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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I definitly dont think that an oscar win can't be instrumental for someones movie career, especially if it is a dark horse victory like Parasite last year. I just think we really shouldn't treat an oscar win or nomination as any inherent indicator of quality or especially, not being nominated as some kind of failure.
Edited by uncertanSearcher on Jun 17th 2022 at 5:45:32 PM
It's not. Oscars are most "prestigious" award and being nominated/winning propels you to a whole new level of visibility compared to pretty much any other award, but this doesn't mean that the Oscars are objective judges of quality (far from it). Their worth is their popularity, not their capacity for objective judgement.
Edited by Gaon on Jun 17th 2022 at 8:44:01 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I unashamedly love the Oscars, watch the nominees, and get mad when my faves don't win, and generally think the MCU contributes to our vague cultural decline. But this is not surprising? Jackson is in his 70s and doesn't have anything left to prove to Hollywood, and Nick Fury is not the world's most difficult gig. Playing it every couple of years for a big paycheck is probably much easier than having to adjust for a more difficult role.
In the interview proper Jackson's talking about his career in a broad, non-linear sense (i.e the looming questions of "should I have won an Oscar? Should have I pursued Oscar-intensive roles in the past?"). Nick Fury is just an example he provides, as he also mentions Mace Windu (a role he started playing in 1999 and last played physically in 2005) immediately afterwards.
It's just an actor discussing his particular opinion on what he thinks his career is worth and how he seems to find more worth in having fun with roles (and subsequently entertaining the audiences) than award pursuit per see. As noted before this isn't particularly surprising, Jackson's always been pretty clear about his Awesome, Dear Boy sort of worldview.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."If the movie/show interests me, I'll watch it. I don't care how many awards it may or may not have won.
Many artists have been inspired by shit that never even became known by a wider audience in the first place, and they made something cool out of what they gleamed from their inspirations and built their own ideas.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."Not the MCU in a vacuum. More Disney, WB, and other corporations leading the cultural landscape into IP-centric domination, which the MCU exemplifies, eg. Multiverse of Madness being allotted all the slots in theaters so smaller movies can't get cinema time. One is able to be a franchise fan while acknowledging that.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 17th 2022 at 11:51:15 AM
I don't actually disagree with that observation, though I'd describe the MCU more as a symptom of a larger problem than exactly a contributor to it but that is essentially semantics.
Edited by Gaon on Jun 17th 2022 at 9:38:40 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."It's a lot of things, including the slow decline of the theatrical mid-budget movie, that all tug at each other, but you don't get stuff like Space Jam: A New Legacy out of nowhere, and you can't stuff theaters with one film unless you have Mouse House clout.
I just think the attempts to get 'highbrow' recognition for popcorn films (whatever #Oscars Fan Favorite was trying to be) despite all this is funny, and don't think MCU fans need to be defensive whenever someone points out their extreme cultural domination is not...good (and I say this as someone who generally enjoys the MCU).
Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 17th 2022 at 12:00:26 PM
The Oscars discussion is a demon of the Academy's own making. It's an award that simultaneously wants to have mass-market appeal while painting itself with a thin veneer of respectability, balancing each badly enough to be a detriment to both. It keeps trying to have its cake and eat it too, in essence. This movement questioning why the Oscars have a deathly fear of the MCU/superhero films in a broad sense when just as commercial films get nominated all the time is simply the logical result of this.
I'd take more the awards side if the discussion was people wanting the MCU to be at Cannes or Sundance. But it's the Oscars, and I don't particularly respect the Oscars (hard to respect any award that has "Best Film" and "Best Foreign Film" while trying to represent global cinema).
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Disney have too much clout is not the same thing as 'cultural decline' or in fact the MCU having 'extreme cultural domination'.
Cinematic movies are not the only form of culture and Disney and Marvel has plenty of combination both in cinemas and in streaming services with all the movies and series; Netflix, Amazon Prime and every other service going.
People have been complaining about low brown films and franchises/sequels/remakes since the year dot. Cinema's still here and it's still coming out with plenty of new stuff. (And of course the effect of franchise has been amplified by Co Vid and cinema closures, no doubt.)
What Sync is saying is that the overwhelming monopoly of Disney (and Warner) tentpole films is pushing out independent films further and further away from commercial film markets, and thus leading to a domino effect of hurting their profitability, causing fewer of them to be made and ultimately hurting the diversity of films being produced. The MCU is one of those tentpole productions. This is a problem for cinema (in a physical sense) as an art experience.
