Hollywood awards are practically meaningless. If Pia Zadora can win a Golden Globe award, anyone can.
All such awards are meaningless. That said, it's annoying that SW fans think it's crazy that SW lost to Annie Hall as if Annie Hall is a horrible movie. I wonder how many of those people have actually seen Annie Hall. A lot of Woody Allen's movies are really smart, thoughtful, and downright hilarious, and Annie Hall is one of the best, an absolute classic.
As everyone has stated they aren't Oscar movies, the Lord of the Rings winning Best Picture is really surprising, but it comes down to a small group of voters, who usually always go for the movies that were made just to get awards, i.e The King's Speech...
I don't know if I would have chosen "A NEW HOPE" as Best Picture of 1977. I didn't care for the movie at the time. I don't think I would have chosen any of the other nominees. Perhaps "JULIA", but I'm not sure. As for "LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING", I don't think it deserved the Best Picture win. Of all of the LOTR movies, I would have given the Best Picture award to "FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING", but not the other two. I don't have a high opinion of the other two.
I agree! FotR was the strongest of the three. I think it had the most plot and was most character-driven, so it's surprising that RotK was the one to get it.
I suspect that the reason ROTK won is because LOTR is essentially one complete story and they waited for it to finish being told before awarding it the oscar.
Two likely reasons and one sure fact come to my mind : - Star Wars/ANH shattered the box office record at the time like no other movie has ever done in American motion picture's history. I guess, maybe for the voting panel and those who control/influence the Academy Awards, awarding ANH the Best Picture Oscar meant bowing way to much to the general audience's current wishes and verdict. - Space Opera/Adventure genre, with plenty of new revolutionary special effects and sounds, largely influenced and pretty much back then confined to comics or TV serials (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers,...), targeted mostly to young people, was really not in the mood at Hollywood in the early and mid 70's, the paramount of the "New Hollywood" (P.Biskind) Era. One look at the Best Picture's list from 1970 to 1976 says it all. - Last, but not least, all nominees can be considered as fairly good movies in a way, whether you personally like them or not. Othewise they wouldn't be nominees. From then on choosing a winner is completely subjective by essence. This is the fact. I'll extend to movies what Johnny Depp, awarded with a honor trophy (César) at the 1999 French Academy Awards, said in his very short (recorded in French) speech while collecting it : "I don't really understand the concept of Academy Award ceremony. I hate the idea of competition. One actor isn't better than another. They're just different people." For those who understand French, here's the whole speech. For those who don't and want a translation of the entire video, just tell me.
1977-- ANH > "Annie Hall". Both are good, but there's no question here. 1980-- ESB > "Ordinary People". However, all the other nominees for best picture & director best Redford's film, as well. Scorsese's "Raging Bull", Lynch's "The Elephant Man" (best director, not picture) and Polanski's "Tess" all are more deserving than ESB, to be honest. 1983-- ROTJ = "Terms of Endearment". Also nominated that year were "The Right Stuff" and "The Big Chill" for picture (either of which probably should've beaten ToE) and Ingmar Bergman as best director for "Fanny & Alexander" (which is better in its TV version, and probably should've beaten James L. Brooks, but... it's not really Bergman's best, so whatever). While we're at it... 1999-- TPM >>>>>>>> "American Beauty". Granted, also nominated that year was Michael Mann for "The Insider" which I would've been happy with (Spike Jonze got a cool nom for "Being John Malkovich", but the real auteur of that movie is Charlie Kaufman). But it's a BS year anyway, because they didn't nominate "Fight Club" for anything other than sound editing, or whatever. So screw that. 2002-- AOTC >>>>>>>> "Chicago". For God's sake. But anyway, I'd have been happiest seeing Scorsese win it for "Gangs of New York". Polanski scored it as best director for "The Pianist", which is a great film, but yeah, Polanski's a scumbag regardless. 2005-- ROTS >>>>>>>> "Crash". Christ, that's not even the best movie with the title "Crash". Ang Lee won as director for "Brokeback Mountain", which is cool from a political perspective, but I'm lukewarm on the movie itself. I'd have rather seen Clooney win it for "Good Night and Good Luck".
I was mostly following until you wrote that. TPM is better art than American Beauty? Why do you think so?
