There are some that argue that Oscar pundits shouldn't be critics or vice versa. Prognostication and film criticism both require analytical skills but they're different jobs. The lines get murkier when it comes to advocacy. Each media outlet produces more Oscar coverage than we have ever had in the past. It's subversively hilarious that as Oscar ratings have steadily dwindled in the era of splintering audiences, discussion and analysis of the awards race is noisier and more populated each year! Yet, if the proliferation of film critics organizations has taught us anything it's that if you get enough film types in a room to talk "Best"... they will immediately, whether consciously or not, begin to equate Best with Oscars. That's how successful the Oscars have been as a name brand and institution. You can see it in the prizes given each year in the precursor awards and how eagerly space is handed over to presumed Oscar hopefuls that don't really need the boost. Even while the same journalists and outlets, who vote on the preliminary prizes, regularly bemoan that 'Oscars never get it right'. Advocacy doesn't equal prognostication but it looks too much like it at times.
Into this mess of adjacent but not always compatible agendas, comes the superhero blockbuster. In this case, Spider-Man: No Way Home which is suddenly getting the "nominate it for Best Picture!" discussion...
Marvel & Sony's latest collaboration opened to near-record business last weekend in the pandemic era when that wasn't supposed to happen. Superhero fans lost their minds over all the call-backs and expensive reunions (Fan Service: The Movie!). Due to the enormous immediate success right smack dab in the always mind-melting 'heat' of precursor and holiday season, predictably people are hoping for and even pushing for its Oscar success. The movie is cute and fun but can't we leave it at that? Can't we just celebrate its box office success and let it dive or in this case swing, joyfully, into a pool of well-earned money!
It's not that cute and fun can't be award worthy! The Oscars could do well to lighten up in this regard. But Spider-Man No Way Home is not Singin' in the Rain (1952) or Beauty and the Beast (1991) or Babe (1995).
It's also, more importantly, not "Best" by superhero entertainment standards. It's action scenes, in particular, don't measure up to the invention and excitment of Shang-Chi (now an ancient 4 months old). It's not trying anything particularly new or daring like the form-busting WandaVision or (the admittedly much inferior) Eternals. Even its interpersonal drama isn't all that much more impactful than say Black Widow, which let us say goodbye to Scarlett Johansson and gifted us with Florence Pugh's wonderfully funny-sad Yelena who we suspect fans will feel the same way about seeing in the future as they do, say, seeing Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man tights again. Hell, it's not even the best Spider-Man movie (that's still Sam Raimi's inventive, energetic, and stand-alone satisfying Spider-Man 2 from 2004).
No Way Home is not a perfect singular movie but a carefully programmed cultural moment in time, that required mutiple films and audience shorthand for it to work emotionally. It is well engineered and produced, for sure, but "Best Picture"? We already know the movie won't "endure" since no comic book films, do, as they're rebooted or recast or retconned within a decade (or less) to serve the next episode or next generation of fans. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this but a Best Picture nomination for Spider-Man No Way Home would not be entirely unlike nominating the Friends: The Reunion for an Emmy for Best Movie Made For Television. It's a must-see and probably-enjoy (I sure did. I love Spider-Man movies!) but neither of those equal 'must-reward!'
The media keeps pushing for action blockbusters to be Best Picture nominees, regardless of quality or probablity of endurance. That "you're too stuffy!" whining is frankly just as exhausting as the Academy's desire to reward supbar biopics each year regardless of quality or probability of endurance. But the solution is not to lower "Best" standards for action pictures but raise the bar on the default preferences like dramas, war films, and biopics.
Pushing for blockbusters to be honored is fine and even important and admirable when a popular movie is an instant boundary-pushing triumph or cultural reset (Avatar, Toy Story, Black Panther, Beauty and the Beast) or a truly no-hyperbole-at-all explosion of genuinely genius craft (Mad Max Fury Road, Terminator 2 Judgment Day). But popularity as a metric is and always has been its own reward. Do we want the Oscars to aspire to be "The People's Choice Awards"? When was the last time that ceremony inspired breathless anticipation, heated arguments, big viewership numbers, and months and months of discourse before and after it aired? Point us to the sites who discuss it and its history all year long.
We'll wait.
Tom Holland's star-making role: BILLY ELLIOTT when he was just 14.
Tom & Zendaya dancin' for fun
This can't help remind the much-battered Oscar lover (it me! and probably some of you) of all those articles each year on "How to fix the Oscars" most of which invariably boil down to asking it to be more like other awards show. It's a strangely perennial argument, 'be more like this thing we care even less about than you!'
When it comes to enthusiasm about pairing Spider-Man with the Oscars, the only place we'll heartily co-sign is Tom Holland hosting the ceremony. The ceremony needs a host and celebrities who are charming, funny, famous but not infamous, and good dancers is a super-solid way to go.