CT Why wasn't Star Wars able to win Oscar?

Those were acknowledged in the Oscars it got for visual design, costumes, visual effects and editing. Not to mention the music and sound. Hell they even gave an extra achievement award for the sound.

You could pour infinite man hours into forging the most beautiful images ever depicted on screen, but still be left with a film that fails to connect with that year's Oscar panel. Woody Allen and George Lucas were at the top of their respective games in 1977 and their Oscar wins reflect that. In fact Star Wars IV got 6 Oscars, beating Annie Hall's measly 4!

 

Annie Hall got the big ones, especially Best Picture and Best Director.

 

I feel like a picture as huge as star wars dwarfs the oscars. If Annie Hall lost to star wars, most people wouldn't remember it.

Now people remember annie hall as the film that beat star wars. I heard its a great film, so if its a great film it deserves praise.

 

I've never heard of Annie Hall being 'the film that beat Star Wars', I've always known it as a one of the most highly acclaimed Woody Allen films.

 

It's the movie that marked the end of his "silly comedy" years, and put him towards his more serious dramedy phase. It's also a movie that had him establishing all of the tropes that he'd go on recycling year after year after decade after... you get the idea.

"Zelig" and "Purple Rose of Cairo" are probably his strongest efforts. "Hannah and her Sisters" might be the best use of his "Woody Allen shtick", though without Gordon Willis as DP it's visually dull. On the other hand there's "Manhattan", which is absolutely gorgeous for its cinematography, but is probably the most pathetically thin in terms of story, especially when it comes to the wish-fulfillment factor of his movie romances (yes, 40-something Woody and 17 year old Mariel Hemmingway makes perfect sense).

 

JFP: What of Crimes and Misdemeanors? Allen's dramas usually exasperate me, but that was something of a masterpiece--the one instance when that little neurotic creep came within shouting distance of his idols, Dostoevsky and Bergman.

 

I honestly can't tell most of his movies from that period apart. I get it confused with "Husbands and Wives" all the time.

 

The Oscars has a problem with both nominated and awarding film & people who oscar-bate & bow & scrape to the academy. I would venture to say at least half of the Best Picture wins are not the film that truly lasts from that respective year.
Just look at this year! We had The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and Skyfall. And NOT ONE of those films were nominated for any major award! Most of them were even snubbed for the technical awards! Do you think anyone is going to remember Argo, Amour, or Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild, or Silver Linings Playbook in 10 years? Nope!

 

True, but my point was that a Best Picture win doesn't necessarily guarantee longevity or greatness, or even necessarily reflect true greatness to begin with. In each of these cases, it's been one of the runners-up, not the winner, that went on to become icons.

For that matter, Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar - while Orson Welles & Stanley Kubrick never won Best Director (Welles shared a co-writing award for Kane, Kubrick was awarded a special award for the effects on 2001).
Martin Scorsese went virtually his entire career without one, until the Academy conceded & gave him one for The Departed just because they felt he was due - for a film considerably inferior to much of his body of work (it's a good movie, but not even in the same league as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull et al).
Ditto Al Pacino's consolation prize for Scent of a Woman. Or Paul Newman's for The Color of Money.

 

Gonna weigh in my two cents here

Of the nominees themselves, I would put The Green Mile up at the top. The rest of them, while ok, definitely do NOT have nearly as much historical & cultural relevance or test-of-time lasting as The Phantom Menace. And as Jedi_Ford_Prefect mentioned, The Matrix and Fight Club are easily the finest films of 1999, no contest. And both were brutally snubbed at the Oscars (though The Matrix did quite fairly sweep the tech awards, it would have been incredibly stupid for it not to have done so)

Actually this year has a much stronger case then 1999, due to the presence of The Two Towers. Other than Gangs of New York, the rest of them are terrible! The last two being obvious Oscar-bait, and Chicago being, well, exactly what Jedi_Ford_Prefect said it was! I would rather the 2002 box office bomb Equilibrium be up there than 3 of those that are! However AOTC doesn't stand a chance against the brilliant masterpiece that is Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers! That was truly the finest film of 2002. (and this is where I completely disagree with Jedi_Ford_Prefect)

2005 was frankly a bad year for film. Lots of "good" films, but no "great" films. (2011 was also like this). Jedi_Ford_Prefect pretty much spelled it out as it is. In my opinion, 2005 could have easily seen Revenge of the Sith fairly being up there as one of the better films of the the year, paired up with Nolan's fantastic Batman Begins, and the first of the Narnia films.

