Is There Another Bias Going On At The Oscars?

Last year’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy finally started a widespread discussion about the racial and gender bias that has been going on for far too long in movies and media. While The Academy (and Hollywood in general) still has a long way to go to achieve racial and gender equality in the movie industry, many of this year’s nominees do indicate a step in the right direction.

But much more capable writers than I have covered this bias, so I’m here to discuss one that’s far less consequential: in a recent interview with The Daily Beast, James Cameron complained that the Oscars are biased against big-budget movies. He went even further in expressing his disdain for The Academy, painting them as a pretentious institution out of touch with the general movie-watching population.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t look to the director of Titanic, Avatar, and The Terminator for my impartial takes on anti-blockbuster bias. So let’s find out: are the Oscars really unfair to big-budget movies?

What does The Academy set out to achieve?

The closest thing to a mission statement for The Academy reads “We recognize and uphold excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences, inspire imagination, and connect the world through the medium of motion pictures.”

This presents The Academy with the unenviable task of balancing “recognizing excellence” and “connecting the world.” In other words, not only do they need to reward the most excellent movies every year, they need to take into account how many people have seen it. No matter how good a movie is, it can’t “connect the world” if no one sees it.

Let’s put it this way: say Moonlight wins best picture this year. There’s a case to be made that it is the best film of the nominees, and it certainly connects with people on a very meaningful level. But at the end of the day, not many people saw it. Would The Academy really be “connecting the world” through cinema if it chose a film that made less than $16 million at the box office?

But this is all theoretical speculation based on over-analyzing a snippet on The Academy’s “About” webpage. If that’s not convincing enough for you, consider this: The Academy wants lots of people to watch the Oscars. If they repeatedly reward films that not many people have seen, not many people will watch. When it comes down to dollars and cents, it is clearly in The Academy’s interest to take a movie’s popularity into account.

So why don’t more blockbusters win Oscars?

The Academy is certainly willing to reward big-budget movies if they are very good (remember that just in the last three years, Mad Max: Fury Road had ten nominations and six wins, and Gravity had ten nominations and seven wins).

The problem is that there are very many good big-budget movies, but not so many great ones. In the past several years, most of the biggest-budget films have been superhero movies, Star Wars movies, Pirates of the Caribbean movies, or Hobbit movies. Mostly good movies – but also mostly sequels and prequels, where the already-captive audience removes a great deal of the financial risk involved.

When a studio pours hundreds of millions of dollars into a movie, they’re looking for a guaranteed return on investment. They don’t want to take risks or take nuanced stances on divisive issues; they just want to appeal to as many people as possible so that lots of people buy their movie tickets (this desire to appeal to everyone manifests itself in the racial and gender bias we are finally starting to confront). The problem is, taking a few risks is usually necessary to make a truly great movie with a shot at an Oscar. In short, a preoccupation with being good prevents most blockbusters from being great.

Smaller-budget movies have somewhat different motivations. Of course they’d still like to make money, but a flop for a smaller budget movie means a loss of a few million dollars instead of a hundred million. This allows for smaller movies to really take risks and put themselves out there (think Swiss Army Man, The Lobster, et cetera). Often, these risks don’t pay off and we’re left with a messy, forgettable movie. But when these big risks do pay off – that’s when we get something great.

So usually, each year we get a few good blockbusters and a few great smaller-budget movies. And when we do get a great big-budget movie, the Academy does not shy away from rewarding it. We already covered Gravity and Mad Max, but there’s also Inception, The Return of the King, Gladiator… the list goes on. A memorable snub here or there (like The Dark Knight not receiving a Best Picture nomination in 2009) does not indicate systematic bias.

Should The Academy change their criteria to accommodate the casual moviegoer?

Big-budget movies these days are made to do one thing: make lots of money. Sure, they have a vested interest in being good, so that future movies that take place in the same universe will – you guessed it – make lots of money.

By that measure, most blockbusters are doing just fine. Marvel movies and Star Wars movies are generating unbelievable box office returns; even the lackluster DC superhero movies are turning huge profits. They’re doing exactly what they’re designed to do. There’s nothing wrong with this; you just can’t expect these generally safe, big-budget movies to win more Oscars than movies that are more willing to take risks and be unique.

So for me, the answer’s a pretty hard no, The Academy should not change their criteria to accommodate the casual moviegoer. Take a look at the GRAMMY awards, which have basically turned into a popularity contest: Macklemore’s The Heist beat Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, mA.A.d city for Best Rap Album in 2014. Meghan Trainor won Best New Artist in 2015. If the Oscars go down that path, we’ll have The Avengers and Star Wars winning every Academy Award for the near future. And no one wants that.

In my opinion, The Academy has done a perfectly serviceable job of balancing smaller budget films with hugely popular blockbusters. And if Disney and DC really cared about winning some Oscars, they’d give their directors some more creative freedom and take some more risks. But they’re not willing to tolerate the flops that would accompany the Oscar winners.

But that’s enough from me – is there really an Oscar bias against big-budget movies? Does James Cameron really think Avatar should have won best picture? Let us know in the comments!