The Academy Awards have announced a big change and here’s why it won’t make a difference in regards to ratings.
The Academy Awards, in a bid to seem hipper and in-touch with the audience, have announced a new “Popular Film” category, one which has garnered criticism from both critics as well as movie goers.
In March, some 26.5 million people tuned in to watch the 2018 Academy Awards – a record low for a ceremony that’s been losing viewers every year. In 2017, nearly 33 million people watched the Oscars, again down from the year before.
The two reasons for possibly announcing this bizarre category would be firstly, the falling ratings and secondly, the interest level of general audiences.
For one thing, the biggest reason ratings have been falling is that in the times of Netflix, Amazon and various other streaming services, these days nobody sits down to watch a 3-hour marathon of a ceremony. Even Super Bowl ratings have declined in recent years.
The Academy has not only decided to add a popular film category but, to also give away technical awards during commercial breaks so that the award show ends around the 3-hour mark.
Secondly, instead of nominating a film like Black Panther in the Best Picture category, which raked in a billion dollars at the box office and was liked by fans and critics alike as well as a game-changer, adding a separate popular film category is both condescending and snobbish. And what, every single high-profile, money raking movie will be in this category? Keeping this in mind, you can put the wildly popular Fate of the Furious, from the Fast and Furious franchise in this category and that would be an appalling decision, since it was a senseless, over the top, action flick.
The idea should’ve been to nominate movies, which were liked by both critics and fans like Black Panther against nuanced movies like Moonlight (the winner of Best Picture in 2018).
In the years before, movies like Lawrence Of Arabia, Casablanca and The Godfather were nominated for Best Picture Category. And were favorites to win all around.
The Departed, one of the best crime-cop movies of the generation, was nominated for Best Picture during the Oscars in 2007, winning the hearts and minds of fans and critics alike. It won four awards at the Oscars including Best Director for Martin Scorsese and Best Picture. Why aren’t the nominations for Best Picture similar?
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Peter Jackson.
2010’s Mad Max: Fury Road, again got a nomination in the Best Picture category.
The problem with this new category is that, Best Picture nominees, if not all but some will still be those that nobody has an idea about, for instance, The Shape of Water. They maybe very good films, but it seems viewers will only tune in if they knew the movies in contention rather than not.
Another issue is who will vote for this category? Will it be like the MTV Video Music Awards where audiences vote for popular categories or will Academy members vote for it?
Instead of this patronizing decision, the Academy should try and be more inclusive of films that have the power of storytelling at its heart. Creating a separate category, rather than including the movies in Best Picture, certainly wasn’t the best decision. It’s not wrong to think of new ways to retain audience interest but, perhaps, this wasn’t the way to go.