Streaming is a new paradigm to be explored, but the jury's still out how much that's gonna work (Netflix itself has already announced they're gutting their "film originals" department to cut costs). Plus a lot of people don't want cinemas to become solely defined by blockbusters.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Yeah, if you aren't one of the big-budget blockbusters, it's hard out there.
Everything Everywhere All At Once came out recently and delivered the single best multiverse experience ever put to film. Blows movies like Multiverse of Madness and No Way Home out of the water. And made a reasonable profit with a 95% Freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But, statistically, most of y'all probably didn't watch it. Some of you may never have even heard of it. Those two MCU films I mentioned made a billion dollars, and Everything Everywhere didn't even hit $100 million.
It's a rough market for films that aren't part of Disney's and WB's mega-money blockbuster engines.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 17th 2022 at 12:13:55 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I've said it before but a lot of Oscar shit that *does* get nominated is usually formulaic as hell and made with the same tame, all-pleasing, populist approach that MCU movies get criticized for.
Yeah, that was the point I was making. Sometimes it feels like the Oscar board could watch two films that are exactly alike, but if one of them has a man wearing a cape, that film is getting ruled out while the other is getting nominated.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."To my understanding, with Oscars and Critical Dissonance it's a case of what might be called "selection bias". It's vaguely akin to "most writers are writers", "most critics are critics".
While a good critic is an expert on movies, the actually paints their biases a bit. Critics and the Oscar guys are generally the sorts of people who became Critics and judges or whatever at the Oscars. They might have a pretty different relationship with movies than you do.
A good metaphor I would give is something like "hardcore" vs "casual" gamers. A hardcore gamer has played a lot of video games, is often willing to sink a good chunk of time into a video game, and would care a lot more about depth than accessibility (and indeed, often hates 'hand-holding').
By contrast, a casual gamer looking for something to pass the time on a long trip or to unwind after work might care a lot more about accessibility and how easy it is to pick up and put down a game, and might never dig that deeply into the game. This is a perfectly valid relationship to have with a game, but quite different from the hardcore gamer's.
Another thing is also what might be called "Fan respectability", exclusiveness, and frankly snobbishness. There's a quote that goes "a classic is something everyone wants to have read but that nobody wants to read". Another way of wording it is that "true art has respectable consumers".
With art that's considered fancy and high class, it isn't necessarily that people like the art itself, it's that they like the kind of person who would like that work. An inversion of being Fan Hater, if you will.
Imagine, if you will, a stereotypical fan of "the classics", can quote all these great works by heart, can play all sorts of classical music by memory, and has fancy paintings in his home. This guy probably has a cool name like Sir Wolfgang Delmore, lives in some castle that's been in his family for centuries and is just an all-around cool guy. For example, Picard from Star Trek is exactly this sort of person.
This is exactly why something like superhero media and other pop-culture stuff is seldom going to reach the same level. If a work of media is liked by the general populace; or worse, liked primarily by stereotypically social awkward types or people who low class-types; it's unlikely that it'll be seen as terribly respectable.
Leviticus 19:34The thing about Oscar awards from the perspective of an actor is that it's abundantly clear which acting roles provide you with Oscars and which don't.
If you're not interested in doing character focused films that are a big distance from genre media and involves some kind of transformation of you as an actor, then you're better of doing what Sam Jack did and accept that the Oscars are an award for something you wouldn't find fun.
I also think that Oscar Bait traits have a history of encouraging Hollywood to try and monopolize depictions of minority demographics because having your famous Hollywood star portray an opressed minority is often a winner.
Sure the portrayals are often sympathetic, but it's often having people's stories being told by the Hollywood elite. The MCU meanwhile, despite perhaps being shallower in character introspection, seems more inclined to have the cast and crew match the demographics of what is depicted.
Kevin Feige Says the MCU's 'Next Saga' Will Become Clear This Summer
According to Game Rant, Feige teased the future of the MCU while doing press for Thor: Love and Thunder. "As we're nearing the end of Phase 4, I think people will start to see where this next saga is going," Feige teased. "I think there have been many clues already, that are at least apparent to me, of where this whole saga is going. But we'll be a little more direct about that in the coming months, to set a plan, so audiences who want to see the bigger picture can see a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more of the roadmap."

Honestly, this. It's an award in their primary career field. That gives it value on its own. But you didn't say it was worthless, just overrated, so I might be arguing nothing here
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you