With all of the focus on diversity at this year’s Oscars, one group has gone ignored and unnoticed. Science fiction fans. The few science fiction films that have ever been nominated for Best Picture Oscars lost to more artsy films and were isolated to tech categories praising their special effects and sound. (Annie Hall vs. Star Wars in 1977) LOTR: Return of the King is the closest we’ve ever come and, well, obviously science fiction and fantasy are two different things, but it was a monumental win for what my mother calls “silly stuff”.
District 9 should have won in 2009. Gravity almost doesn’t count as sci-fi because it’s too real world. Yes, there are some things in that movie that no one could actually do in space, but if impossible stunts qualify a film as science fiction, Fast and Furious is science fiction. Either way, Gravity didn’t win Best Picture.
Well, there are two science fiction films nominated for Best Picture this year. And the Oscar goes to… (yes, I wrote this first part before I knew who won)
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwdCIpbTN5g[/embedyt]
Far be it from me to be mad at an exposé about systemic child abuse in the world’s largest professed Christian religion. Haven’t seen it yet, but I plan to, as religious history is an interest of mine and Boston is semi-local to me here in Rhode Island. Did anybody expect Mark Ruffalo to Hulk out while watching his impassioned speech at the end of this trailer?
Seriously, as awesome as The Martian and Mad Max may have been, I don’t mind science fiction films losing out to films with such powerful real world messages like this or 12 Years a Slave. You know, why? Because there are far more oppressed minorities in the world than science fiction geeks, as evidenced by two of the last three Best Picture winners that we’ve seen at the Oscars, both of which have something to do with oppressed groups (abuse victims/slaves). It would have been nice to see Ex Machina get nominated, robots have it BAD!
It was nice to see former Batman, Michael Keaton play an actor who used to play a superhero who dresses up like something that can fly in last year’s Best Picture win Birdman. For sci-fi/comic book geeks, that’s something. Besides, we always have the MTV Movie Awards.
What do you think? What science fiction films for next year do you think have a shot at winning Best Picture at the Oscars? Ready Payer One? Rogue One? Something else with the word ‘one’ in the title? Let me know in the comments section below.
