One issue is that it’s impossible to determine how films will be regarded decades later. Tastes change, and voters can only choose films based upon the critical assumptions of their own times. Hindsight may say Cavalcade is not a great film (though without seeing it, I cannot say), but the award was given in 1933, and it may have been considered quite good for the time.
In addition, films prior to around 1950 were not voted upon by a free ballot. Thus, the Best Picture winner was often determined because that particular year it was Fox’s turn to win Best Picture, so all the studios told their workers to vote for Fox’s candidate (there were also tradeoffs for acting roles). This weakened in the forties (when some UK films started winning Best Picture), and ended in the 50s when the studios withdrew funding AMPAS.* The Oscars might have faded away and been forgotten if TV hadn’t stepped in and paid their expenses.
But since the mid-40s, the Academy voted freely, and chose films that were considered excellent at that time. The main difference between its judgment and that of the moviegoing audience is that AMPAS is older and probably with more females (thought, I hasten to add, no where near equally representing the genders).
*AMPAS, BTW, was originally founded as a company union to keep workers in line. It was an afterthought for it to hand out awards.
Every few years someone goes digging into who makes up the HFPA, and the results are always amusing. Here’s one example; and he has links to a lot of other articles:
You have a strange definition of “commercial success.” Argo made over $130 million in the U.S. Its overseas take wasn’t as impressive, which isn’t really surprising, but then you have The King’s Speech, which was a gigantic hit in a number of countries (including the U.S.) and took in over $400 million worldwide. Slumdog Millionaire ($378 million) and The Departed ($290 million worldwide) were also very successful.
As several people have pointed out, it’s far more unusual for Best Picture winners to be flops than it is for them to be successes.
That’s actually subjective, not objective. When you’re stating an opinion, it’s subjective. When you state fact, like Star Wars was released in 1977, that would be objective.
If it were me subjectively speaking, Star Wars was a great movie, one of the best of all time. Annie Hall was fine, but not Woody Allen’s best, and didn’t deserve to win in the year that Star Wars changed movies forever.
That’s a lot of money in ordinary terms. But look at that in context.
Rank from Boxofficemojo.com, giving rank among U.S. grosses for the year of release, followed by rank among worldwide grosses for the year of release.
Argo, 22, na
The King’s Speech, 18, na
Slumdog Millionaire, 16, 14
The Departed, 15, 14
There’s a huge difference between making money and being a blockbuster. No movie that can’t even break into the top ten of its year is a blockbuster. None of them rank in the top 100 alltime either domestic or worldwide. Slumdog is #198 worldwide. Avatar is #1, Return of the King #7. Those are blockbusters.
2012 The Avengers
2011 Harry Potter DH2
2010 Toy Story 3
2009 Avatar
2008 The Dark Knight
2007 Spiderman 3
2006 Dead Man’s Chest
2005 Revenge of the Sith
2004 Shrek 2
2003 Return of the King - Win!
2002 Spiderman
2001 Harry Potter SS
2000 The Grinch
1999 The Phantom Menace
1998 Saving Private Ryan
1997 Titanic - Win!
1996 Independence Day
1995 Toy Story
1994 Forrest Gump - Win!
1993 Jurassic Park
1992 Alladin
1991 Terminator 2
1990 Home Alone
Anything that follows will show the same thing: the top grossers are the flyers.
I agree; Star Wars is a genuinely great movie and its impact on filmmaking was incalculably vast. But I wouldn’t say that Star Wars got snubbed at the Oscars; it won seven (although they were primarily technical awards) and was nominated in four of the major categories (best picture, director, original screenplay, and supporting actor). Just the fact that Star Wars was in the Best Picture pool is amazing, given that it’s a scifi film. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey didn’t get a BP nomination.
I think Wendell Wagner is right on target. The Academy tends to like popular middlebrow films that have a patina of seriousness about them. Annie Hall fits the bill nicely; Star Wars doesn’t.
You really can’t ignore production costs when you’re talking about whether or not a movie was successful. Most best picture nominees are not going to be the kind of movies with massive budgets.
Argo made $136,025,503 domestic and had a $44.5 million budget. That’s a financial success. Same with Silver Linings Playbook ($21 million production - $132,092,958 domestic) and Lincoln ($65 million production - $182,207,973 domestic).
Compare them to movies like Snow White and the Huntsman ($170 million budget - $182,207,973 domestic), Men in Black 3 ($225 million budget - $179,020,854 domestic), and The Amazing Spider-Man ($230 million budget - $262,030,663 domestic).
So while Oscar-worthy movies may not be at the top of the grosses, they often earn more profits that the movies that are.
So they could not deign to give an actual award to the Director of Birds, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Pycho, Strangers on a Train, Rebecca, Vertigo.:rolleyes:
They must be still kicking themselves. I did like Hitch’s acceptance speech when he got the memorial prize.
On re Star Wars and Annie Hall the later was a good movie, the former a groundbreaking, genre creating one.m
I did think Shakespeare in Love was a good film, better than many other winners ( Slumdog, The Artist etc), but it should have been Saving Private Ryan. Moreover, that’s the year Roberto Benini got his award right?
As I already said, financially successful and blockbuster are two different categories. And the whole point of the OP was to ask about blockbusters, not merely financially successful.
The Globes are run by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), and voted on by barely 80 journalists—in contrast to the Oscars, chosen by 6,000 members of the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Neither the “Globes” or the “Academy” rely on input from the public for their decisions. Voting members (hopefully) vote for the directors, actors, films, categories, etc that they believe are best. (or believe that their vote will get them a part in the next movie. hehehe. )