All About Oscar: Categorically Speaking
Will The Academy Ever Recognize These New Categories?
By Tom Houseman
April 11, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Since then, several categories have come and gone, including awards for supporting actors, documentaries, film editing, sound mixing, and music composition. The last category to be created was Best Animated Film, which rang in the new millennium by ensuring there would always be an Oscar for Pixar if it made a movie better than Cars 2. Fast forward to today, and the Academy has shown no inclination towards adding any new categories, although considering how secretive they are it is possible that several categories have been given consideration. In public, at least, the Academy has been content to expand categories, with Best Picture, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects all adding spots to their list in recent years.
But that does not mean that there are not categories that Oscar fans want the Academy to add. There are quite a few, each with arguments for and against their inclusion in future Oscar ceremonies. Below I have listed the five most interesting and most legitimate categories that might be considered. I also list films that I think would have been nominated last year if the Academy had chosen to accept these categories and why, in all honesty, none of these categories will ever show up at the Oscars. I guess my point that this is a purely hypothetical exercise with no relevance to the real world, but then, couldn't you say the same thing about the Oscars?
Best Stunt Choreography
The Argument For It: For well over a decade there has been a strong push on behalf of stunt choreographers to get their work recognized by the Academy. And their demand for recognition seems completely legitimate. The purpose of the Oscars is to represent the various aspects of filmmaking that work in concert to create great movies, from art direction to sound mixing to music. For some films, the composition of the fight sequences is as complex and artistic as the composition of their score. Stunt choreographers are artists, and anybody who saw The Raid witnessed the incredible work that a great stunt choreographer can create.
Looking at this category from a different perspective, the types of films that would get nominated are the big budget action movies that rarely get nominated for many Oscars. The more Oscar attention they get, the more likely people are to tune in and watch the show.
Last Year's Likely Nominees: Of course, the more prestigious films would still have an edge here because, come on, it's the Oscars. Two Best Picture nominees from last year would be very likely to have their presence felt: War Horse and Hugo. Still, the big budget films would be able to give them a run for their money, with Captain America, Fast Five, Sherlock Holmes 2, and especially Mission: Impossible 4 all being contenders.
It is likely that Academy would eschew effects-driven films here as a way to prove that there is still respect for movies that don't rely on CGI. I suspect that Hanna, Drive, and Colombiana would all be considered, although they would be dark horses. In the end it would probably be a race between Hugo and M:I 4, and it could go either way.
Why It Will Probably Never Happen: “The types of films that would get nominated are the big budget action movies” is one of the main reasons why the Academy has been so unwilling to create this new category. You might not have realized this, but the Academy can be a bit on the pretentious side when it comes to what movies they choose to award. While they are already embarrassed enough that movies like Click, Norbit, and Transformers will always be remembered as Oscar nominees, they probably don't want to compound the problem by giving movies like Fast 5 a better chance of getting a nomination.
Yes, there is definitely a bias against stunt choreographers, for a number of reasons, none of them terribly valid. While every movie has a cinematographer and a sound mixer, most prestige films don't have much in the way of stunts, while a lot of trashy action movies do. And you know that if The King's Speech can't even be considered for an award, that award is probably not going to ever be taken seriously. Let's just be happy that Visual Effects is around to represent the blockbusters and not press our luck.
Best Ensemble Cast
The Argument For It: Some movies are defined by one or two characters and one or two great performances. Everybody else sort of fades into the background and Daniel Day Lewis (because this is true of every movie he has been in) is the only one worth paying attention to. But some movies create rich worlds in which there are a dozen or more interesting characters played by actors who give memorable performances. Some of these characters are only in a scene or two, and thus their parts aren't juicy enough or feature enough crying to merit Oscar consideration.
But if there a way to reward the entire cast of a film, or at least the six to twelve most notable actors, it would solve this problem. The Screen Actor's Guild already does this, handing out a Best Performance By a Cast award as their version of Best Picture. There have even been three years where the winning cast had no individual nominees in the other categories (Slumdog Millionaire, Return of the King, The Full Monty).
Last Year's Likely Nominees: It is is safe to say that, like with the other acting categories, Oscar and SAG would match three or four out of five nominees. It is virtually certain that The Help, The Artist, The Descendants, and Midnight in Paris would all have been nominated. The only question mark is Bridesmaids. It would have faced tough competition from films that the Academy clearly liked more than the SAG did, including War Horse, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Hugo, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Margin Call would have also been in play as spoilers. I am sure that the winner would have either been The Help or The Artist, with the latter probably edging out the former for the win, giving it one more Oscar to hang on its mantle.
