The nominees for the 2014 Oscars have been announced and there is one glaring omission from the Best Picture category big enough to fly the Dark Aster through. Guardians Of The Galaxy absolutely deserved a Best Picture nomination and the fact that it didn’t get one just proves how aloof and stuck up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is. There has long been a dividing line between “film snobs” who only like artsy fartsy type movies and fans of “popcorn movies” who love their explosions and car chases and cars chases where the cars turn into robots and make stuff explode. It’s the difference between Michael Mann and Michael Bay. Every now and then though, a movie comes along that captivates both groups of cinephiles: The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pulp Fiction, all critically adored movies that were also extremely popular at the box office. Guardians of the Galaxy also belongs on that list. The critics loved it, the fans of big-budget summer blockbusters loved it. Adults and children both adored it, heck, someone, somewhere probably dragged their grandparents to a matinee and had to listen to Grandma going on and on about the talking raccoon on the ride back to the nursing home. So why then was Guardians of The Galaxy not nominated for Best Picture, or at the very least, something more substantial than Hair and Makeup or Best Visual Effects?
Well for one thing, the Academy never picks movies based on their popularity with the general public or how much money they made but instead usually seems to pick movies that were critical successes. This is why a movie like Transformers has never been nominated. But even though, Guardians was the highest grossing movie of 2014 domestically and the second highest worldwide (behind Transformers Age Of Extinction), Guardians Of The Galaxy wasn’t just a hit with Marvel fans, it was smash with critics as well.In fact, according to Rotten Tomatoes, Guardians Of The Galaxy has a 91% rating, which if you are unfamiliar with how Rotten Tomatoes works, essentially means that if you took one hundred reviews, 91 out of those hundred were positive. That’s a great rating, and not only significantly higher than the 18% that Transformers Age Of Extinction has, but it’s also higher than half the movies that beat out Guardians for a Best Picture nomination. The Imitation Game has a 90%, but that’s only 1% less so that’s negligible. The Theory of Everything has 79%, American Sniper 76%, a more significant drop. Interstellar, the latest from critical darling Christopher Nolan? Only 72%, or C- if you put it in high school report card terms. Not only did more critics like Guardians of the Galaxy than Interstellar, but a significant number of them. So why is Interstellar nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t?
While it’s true that the Oscars routinely ignore genre films and comedies, there have been exceptions. Both Avatar, and District 9 managed to break through the wall of historical dramas to receive Best Picture nods. Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King managed to not only get nominated , but win the Oscar for Best Picture despite being * gasp * a fantasy film. Not to mention Interstellar is itself a Sci-fi film like Guardians so obviously the genre isn’t a hindrance this year. No, the real reason that Interstellar gets a Best Picture nod is because filmmakers like Christopher Nolan carry more prestige (pun definitely intended) than directors like James Gunn who’s previous two directing credits are Slither and Super, both of which are cheesy and offensive, guilty B-movie fun. The academy is a lot like the Bushwood country club from Caddyshack. Just picture Christopher Nolan as Ted Knight, the stuffy, boring, old money WASP and James Gunn as Rodney Dangerfield the crass, unsophisticated, fun-loving nouveau riche party crasher. It’s sad that a lot of Hollywood still operates on the same clique system that they were no doubt exposed to in high school, but that’s the way that it appears to work. There have been so many arbitrary nominations and snubs over the years that the Oscars stopped mirroring the tastes of the general movie going public long ago. The Academy Awards have essentially become the hipsters of Hollywood: “The Best Picture? You probably haven’t seen it. It didn’t play at the multiplex”.
That isn’t to say that none of the Best Picture nominees are deserving. The Grand Budapest Hotel was nothing short of amazing. I haven’t seen Birdman or Boyhood yet but I’m pretty sure that they deserve to be there. In fact, nominating Guardians wouldn’t have had to knock any of the other eight movies out of the running. The Academy has the option of nominating up to ten movies a year for Best Picture but just chose not to. For whatever reason, the Academy opted to once again ignore popular opinion and snub a great movie. Ultimately it’s fine because the lack of a gold-plated trinket isn’t going to diminish anyone’s enjoyment of Guardians Of The Galaxy, most of us know what was the real best picture of 2014. It just would have been nice for it to have been nominated.