The divide between films the stand the test of time (like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, The Dark Knight trilogy, etc) and ones that pander to the Academy for a quick award would become even more obvious if you go further back! Check out the nominations for 1977, 1980, and 1983 - and see if you can remember any of those films!

1977:
Annie Hall (winner)
The Goodbye Girl
Julia
Star Wars: Episode IV -A New Hope
The Turning Point

1980:
Coal Miner's Daughter
The Elephant Man
Ordinary People (winner)
Raging Bull
Tess

1983:
The Big Chill
The Dresser
The Right Stuff
Tender Mercies
Terms of Endearment (winner)

 

Gotta disagree on two counts. First, as much of a problem as I have with the guy on moral grounds as a human being, Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" really is a great film, and probably the best English-language movie about the absolute brutality of the Holocaust. I wish that Scorsese had won that year for "Gangs of New York", but it's hard to split hairs between two masterpieces.

As for "The Two Towers"-- No. I don't begrudge the Academy for nominating "Fellowship", especially since it was the only film out of the trilogy that wasn't a terrible slog (all of the speedy exposition helped with that-- you feel the history of middle earth in a way that the others don't really have). But the TTT and ROTK never really lived up to the potential of that first film. I'd have rather seen "Equilibrium" nominated, too.

"The Goodbye Girl" is a decent Neil Simon movie. I think. No idea on "Julia" and "The Turning Pont". There's so many other movies that could've been nominated that year. I'm surprised that "Close Encounters" isn't up there.

"The Elephant Man", "Raging Bull" and "Tess" are all absolute masterpieces, easily better than "Empire Strikes Back". "Coal Miner's Daughter" I don't know, but doubt it. "Ordinary People" is practically ground zero for awful Oscar bait, which goes to show from winning over Lynch, Scorsese and Polanski at the top of their games.

"The Big Chill" was a fantastic debut from Lawrence Kasdan. "The Right Stuff" is a wonderful balance of historical drama and comedy from Phillip Kaufman on early NASA. "Terms of Endearment" shouldn't have won over either of them, but it's better than most of the other Oscar crap in consideration. James L. Brooks would go on to do much, much better with "Broadcast News" and "As Good as it Gets". I'd like to have seen "Jedi" get a nod, but I'd have voted for "The Right Stuff", myself.

 

Goddamn! You DO know your film! Props to you for that.

I, too, loved 'The Right Stuff'. But yeah, LOTR in its entirety (and the EE even more so) are pretty much my favorite films of all time (after The Matrix).

 

Who takes the Academy Awards seriously now in days? The whole Harry Potter series wasn't awarded a single Oscar. Good films are snubbed all the time.

 

I've seen nearly a whole Harry Potter film, and bits of most(maybe all) of the others. I'm in no hurry to see any more, because what I've seen is very bad indeed.

I can see why the committee tend to snub franchises in favour of original work when they're presented with stuff like Harry Potter 6 part 1 part A, or whatever.

 

I love me some Harry Potter and I think you're missing out, but I agree; it isn't art. Oscars seem to favor movies that have stories where the characters come out the back end of the flick significantly changed due to the events they experienced. Scifi and fantasy movies, by contrast, usually seem to focus more on how an everyman is able to change events. Occasionally there is some character growth, but mostly Potter, Luke, Bastion, Et al. are basically the same person at the end of their respective movies, (with a few more XPs,) which is not the way to bait the Oscars.

 

There's a lot of politics and snobbery in the Oscars. Star Wars just doesn't fit what they're looking for.