Why It Will Probably Never Happen: The term “Oscar winner” carries an incredible amount of weight, especially for actors, where the award is often considered the crowning achievement of a career. Part of the reason the title is taken so seriously is because only four people win an acting Oscar every year, which keeps the list of previous Oscar winners very small. What would happen if that number were tripled or quadrupled? We would be living in a world in which, sure, Meryl Streep has an Oscar, but so do Mena Suvari, Topher Grace, Ryan Phillippe, Lucy Liu, Orlando Bloom, and Brendan Fraser. You would have to always refer to him as “Oscar winner” Brendan Fraser!
Other than Freida Pinto and Dev Patel, you would be hard pressed to recognize or even pronounce the names of the 11 actors who won SAG awards for being part of the cast of Slumdog Millionaire. But if there was an Oscar category for ensembles then all of them would be Oscar winners. It would severely dilute the prestige of having won an Oscar, which is why the award is never going to be added.
Best Voice/Motion Capture Performance
The Argument For It: Animated feature films have been relevant to American culture since 1938 when Walt Disney made Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and won an honorary Oscar (as well as seven tiny Oscars to go with it) for his contribution to film history. But never has an actor been considered for an Oscar for a voice performance. While it is understandable that voice actors are barred from the acting categories - voice acting is an entirely different type of performance from traditional film acting - it does not make sense that there has never been a category reserved for voice performance. Phil Harris (Baloo in The Jungle Book), Robin Williams (Genie in Aladdin), Jeremy Irons (Scar in The Lion King) and Ellen Degeneres (Dory in Finding Nemo) all gave memorable and iconic voice performances and deserve Oscar recognition.
In recent years a different aspect of this argument has become more relevant, as new technology has made motion capture performances more prevalent in movies. Andy Serkis is the poster child of this revolution, having given extraordinary performances in The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Yet, because you never actually see him on film he was not eligible for acting nominations. If the Academy refuses to allow motion capture performances to be considered for the acting categories they should at least give this type of performance its own category in which to be considered.
Last Year's Likely Nominees: Obviously Andy Serkis would have shown up in this category last year, but for which role? Given the Academy's preference for flamboyance over subtlety, I suspect that his ostentatious performance as Captain Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin would have won out over his mostly silent but far more powerful performance as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. There are not many other memorable motion capture performances from 2011, but it is possible that Mark Strong (Sinestro in The Green Lantern) would have been considered.
From the more traditional animated films, strong contenders would have been Johnny Depp as the title character in the Best Animated Feature winner Rango, Michael Caine or (shudder) Larry the Cable Guy in Cars 2, Antonio Banderas in Puss in Boots, and James McAvoy in Arthur Christmas. Would this category be split by gender as the other categories are? If so it would open up opportunities for Anne Hathaway in Rio, Selma Hayek in Puss in Boots, Angelina Jolie in Kung Fu Panda 2, and either Isla Fisher or Abigail Breslin in Rango. The actor I would champion in this category would be Jim Cummings, who is famous among voice actors but unknown outside of that circle. Last year he was phenomenal as Tigger in Winnie the Pooh and as Featherstone in Gnomeo and Juliet.
Why It Will Probably Never Happen: Notice how I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with a list of credible contenders for this award? Some years there is a bevy of great voice performances and motion capture performances, but other years the pickings are slim. Is it worth being able to give Andy Serkis an Oscar if it means there are years when Larry the Cable Guy is seen as having a realistic chance to be nominated for an Academy Award?
From a different perspective, we've been getting the sense that the old fogies of the Academy aren't too fond of motion capture. The impression is that actors consider motion capture a threat to traditional acting and animators consider it a threat to traditional animation and CGI, which is why Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, and The Adventures of Tintin were all snubbed for a Best Animated Feature nomination. With that much animosity towards this new technology, there is little chance of a new category rewarding it being added unless it has saturated the market to such an extent that it cannot be ignored, which won't happen any time soon.