Because "American Beauty" is mostly just a wishy-washy recycling of a lot of the same mid-life crisis suburban angst crap that was in countless other, better indie films throughout the 90's, 80's and arguably further back into the days of Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray. All that it really has is a half-baked script from the "True Blood" showrunner, an okay performance from Kevin Spacey from before he went onto auto-pilot (though perhaps not quite), and some nice cinematography from Conrad Hall. And as good as I think Sam Mendes' work is there and especially in "Road to Perdition", I really can't stomach how easy it was for a theater guy like him to jump straight into Oscar-bait territory right from the get go (a good unpretentious Bond movie should be just the thing to make him palatable). TPM is a pure franchise film, yeah, but by far it's one of the most original and visionary works of sci-fi imagination from the past 20 years, and certainly the best example of that from 1999 ("The Matrix" is fun as hell, but leans heavy on cyberpunk movies, books, manga and anime that came before). I'd vote for that in a heartbeat ahead of AB. Though if "Fight Club" were also in the running, I'd have some pause...
I can understand where you're coming from on AB, but I don't see TPM as visionary. I'd say a franchise film only deserves that designation if it builds on an existing universe in a very significant way, introducing new themes and messages. TPM introduced new species, new vehicles, and so on, but I don't think it changed the paradigm of Star Wars. As a comparison, consider ESB: Vader's revelation changed the whole psychological tone of the universe from what was in ANH. ANH was a swashbuckling story of good guys vs. bad guys, and ESB turned it on its head by revealing that the "good" guys deceived Luke. Now, instead of just an adventure story, we have an opportunity to think about ethics and the personal crisis Luke must be in. That's why so many people, Star Wars fanatics and non-fanatics alike, consider ESB one of the best movie sequels of all time. Now, as a fan, I enjoyed the prequels. But I don't think any of them changed the game like that. "Why" doesn't mean "there's something wrong with you." It means "what's your reasoning."
ESB changed the game the first time, but I'd argue TPM did it a second time and in some potentially more lasting ways as far as sci-fi and cinematic conventions are concerned. First of all, it popularized the whole idea of a prequel in mainstream cinematic franchises, and consequently the whole reboot structure we see in so many series. Without TPM going back to the beginning with Episode I, I'd argue we'd be less likely to see the Batman or Bond series brought back to a kind of ground zero with "Batman Begins" or "Casino Royale". Second, it made good on the long-term story arc that ROTJ capped off by turning Vader into a redemptive hero, and further turned things onto their head by introducing all notions of midichlorians, the prophecy and Anakin's virgin birth. It's one thing to say that Vader's the hero's father, that he used to be a hero himself, or that other heroes have lied to us. But by turning the villain into a messiah complete with an immaculate conception, you're dealing with a very different and deeper kind of mythology than just "the bad guy used to be a good guy". Third, it dramatically altered the way that the SW franchise works just in terms of the kind of cinematic action blockbuster it represents, and played a part in influencing the tide of action movies around it. As much as ANH is seen as a swashbuckling movie, it's generally light on any kind of action other than shootouts and dogfighting-- yes, each movie has a duel or some high-concept suspense, but really they're more adhering to the traditions of American westerns and war movies than anything else. TPM and the movies that followed, however, placed a much bigger emphasis on the closed-quarter combat between the Jedi and their various enemies. They owe less to the westerns and war movies of the OT and more to martial arts films, anime and even old-school Bond flicks. The shootouts and dogfighting take a backseat to the duels, fights and all manner of choreographed combat, and along with the "Matrix" movies they helped up the stakes for set-piece design in action movies of the past 13 years or so. I could go on about the increased emphasis on political themes in TPM, but that's for another time. Suffice to say, TPM was as much a game changer as ANH or ESB. I'd venture to say those are the three really essential SW movies in terms of impact, or at least impact and overall quality.
And considering it practically created the whole modern film industry...by that i mean ILM, Lucasfilm, and to a lesser extent Pixar. Most of the sunsidaries created by Lucas in the 70s are practically what are used to create films these days, the computerized and graphical stuff anyway.
Forget Star Wars. Why didn't JAWS win for '75? (Yeah, yeah, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was phenomenal. But have you ever seen JAWS? You know, the greatest escapist film in world cinema?) On edit: To all the younglings out there: Your assignment this week is to watch, nay...experience JAWS. Let it envelop you. Savor it. Understand that this is the pinnacle.
