Sleiek
Superhero
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I hope WW gets a best picture nom just to make the fanboys mad.
This.
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I hope WW gets a best picture nom just to make the fanboys mad.
Ambitious, but no. Look, Wonder Woman is a fantastic film, but I'd hardly call it award worthy. Still, with the maximum number expanded unlike in 2009 when WB pushed for The Dark Knight, I don't see this film getting a Best Picture nomination. Even on a technical level, this film doesn't do what something like a Fury Road did. Still, admirable for WB to give it a shot. If it gets a Best Picture nod, great, but I don't see it happening.
I don't see a win, but a nomination? Yeah, I can see that easily.
I still say Chris Pine deserves a best supporting nod, tho.
Ambitious, but no. Look, Wonder Woman is a fantastic film, but I'd hardly call it award worthy. Still, with the maximum number expanded unlike in 2009 when WB pushed for The Dark Knight, I don't see this film getting a Best Picture nomination. Even on a technical level, this film doesn't do what something like a Fury Road did. Still, admirable for WB to give it a shot. If it gets a Best Picture nod, great, but I don't see it happening.
I hope WW gets a best picture nom just to make the fanboys mad.
Now Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, wants the action movie to break another glass ceiling. Although executives havent commented publicly on their plans, they have internally discussed launching a formidable awards-season campaign for the movie, in the hopes of making it the first comic-book film nominated for best picture, Variety has learned.
The studio will also stump Patty Jenkins for best director, which would also be groundbreaking. No director of a comic-book film not even Christopher Nolan has ever been nominated, and only men have ruled the category since (and before) Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010.
Best picture? It won't win but a nomination is possible.
To be nominated WW has to be one of the top choices (5-10) of at least 5% of members who cast their ballots. If you're a woman (28%) why wouldn't you vote for a female-led, female-directed box office hit?
Best director? If they feel obligated to nominate a female director for whatever reason (#oscarsomale?), Kathryn Bigelow has a new film coming out (Detroit - 87% Metacritic, 100% Rotten Tomatoes).
An Oscar nomination for production design, costume design, etc., isn't out of the question.
As long as the film wins a couple Golden Globes, Critics' Choice, SAG awards, etc. it will go down in history as the 'award-winning' Wonder Woman.
I don't think this movie is deserving of Best Picture or Best Director.
I enjoyed the movie though, and Gadot was born to play Wonder Woman
Pine as Trevor didn't blow me away. He's a great actor, but he was just as good as Trevor as he was as Kirk.
Sorry if I sound negative! I love the movie!
If TDK doesn't get a best picture nod, then this shouldn't either.
Isn't Nolan going for an actual win here (pic or director). I don't think they are mocking around with a nom this time. Is it possible to get two movies nom for best pic from the same studio?
But that's like saying if an actor didn't get a best actor/ actress nod for a particular film for which you think they deserved to be, then they shouldn't get one for a lesser film of theirs where they are nominated. Are the actual Oscar wins for an actor/ actress always for their best work? I don't think so.
Every time Im out, they pull me back in. I swore this week would be the end of the Wonder Woman daily updates, and that might still be the case. For the record, the film made an additional $646,000 yesterday to bring its domestic total to $391.9 million as it heads into its ninth weekend of release. It will only be playing on 1,651 screens so we'll see if it can continue to outpace Sam Raimi's Spider-Man over the weekend. But I digress.
Still, Variety dropped a story last night about Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. planning to going all-in for an Oscar campaign in the hopes that Wonder Woman will be the first comic book superhero movie to win Best Picture. And without arguing that Wonder Woman is necessarily my favorite movie of the year (cough, Get Out, -cough), I would love to see it (and Get Out) play a major role in the year-end awards races. Why, do you ask, would I champion a Wonder Woman Oscar run more than, for example, Deadpool? The answer: aspiration.
The specifics of the year-end awards race have as much to do with politics and narrative as the actual politics. I would argue that the films that end up making the final cut are one of two types of pictures. Either they are designated awards-bait movies that are celebrated enough to live up to their preordained inclusion (The Imitation Game), or they are populist movies that are so damn good and so representative of what Hollywood would like to pretend they make on a regular basis (Mad Max: Fury Road) that they sneak in.
You can debate which category Moonlight or Beasts of the Southern Wild fit in, but both nominations ennobled the Academy.
There was an old line two years ago about Birdman essentially being about an artist trying to make a piece of art as good as Boyhood. And regardless of whether you think the right movie won in 2015, movies like Boyhood and Birdman represent the kind of films that Hollywood would like to think it can still crank out alongside the franchise offerings. Movies like The Revenant or Spotlight or Moonlight or La La Land are Look what we can still do movies.