Best Soundtrack
The Argument For It: There are two awards already dedicated to music in film: the conservative but pretty good Best Original Score and the lately terrible Best Original Song. But these are both very specific awards that ignore an enormous amount of the music used in films. What about collections of songs written for movies, such as Eddie Vedder's songs for the Into the Wild Soundtrack? What about adapted scores, such as Clint Mansell's adaptation of the music of Swan Lake for Black Swan or Carter Burwell's use of Protestant hymns in True Grit? What about the eclectic appropriation of found music that define the films of Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson?
There is as much artistry in finding and placing the perfect music for a film as there is in composing it. We at BOP realize that, which is why we have a specific category for Best Use of Music. If the Academy is really interested in rewarding all of the different aspects of the film industry, they should consider all of the music that is used to create great films, not just original film scores and specific original scores.
Last Year's Likely Nominees: There is no precursor for this award so it is difficult to say which direction the Academy would lean. The two frontrunners would likely be the two films nominated for Best Original Song, The Muppets and Rio. There are a few other musicals that would be considered, notably Winnie the Pooh. There are also several films that use older songs and music for their score, from Drive to Gnomeo and Juliet to Sucker Punch to We Need to Talk About Kevin. But really the Academy could go in any direction with that category, which makes the concept of adding it to the Oscars even more exciting.
Why It Will Probably Never Happen: Because it's too weird, I guess? There are a number of issues that one could take with this category. There are different cinematography styles, of course, and different types of filmmaking techniques (i.e. film vs. digital) but all cinematography is pretty much the same, and can be judged on similar standards. But how can you get a group of thousands of people to agree on what makes a great soundtrack? How can you reasonably compare a soundtrack of original songs to a soundtrack of appropriated songs to a soundtrack of just music?
And who would the Oscar go to? With Best Original Score there is a composer, but with Best Soundtrack? Would an Oscar for The Muppets go to Bret McKenzie, the Music Supervisor who wrote some of the songs? What about the people who wrote the rest of the songs, or composer Christophe Beck? And what about if Inglourious Basterds won for its curated pastiche of musical homages? Would the Oscar go to Music Supervisor Mary Ramos or to director Quentin Tarantino? Generally, both of these issues point to the fact that it is far too vague a category to merit Oscar consideration, even if it means that great soundtracks never get recognition from the Academy.
Best Comedy
The Argument For It: You might not know this, but the Academy has a reputation for treating comedies like they're smelly hobos asking for change on the subway. Basically, they put on their headphones, keep their heads down, and avoid looking at them at all costs. The accuracy of that broad generalization aside, it is true that the popular comedies loved by fans and worshipped on the internet typically only score token Oscars, usually for their supporting actors or their screenplays. Bridesmaids is a perfect example, as are Tropic Thunder and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. And no matter how much people loved The Hangover, it was never going to get a Best Picture nomination.
So why not solve this problem by diving Best Picture into comedy and drama like they do at the Golden Globes. You'd still be able to award the artsy pretentious dramas while giving some room for mainstream comedies to take home some gold. Plus, the inclusion of popular comedies would certainly boost the show's ratings, so everybody wins, right?
Last Year's Likely Nominees: Assuming that the films are classified the same way they were at the Globes, dramedies Hugo, The Descendants, and Moneyball would all be classified as dramas. That means that The Artist and Midnight in Paris would be the frontrunners for Best Comedy. Bridesmaids had a surprising amount of support, and would likely join them. Last year was a bad year for popular comedies, and I can't imagine Bad Teacher or Horrible Bosses being nominated. It is likely that indie comedies 50/50, Win-Win, Carnage, and Beginners would fight it out, with more mainstream films like The Muppets and Crazy, Stupid, Love serving as spoilers. My Week with Marilyn would also be a contender.
Why It Will Hopefully Never Happen: There is a certain beauty and simplicity in the Academy declaring “of every movie released this year, we declare this one to be The Best Picture.” No matter how wrong they are, it is at least a definitive statement, and that film will always be known as the film that the Academy declared the best. Taking that away would significantly water down the meaning of Best Picture if the Academy started saying “well, this is the best drama, and this is the best comedy.” True, it would clear some recent uproars over The Artist beating Hugo and Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan, but that's part of the fun of the Oscar race. The wonderful purity of a single Best Picture is what makes the Oscars the Oscars, and I would never want that to change.
What about you? Do you think any of these categories definitely should or shouldn't be recognized by the Oscars? What about other awards given out by other groups, from the Saturn Award's Best Action Film to the MTV Movie Awards Best Lip Lock to the Cannes Film Festival's Palm Dog? Which of those should the Academy embrace?