Infinity Wars had a very easy to follow plot. Perhaps you missed it.
I watch independent movies all the time, though not usually in theatres anymore. How do you even compare say, Little Miss Sunshine with Infinity Wars? Both good, but different. How about Justice League and Tusk? Both terrible but different.
I would like mention that this will be named by me as the “Disney Award for the Best Marvel Movie” in all future discussions.
They do make very entertaining movies. Credit where credit is due. Can’t say the same for WB, imo.
I can’t believe people are still trying to float the left-wing theory for why it’s unpopular. People will watch what’s really good, no matter what. I didn’t want to watch 13 Hours because I thought it would just be a thinly veiled action screed, but my trusted friend said to watch it and I did. And I loved it for the same reason he recommended it. Because it’s good.
The Oscars are not good. This is not because of politics, so please. This is because of two basic things. Simply: Platform and Distribution.
[SIDE NOTE: I stopped watching because I got sick of seeing speeches cut off. So their idea of having the speeches go on during commercials…meh. The greatest drama in the show was the speeches for me. I’d rather hear an editor talk for a couple of minutes to thank people for something he’s worked on for years, then hand the mic over to his colleague to hear him talk for a couple minutes too. That is moving and dramatic to me. Worrying that the first editor might take too much of his allotted time because he has never spoken in public before and then hand the mic over to the other person who gets cut off before he can say word one is not drama to me. It is suspense. And I don’t want that. I want the human drama. I’d rather hear a sound designer thank his mentor than watch a dopey Jim Carrey skit or some dumb musical number. I was done with those after Elliott Smith played “Miss Misery” in 1998 alone on the stage. It was sad and beautiful and I think I was done after that. They waste so much time with so much bullshit “entertainment” during the telecast that these little adjustments are pointless. Point is, there are people watching for various things like music numbers, people watching for some montage action, people watching for speeches, people watching for trainwrecks…there’s too many things to track to make these adjustments useful or meaningful at all.]
As for platform, until The Academy (said in Eddie Izzard “The City” voice when he performed in San Francisco for “Dress to Kill”) gets hip to the idea that movies are now not just things that have to be released in Los Angeles for two token weeks, but things that can appear on Netflix and HBO and Amazon Prime and wherever, they’re just going to become increasingly irrelevant. I like the idea of protecting the movies as an experience. Just don’t expect it to be an extravaganza anymore. Go ahead and protect cinema as a theater experience. Fine with me. But turning it into the MTV Awards isn’t going to help if you decide you’re going to sit in the corner and pout about how the platform structure has utterly changed.
BTW, if you cannot face the fact that TV shows on those platforms, released all at once, are essentially long movies (“Barry” and “Killing Eve”…I’m looking at you)…and better than many movies at that…then I don’t know what to tell you.
As for distribution, uh, unless you’re somebody with the sports-recording/spoiler-averse gene, you can just look up the winners as the show goes. Chances are you’re getting alerts on your phone as the show progresses anyway. So why bother watching anymore for the suspense of who is going to win? Other than the odd moment of seeing Bonnie and Clyde accidentally give the award to the wrong movie, what’s in it for those people?
Seems to me some idiot exec finally watched the first season of American Idol and said, “Hey! I have an idea!”
Good for you. Welcome to 2002.
-xtien
P.S. Sorry that’s so long. I used to be really passionate about this show. For twenty years I ran my own alternate Oscars contest and would mail out ballots to fifty or so friends. Then I just got sick of the way the show devolved.
I agree with the rest of your post, and how there are main reasons for the decline in the Oscars, but you really have no idea how execrable the politics of Hollywood has become to large swaths of the populace if you genuinely believe the statement above.
The movies favored by the academy, and the presentation of the awards themselves, are just non-stop inane, heavy-handed lectures and childish polemics.
Agree with you @ChristienMurawski, but this is so true. Half the movie-going audience doesn’t agree with the lectures’ content, and the vast majoity find the lecturing unentertaining.
