Academy Awards

About animated movie Oscars before 2001: 1988 would be a tight race between Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Akira, and The Land Before Time.

Edited by Weirdguy149 on Mar 16th 2024 at 8:19:24 AM

Roger Rabbit is live action, and Akira is anime in 1980s. It's not getting an Oscar, deserved or not. 1998 even moreso. That's the height of the public perception of All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles.

The prompt was "what would win" not "what's the best animated movie that year."

Edited by Larkmarn on Mar 16th 2024 at 10:42:38 AM

Totoro is also from that year, and more importantly, so is Grave of the Fireflies.

People definitely have their "What Should Win" preferences. Important not to conflate them with "What Will Win" though.

I agree that for 1989 (1988), The Land Before Time would easily get it. I also agree though that Roger Rabbit because its half live action probably wouldn't be eligible. In 1990, The Little Mermaid 1989 would win without question.

1987 (1986): It would come down to the two rodent movies of course: The Great Mouse Detective or An American Tail. Haha. A case could be made for either, but maybe the latter has the edge admittedly—even with my love for the former.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Mar 17th 2024 at 1:21:47 AM

So, this is something that I'm noticing with the Academy Awards. Do they always nominate the same movies in every category? Like for this year, it seems like the movies Oppenheimer, Barbie (2023) and Poor Things, to name a few examples, were the only movies that got nominated for every category and even movies like Godzilla Minus One and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 only got one nomination, where they could have easily gotten more nominations.

This is just a personal thing for me and probably one of the many reasons why I don't watch award shows at all, but I am genuinely curious about why the Academy Awards don't nominate more movies per year.

Edited by Rabbitearsblog on Mar 17th 2024 at 12:15:26 PM

Along similar lines, has a Box Office Bomb ever gotten nominated at the Oscars?

I'm pretty sure there's been movies that while not financially successful in the slightest have gotten Academy Award nominations. Look at West Side Story 2021. Then again, that's a great movie though.

That's the thing: the movie either needs financial success, a good critical response or both. Never saw Norbit, but I've heard how awful it was and yet, it was financially successful and got an Achievement in Makeup nomination.

Edited by futuremoviewriter on Mar 17th 2024 at 1:21:24 AM

You'll notice that pundits often talk about the Oscar race like an election, and that's because the traditional way to get one begins almost a year ahead of the ceremony. Industry insiders will have most favorites locked in by mid-fall, because they've already seen them ahead of time at the "respectable" film festivals. November-January is when these films are often shown to the "general public", which is when they get to build serious buzz ahead of awards season (January-March). And of course, studios are also shelling out for marketing the whole time, the top-line creators are schmoozing, etcetera.

Another factor is that other than Best Picture, the individual nominees are provided by members of those guilds. If you're, say, a beginner film editor who didn't otherwise have an ear to the ground at Cannes, word of mouth among your peers is going to influence your ballot significantly.

So perfectly respectable would-be nominee could miss out if it, for example, debuts too early and loses steam or too late when the frontrunners have already been established (e.g. some would say Zac Efron deserves a Best Actor nomination for The Iron Claw, and they would be correct but it only came out in December). If the studio or American distributor doesn't bother launching an awards campaign for a film (as is the case for most MCU films), then its chances of nomination are low.

Conversely, if a film manages to snag a nomination without doing all this, deservedly or not (like G-1, or Andrea Riseborough's controversial nomination last year) it often causes some blinks.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 17th 2024 at 4:57:07 AM

Click—which I really like by the way or at least have mostly fond memories of—also got a Makeup nomination despite not having the best critic reviews, so there you go. Haha.

For Animated Feature 2001 (2000), as beloved as Emperor's New Groove is, anyone else think there's a chance Rugrats in Paris could've had the edge over it? I'm curious to hear thoughts on that.

If anything, I think 2000 would've been year of the Chicken Run.

Oh yeah you're right! I totally forgot Chicken Run and how could I!? Especially with how beloved Wallace & Gromit already was, then yeah!

I totally think Emperor's New Grove and Rugrats in Paris would've both still got nominated though. Both were definitely beloved back then and still are today too.

Chicken Run would definitely be the one to beat for that year, with Emperor's New Groove a close second.

Ironically, Fantasia 2000 wouldn't have been elegible because it officially premiered the previous year. As much as I love it, it would've had stiff competition from the other big animated features of 1999 — Toy Story 2, Tarzan and especially The Iron Giant.

With 1999 (1998), that make sense that Antz or The Prince of Egypt would've gotten it? As much as I love The Rugrats Movie and as big a hit as it was at the time, I'm not even sure it'd have gotten nominated honestly.

Regarding bombs for Best Picture, along with all sorts of Acclaimed Flop, one particularly nasty case was in the 60s: Doctor Dolittle was a Troubled Production that tanked, but right before awards season the studio lobbied hard, including screenings with dinners to Academy members, and it scored a Best Picture nom, among others (winning Best Song and Effects).

I feel like all of the 2020 nominees were bombs by virtue of nobody wanting to go to the theaters for reasons I hope I won't have to tell you.

Decided to check, four (winner Nomadland along with Minari, Promising Young Woman, and The Father) don't qualify because they recouped their cheap budgets. The other four were indeed bombs - albeit Mank and Sound of Metal were primarily streaming movies with limited releases, and Judas and the Black Messiah came out simultaneously on HBO Max to really ensure people didn't go out to see it.

Thanks, counted it wrong. And checking that movie's Wikipedia page, it's like what I put on Acclaimed Flop regarding CODA: what the streamer paid covered the budget, so the $115,709 (!) in theaters is an afterthought.

Edited by igordebraga on Mar 21st 2024 at 1:10:26 PM

For the record, only eight Best Picture nominees that year and not nine. Only one not mentioned in that post is The Trial of the Chicago 7 ( which is Netflix, so streamer).