Amph 2023 Oscars (discussion of likely award-winning films)

The difference is that the actual filmmaking in Top Gun is better. The cinematography, the visual directing.. it's fine in The Woman King but nothing special. Also, The Woman King gets into not just cliche territory but utter melodrama to the point of being unbelievable or unnecessary to the story. The entire plot of

Spoiler

the mother-daughter connection

Is unneeded and frankly made me roll my eyes.

By comparison, in spite of its cliches, Maverick is restrained enough to keep the uber melodrama at bay. It's not like it's revealed that Rooster is actually Maverick's son or something.. it's a cliche drama, not a melodrama.

Also I'm sorry but The Woman King HAS to lose points for being historically inaccurate in the most over-the-top way possible. If it didn't posit itself as based on a true story or historical in any way, it would be different. But literally the only true thing in it is that these women warriors existed, which was impressive and interesting...

But the fantasy version of it in Black Panther is better than this "true story" version.

 

no-one gives a **** what wins best picture. the oscars are dead.

 

Yeah, but he was white.

 

true apathy goes unannounced.

 

@gezvader28 Yet incredibly it still landed in the Top 25 TV Shows according to the Nielsen Ratings:

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/to...wstone-ncis-oscars-fbi-super-bowl-1235475629/

Heck it was the only thing that wasn't in a sporting event in the Top 30. Yes, the audience has significantly shrunk over the past 30 years but you can say that about a lot of things since obviously the saturation of TV has been happening for a few decades due to cable and especially streaming. It still has significance just not what it once though I do concede that it needs to get more modern and if it doesn't it could very well become truly inconsequential. But it isn't there yet especially how much businesses value it. There is a reason why it fetches the second highest dollar amount for a 30 second commercial outside of the Super Bowl. It's because besides the ratings being very high for a non sporting event, Madison Ave knows those who watch it are typically people with some strong discretionary spending and like to use it.

 

No one here is defending Braveheart? It's totally completely inaccurate and should not have been nominated.


But again, most of my objection to the idea of TWK getting a BP nom is that it's simply not one of the ten best films of the year this year..period.

 

@solojones One good thing about Braveheart? It did give Alan Ladd Jr. a much deserve Academy Award.



Just ignore the crazy racist psychopath in the middle.

 

I don't think historical accuracy or inaccuracy should really factor in at all honestly. I mean, BlackKklansman had a ridiculous amount of completely fabricated material in it, but it absolutely deserved the BP nomination and I wouldn't have been angry if it had won, even though it wasn't my favorite of the slate that year.

 

Then read the rest if my post about why it's not a deserving movie.

 

Gladiator isn't historically accurate, but it's a damn great movie that deserved all the awards it won.

Very few historical movies are particularly accurate, because actual history could be quite boring.

You don't give out awards based on accuracy, you do it based on film-making quality.
Are we going to disregard any movie every time someone carries a sword on their back or uses flaming arrows?

 

Another strong point of Devotion is that it has no glaring historical inaccuracies like those. The only things it got 'wrong' were some early scenes that were made up to provide exposition that set up the ending for success. The ending is as close to exactly right as we're ever likely to see for a Hollywood history movie.

 

Yah but Top Gun Maverick has Danger Zone!

 

Well, they still have managed to recapture once again everyone's attention last year. I think they should create a prize for "how to ressurect from the dead from a brief moment" and reward themselves, or at least reward Chris Rock and Will Smith:

 

You know as well as I do that they're already typing up the boring jokes for the teleprompter to talk about Will Smith's absence and how many people he's slapped since last year.

 

*host enters, wearing football helmet*

 

Did anyone read the rest of my post where I said The Woman King was not as well made as Maverick and has some actively bad melodrama elements?

Of course not.

 

Yes, I read it. I haven't seen TWK since it first came out, and I agree there was some melodrama, but I don't recall if it was as actively bad as the melodrama in TGM. I just saw that one yet again last night, and I had forgotten how bad some of the characters and dialog are. Hangman is a terrible character with terrible lines and exists only to add some meaningless conflicts. But even his lines aren't the worst. "We're the best there is. Who're they gonna get to train us?" Ugh. Who talks like that? Nobody. Pure cringe.

 

I agree that Maverick shouldn't have gotten a screenplay nom..there are many many more deserving films for that.. that's not it's strength.

But I'm sorry, the melodrama of TWK with

Spoiler

the focus character who clashes with the general just HAPPENING to be her long lost daughter

Isn't just cliche, it's straight up soap opera territory. And the film didn't need it at all. It for me kinda

Spoiler

reduced these strong warriors to "just women" by kinda implying their lives were only fulfilled because they had a child to pass it on to.

 

Yeah, I can't argue with that.

 

You're tempting me to put TWK in my arsefests list. I thought it was okay when I saw it, but I'm disliking it more, day by day. It's such a silly and contrived film and the historical inaccuracies make Braveheart look like a Ken Burns documentary.

 

I do think the only thing that makes it worth it are the unscripted things.

 

Having not seen The Woman King, there's really no such thing as a historically "accurate" film. To craft a story, things must necessarily be compressed, omitted, twisted; things must be distorted or added for the sake of drama. History itself is often debatable, a matter of perspective, or just outright lies. Many records are lost, others are biased sources, and the vast majority of past events were never recorded to being with. I agree with @Rogue1-and-a-half generally that historical accuracy doesn't matter when evaluating a film as a work of art, but it can be a problem when it is presented as accurate (especially for political purposes) or is widely believed to be (e.g., The Birth of a Nation being used to stoke racial animus, or as a less extreme example, James Cameron defaming a real member of the Titanic crew).

 

So this is my problem with the particular way historical inaccuracy works in The Woman King. It IS changed, wildly so, for political purposes.

Just because those are politics (diversity, anti-slavery which is still a modern issue, women's rights and power) I generally agree with though does NOT mean it excuses this film for the particular way it presents historical subjects.

I mean, let's call a spade a spade: the women warriors portrayed in the film were a cool aspect of history from a feminist point of view... They also were actually on the side of the slavers.

The film glosses over this by having their nation currently involved in slavery, but the women heroically fighting against it.

This is not a mere historical changing to make the story more compelling. I get that those will always happen. This is exactly as you said, a politically driven change that totally flips reality on its head.

This would be akin to if Braveheart, a notoriously wildly innacurate film, also purported that William Wallace was fighting for English rule.

I completely understand historical adaptation and have participated in it professionally. I was a historical researcher for one of the most prominent historically based television shows in history!

It's this background and understanding of how history works, how it's all just perspective-based stories, that gives me reason to feel The Woman King is an egregious example of changing major facts for political reasons.

In spite of all this, TWK manages to tell a story of slavery that is overall true (that it was a horrible colonial atrocity, that Africans participated in, and that some Europeans fought against). So I could almost forgive all this...


.... If it weren't also working with character development beats right out of a soap opera.

Look, I really WANTED to love this film in spite of its flaws. I did. It's just... Not that good. It's not one of the best 10 films of the year, there's no way.

 

Brace yourselves; I have a real shocker for you. I know a thing or two about military aviation history. Everybody recovered now? Take another minute if you need it.

I've read a bit about Manfred von Richtofen, aka The Red Baron, including the advice he shared on air combat. One of the things he told his men was, "Always aim for the man, not the machine."

A few years ago I was watching a then-recent movie about him and the Red Baron character said, "Always aim for the machine, not the man."

That's one I'll never watch again.