All About Oscar: Inception
Who Incepted Voters to Snub Inception's Film Editing?
By Tom Houseman
March 7, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But are we done thinking and talking about the Oscars? Of course not! That's a year-round event, whether it's looking backward or looking forward (there is no such thing as the present when it comes to the Oscars; everything has either already happened or is going to) there is always something to talk about. Recently a reader sent me a question about one of the stranger nomination snubs of the last couple of years. It was something everyone was talking about when it happened, and nobody was able to explain. I do my best.
“How was Inception NOT nominated for Best Editing?! I am a bit of a movie geek so I look for or notice things that most movie goers probably wouldn't and the way Inception was put together and all the different threads, strands, and layers tie together at the end I thought was really impressive and deserved a win or at least a nomination. When the nominations came out that year and I saw it wasn't even nominated I was dumbstruck. What the hell happened there? Why wasn't it at least nominated? Any ideas?”
Man, I am as baffled as you are. On paper, Inception seems like the perfect Best Film Editing nominee. It's a big Hollywood blockbuster that still holds onto its gravitas, and when films pull off that combination they tend to get nominated. District 9, The Dark Knight, The Bourne Ultimatum, Gladiator, and The Matrix were all nominated for Best Film Editing, even though only two of those were nominated for Best Picture. I think people thought of Inception as a contender to steal the Best Film Editing Oscar from The Social Network.
It's important to remember that this category, more than any other except for Best Director, matches up with Best Picture. 2010 was the third year in a row that all five Best Film Editing nominees were also Best Picture nominees (this year broke the trend when Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could not be denied, winning the Oscar over The Artist and Hugo). Especially since the Best Picture category has expanded, this category has gotten more competitive, since there are more films making a claim in this category.
Obviously the main precursor for this Oscar is the ACE Eddie award, since the Guild is always the most important thing to look at when trying to figure out what was going to be nominated. Sometimes the Eddie matches up perfectly with Oscar; in 2007 and 2008, all five of the Best Editing-Drama nominees scored Oscar nominations. But in both 2006 and 2009 the two categories only matched three out of five. The Queen, Casino Royale, Star Trek, and Up in the Air were snubbed in favor of Blood Diamond, Children of Men, Inglourious Basterds, and Precious. Notice that that is a mix of both big budget action and smaller drama. It is very rare for comedies to get nominated for Best Film Editing. Before The Artist, the last film nominated for both the Best Editing-Musical/Comedy Eddie and the Oscar was Walk the Line, which isn't really a musical or a comedy, but that's a different issue altogether.
So when looking at the films in the running for Best Film Editing in 2010, the potential nominees were the five Eddie Drama nominees, as well as a couple of dramatic Best Picture nominees. Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The King's Speech, The Social Network, plus 127 Hours, True Grit, and Winter's Bone. The King's Speech and The Social Network, as Best Picture frontrunners, were both guaranteed spots, which meant there were six films fighting for three spots.
The Coens do not have a good track record in this category. The only times they have been nominated for Best Film Editing (using their nom de edit Roderick Jayne) were for their biggest hits, Fargo and No Country for Old Men. True Grit had not achieved that level of popularity, which meant it was at a disadvantage. If you're going to get a Film Editing nomination without an Eddie nom in your pocket, you need a strong argument, and neither True Grit or Winter's Bone had that.
On the other hand, 127 Hours did. Its editing is very memorable, mostly because Danny Boyle's films are very stylized. The film jumped through time and combined a variety of different kinds of shots (dream sequences, shots taken from a video camera) to tell the story. Editor Jon Harris had never been nominated for an Oscar before, and 127 Hours was his first collaboration with Boyle, but he had worked with Mathew Vaughan multiple times before (including on Kick-Ass, which was also released that year).
So if you're asking me why voters didn't put Inception on their ballots, I don't have an answer for you. It's baffling. In my mind Inception had the second best editing of any film from 2010, with only Black Swan beating it out. Why the editors decided that that was the film to leave out, instead of The Fighter, I can't explain. But clearly several voters made a conscious decision to vote for 127 Hours instead of Inception, and I can certainly understand why 127 Hours got votes. Danny Boyle's directorial style is somewhat polarizing, but people who love it will fall for the cinematography and the editing every time.
Sometimes these snubs happen and they don't make sense. Voters love what they love. Sometimes the choices are representative of the Academy as a whole, such as when their snub of Up in the Air was a harbinger of Precious beating it for Best Adapted Screenplay. Sometimes it's not, though, as Inception still did pretty well for itself at the Oscars. I only expected it to win Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects, but it also took Cinematography and Sound Mixing. It is unlikely that it would have also taken Best Film Editing had it been nominated, as that award was reserved for The Social Network. I guess all we can do in the case of such a snub is to look back, shake our heads in confusion, and hope that The Dark Knight Rises fares better.
Do you have a question about the Oscars? Want to know why your favorite film got snubbed (it's probably because your favorite film is Operation Dumbo Drop) or what the difference is between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing (the second one involves less mixing)? Submit your question via BOP Feedback and I will try to get to them.