 

Of course this isn't exact, but to a certain extent, popularity (unless everyone in the industry is patting themselves on the back for liking said movie) sometimes works against movies. Sci fi/fantasy are not usually popular. GL was on the "outs" with some. Star Wars was seen as "too kiddie" to some.

Blockbusters, and Star Wars was one of the first, had a certain stigma attached to them (at least in those days).

For the record, although I didn't all of the listed movies in that comparison page 1, I do remember practically all those movies - those which won Best and those which didn't.

 

I might be wrong but didn't his ex-wife win an Oscar for her editing on Starwars ?

People are also going overboard on Gangs of NewYork, Yes Daniel Day Lewis was brilliant (and I kinda wished he'd survived at the end instead) and the film was enjoyable but hardly deserving of any Oscar nomination but Lewis.
Cameron Diaz as a 19th century pickpocket common now
Let's also not forget Leo being brutally scarred on the face, which happens to disappear by the next scene
Finally the film completely, ignores the fact that the rioters were against black people and fighting to free them in the war, which kind of skirts over in favour of the oppressed immigrants message instead.

 

you can't say that the Oscar's stay away from franchises and series movies.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King has the most Academy Awards for any movie. It's actually a three way tie, but whatever.

It still disproves the statement that they stay away from franchises, when a franchise won the most of them.


the PTs just blew. Giving that trash Academy Awards would discredit the Oscars more than they already are.

ANH got one.

Empire should have gotten about 5.

Jedi should have gotten at least one.

 

AKA to my family as "Ordinary Picture".

 

While I feel Star Wars should've won Best Picture(I'll be honest, I've never seen Annie Hall, nor have any desire to), I do feel better that Star Wars is #13 on the AFI's 100 Greatest Movies, where Annie Hall is #35(on the 1998 list SW is 15, where AH is 31).

I think that's a greater achievement than an Oscar. The Oscars only pit you against other movies from that year, that AFI list is against all movies in the history of American Cinema(of course I felt SW should've been #1, with Raiders at #2, but that's besides the point, lol)

 

Daniel Radcliffe (who has admitted he was quite drunk when doing work on the last few potter flicks, to be fiar) said that Alan Rickman deserved an Oscar nomination for his work in Deathly Hallows Part 2. One may think he's overdoing the statement but there is some solid thespian lifting in the series, hell even the 3 main leads turned out to be pretty good actors as well. A big sequence of the last film involves Rickman and Ralph Finnes and there's barely any dialogue or action between them, it's most subtle stuff between their eyes and exchanges that sells it. Once you can wrap your head and get into the fantasy bombast of the films, there actually is some solid actorly stuff throughout the series, especially when you hit the later installments. Fantasy, sci-fi and blockbusters never get much, or any, love in Oscar award season, which is a shame because once you distill out a lot of Jack the Giant Slayer style chaff there is some decent work throughout the genre. X-Men First Class has a pretty big roster of relatively unknown actors and they do a damn good job throughout, Michael Fassbender is able to pull off some great stuff in that movie. He basically puts in as much emotional depth into Magneto as something he did in Shame. And Jennifer Lawerence is in it! And she just won an Oscar!

Which brings it kinda way back to the annie hall beating star wars thing. Annie Hall is a great flick but I just love the layers of every different genre (sci-fi! western! samurai movies! WWII! Lots more!) that is poured into Star Wars, which I think makes it a more fulfilling overall movie. Annie Hall can be boiled down to a single romantic genre, Star Wars really can't. It mashed together so many different genres it created one!

 

Because the Academy award people get really...grouchy...when it comes to anything that isn't grounded in reality or is sci fi.

 

I will say that something like Amour being nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the 2012 Oscars over Looper makes me want to pull my hair out. Guy tells his wife to swallow water, or the bit where the French daughter is saying how she liked to hear her parents making whoppie is somehow better writing that navigating time travel twists and character arcs all at once. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if half the script for Amour just had "meaningful, soulful, sad pause" written into place.

 

Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan.....