So even after the Oscar field expanded to ten nominees after The Dark Knight got snubbed, and especially after the nominating process changed two years later to prevent popular fare like The Blind Side from getting in (because eww cooties), the road for big-budget blockbuster fare is a near-impossible one to climb. The reason is simple: What was once monumental is now par for the course.
In 2001, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring stood out as a monumental achievement in modern cinema. But, in 2017, with the caveat that Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings trilogy still holds up as timeless classics worthy of every Oscar they won (and a few they didnt), big-budget fantasy epics like The Dark Knight are almost standard year-round Hollywood fare. A movie like The Two Towers is no longer an aspirational triumph that stands apart and alongside the conventional character dramas and thrillers and comedies because those other films are barely made at the studio level in 2017.
In 2005, it was impressive that Chris Nolan snagged Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson for a Batman movie. Today, partially due to the lack of mid-budget studio fare for popular working actors, Cate Blanchett, Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Tilda Swinton and Jeff Bridges can join a comic book universe and nobody bats an eye.
Thats why, for example, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II never had a chance in 2012 even as the not that popular Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (a film that I would now qualify as underrated as its post-nomination backlash turned it into a whipping boy of sorts) snagged a nom. As good as the final Harry Potter movie was, and it was very good, its commercial and artistic triumph merely meant that Hollywood could make and would make more big-budget, YA fantasy adventures.
While Gladiator may have been a Look what we can do! triumph in 2000, a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 is merely a very good example of the kind of film that Hollywood is more or less forced to make on a regular basis. Quality aside, it or Skyfall or The Hunger Games: Catching Fire doesnt represent anything novel in terms of what those working in the system would like to be able to show off as idealized Hollywood product.
If anything, Birdman resonated because it detailed the travails of an artist wanting to make Spotlight when all the industry would rather make Spider-Man: Homecoming. Thats also why Star Wars: The Force Awakens never had a shot in hell at top-tier Oscar love. Even if you loved it, it was a nostalgia-driven franchise revival that succeeded mostly due to previously established fandom.
Even in 2010, the first year of the expanded nominations, the Best Picture slot that everyone presumed would go to Star Trek (a well-reviewed, well-received, buzzy and crowd-pleasing popcorn entertainment) ended up going to Neil Blomkamps District 9. The latter was an original, R-rated, topical, and reasonably budgeted sci-fi thriller which debuted to rave reviews and surprisingly strong box office. It was idealized in a way that Star Trek was not.
This somewhat explains movies like The Theory of Everything, modestly well-reviewed prestige pictures that no one really loves which end up showered with nominations primarily because it was considered a shoo-in at the start of the award season. By todays standards, a comparative trifle like Foxcatcher or The Theory of Everything is indeed aspirational. All of this brings us to Wonder Woman.
Whether Wonder Woman is worth a seat at the Oscar table, assuming you think its at least very good, is arguably a question of whether it is aspirational beyond its franchise intentions and corporate-minded origins. Yes, in 2017, I would argue that a big-budget, female-led and female-directed comic book superhero movie, one that received near universal acclaim and was so beloved by paying consumers that it's one of the leggiest big movies in recent years, is indeed a Look what we can do! triumph.
In that sense, by offering very real cracks in the glass ceiling, and yet again shattering conventional wisdom of what can and cant be a hit movie, it differs from Logan or Deadpool or almost any other recent mega-bucks hit you can think of. In the sense of proving that women can direct a big-budget action movie as well as men, and that a female-led superhero movie can do at least as well as a male-driven one, and by being the kind of leggy, crowd-pleasing and zeitgeist-capturing hit that helped make mainstream movies matter again, I would argue that yeah, Wonder Woman is an optimistic victory for the studio and for the industry.
So, well see if Warner Bros. aggressive campaign actually puts the movie and its makers into the Oscar race. Warner also has the easier shot with Dunkirk (also arguably an aspirational movie, even if its a more conventional male-centric World War II drama) and that Clint Eastwoods The 15:17 to Paris. I would argue that the Wonder Woman campaign is partially about a combined flooding of the awards season, with hopes of a ton of Warner Bros. movies in the mix just like Lionsgate had last year.
But I do hope Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. includes Wonder Woman in the Oscar conversation, and yeah, I hope it sneaks into the final batch of Best Picture nominees. Itll certainly help the domestic box office, and if it gets a nomination it might well sneak past Iron Man 3 and The Hunger Games if not Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($424m) to best Shrek 2s leggiest $100 million+ opener record.
Whether or not Wonder Woman is one of the best movies of the year, and I would argue that barely matters considering how many merely pretty good awards contenders sneak in each year, it is unquestionably an aspirational movie, one that offers an idealized version of what is now a definitive Hollywood product. Critics loved it and audiences loved it, and it succeeded as a genuine Look what we can do! triumph right alongside the likes of Get Out and The Big Sick.
If the Best Picture nominations are supposed to represent the year in movies, there is little doubt that Wonder Woman deserves a seat at the table.