I mean this…this was the good old days, quaint and the exception (which also meant it wasn’t drowned out by noise and resonated far and wide). Now it’s half the show.
http://movieboozer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/sacheen-littlefeather-oscars.gif
Anytime politics becomes a front and center part of any entertainment, be it the movies or football, you can expect some sort of fan alienation.
I speak from personal experience. I was raised very conservative, and my folks still are very conservative, and very smart people. I loved watching the Oscars when I was a conservative. I just tuned that crap out. They never watched the Oscars, or at least barely paid attention when I was watching. They could not have cared less. But it doesn’t stop them from complaining about the left-wing politics of a show they do not watch and never cared for at all. Weirdly enough, my mom kind of hate-watched for a while to see what dopey thing Susan Sarandon might say about Iraq or whatever.
I respect this, Navaronegun. I really do. But the thing is, I don’t think this “half the movie-going audience” argument holds any water as a reason for ratings decline. I would wager that most of the movie-going audience doesn’t watch the Oscars anyway, and never did, because more than half the movie-going audience would rather be watching a movie than watching an awards show about the movies.
As I stated above, I can watch a movie or TV show if it has a message I disagree with if it is a well produced piece of work. I’m secure enough to do that. I was when I was a conservative. And I can also now that I’m more liberal.
That said, I do get a little antsy when we get political on the podcast, as you can hear, but people who like the show seem to weather it with equanimity. I’m sure we’ve lost listeners because of that, as I’m sure the Oscars have lost some viewers because it burns their eyeballs to see Michael Moore get on stage. But this “half the movie-going audience” thing is an exaggeration. With respect.
I think it’s an easy and glib argument to say that a show’s politics disagreeing with "half’ of the country is the reason for its steady decline. I’m not saying y’all are wrong about the politics of the show, I’m just saying that has far, far less to do with the ratings tanking.
-xtien
Half the movie-going audience doesn’t watch films that deserve the (headline grabbing) Oscars. Hell, most years 95% don’t. Not that the Academy awards the Oscars to those films either, but still. It’s not a popularity contest (apart from this new award, apparently).
If they really want to shake things up, one thing they need to get ahead of all the other major film awards. As it is right now, there are very few surprises, especially in the acting categories. Between SAG and BAFTA and, hell, even the Independent Spirit Award the night before the Oscars, all the surprise has been wiped out. At that point, the Oscar show is just a coronation. It’s boooooooring.
Back in the day, you could hear the audible shock of the audience when acting favorites were upset.
We agree here. The fact that the lecturing is yawn-inducing entertainment, was really my point. Boring usually doesn’t bode well for ratings. :)
P.S. No amused reaction to the gif of Sacheen Littlefeather??? C’mon, that is some Oscar history I laid down there!
The funnt thing is, Netflix and other streaming services have made the movie going experience, and therefore the marketing muscle behind it, and therefore the Academy, much less relevant. They still all have power, but it’s diminishing by the quarter.
I get my movie recommendatuoms not from commercials or critics anymore, but from, in ascensing order of importance:
Forums
Friends
And most importantly…
“Recently added” and “recommended” lists on the services themselves.
It makes me too sad to think about what Marlon Brando did to himself. That doesn’t stop me from appreciating this of course:
-xtien
I swallowed a bug.
I prefer the original:
-xtien
It’s pretty hard to look at the list of best picture nominees over the past few decades and conclude that the nominated movies can all best be described as ‘inane, heavy-handed lectures and childish polemics’.
Do you mean these? Which ones are childish polemics or heavy-handed lectures or inane?
The Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Get Out
The Phantom Thread
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Bridge of Spies
The Big Short
Mad Max Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
(I’ve dropped a few from the list on the grounds that maybe you would think they were polemics. I don’t think they were, but I’m trying to be reasonable by granting that.)
Cruise is cocky enough to believe he will live forever (or The Surpreme Being or Ron Hubbard’s ghost will save him if anything goes wrong).
The inimitable @Kelly_Wand once provided us this wisdom:
“No one ever wins for what they should. No one ever goes nude when they should. Everyone spends their lives loving and hating the wrong people. That’s what the Oscars remind us.”
This is a tangent, but I found this video about the Oscars and winning interesting. Not sure how accurate it is, but at least it is slightly humorous