Avatar failed to win Best Picture, and as I said elsewhere, I didn't think it deserved to win. Technically it was great, but the acting was good, not great, but the story had absolutely no originality to it at all..IMO, outside of the "avatar" aspect of the movie. The message of the movie, the oh so predictable ending, and its mirroring of several Native American 'themed' movies, all kept it from winning, IMO. Of all the movies that came close to winning BEST PICTURE, from the world of scifi, I think to this day it should have been Star Wars. It was the Avatar of its time, and ushered in the modern era of scifi movies. It was, as they say, a game changer more so, IMO, than Avatar claims to be now. If not star wars, what scifi movie do you think should have won best picture, and was highly thought of to even have been considered (as Star Wars and Avatar were) when it was eligble for the award? Rob
2001: A Space Odyssey E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Brazil Planet Of The Apes (1968) Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth) King Kong (1933) The Dark Knight The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) The Right Stuff Alien Spider-Man II Dark City The Matrix
Definitely should have been Star Wars. It was a great film, it made lots of money, it wasn't the Avatar of its time, it was far beyond Avatar. I'll reserve judgment on whether District 9 should have won until I check out The Hurt Locker in the next couple of days, but I definitely think it would have been more deserving than Avatar.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country deserved to be at least nominated. The five nominees that year were The Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, and The Prince of Tides. I think TUC was much better than either Bugsy or The Prince of Tides.
OOh I second Close Encounters of the Third Kind!That thing felt so real, if you know what I mean. What happened to that Spielberg? (Well, it seems like he flips a coin for how he's going to direct, of course Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan were made by that good ol' Spielberg.
When Avatar 3 comes out. They'll probably pull a ROTK and give Cameron all of the awards for the last one.
I have no idea. Probably eventually; if Return of the King could do it... Heck for all we know the first sci-fi film to win best picture will be the Avatar sequel (provided it's good, makes a bundle, and after two megahits the Academy feels Cameron is now again due.) Stay tuned. Aside from Star Wars (and District 9, if we're counting) have any other sci-fi films been nominated for best picture?
After ploughing through the list on Wikipedia I was able to come up with E.T. which was nominated in 1982 and that's it. I didn't realise that 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn't even nominated. So, the total list of Science Fiction (not Fantasy, Horror or "supernatural") films nominated at 82 ceremonies for Best Picture consists of: Star Wars (1977) E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) Avatar (2009) District 9 (2009) Yes, four Science Fiction films. Despite the fact that Science Fiction utterly and totally dominates the top 100 highest grossing films of all time.
^You're forgetting that there's a ginormous disconnect between what the "unwashed masses" watch and what Hollywood votes for on the evening where they pat themselves on the back. Even when some of those top-grossing films really are deserving. Star Wars is the only one I really have a beef with; as good as E.T. was, Gandhi was better. Funny this thread should have popped up; a friend of mine posted this link to her Facebook status: We pick the winners: 81 years of sci-fi Oscars I think most of the article is bollocks (Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars deserves Best Picture of 1938? ), but some of the films they highlight really would have been deserving (specifically, The Day the Earth Stood Still and 2001)
Great list..I thought DARK CITY should have at least been nominated..Ebert thought it was the best movie of the year, when it came out, and I, to this day, find it better than Matrix, which came out the next year I think. Rob
I believe that revolutionary films should be honoured. The age old Star Wars vs Annie Hall debate will rage forever, but Annie Hall did not change the way films are made. Star Wars changed the entire movie industry. For the most part, I'm not even asking for winners, just nominations. Four in 82 years is not good enough. There are other populist genres that get much more recognition but deserve it a lot less - romantic comedies immediately spring to mind.
Although I agree with you on your assessment of Avatar, based on the same criteria Star Wars A New Hope can't be considered either, because once again it was a case of style over substance. Just as Avatar was a hodge-podge of different plots from other movies, ANH was acknowledged from day 1 as being virtually a remake of Seven Samurai and other "group going on a mission" films. A game-changer, yes, but not original by any means. And even the biggest fans of the film have to agree that the acting wasn't exactly stellar, either. I will agree that 2001 deserved to win. It had a challenging, hard-SF storyline, naturalistic performances (in an era where that sort of performing on camera was just coming into vogue), and was the Avatar of its day for special effects (in fact wasn't the infamous sequence at the end originally to have been in 3-D?). Plus it had the imagination of Arthur C Clarke augmenting that of Kubrick. I might also go with Empire Strikes Back. While it stems from A New Hope, it took things in a new direction, the performances were stronger across the board, and it improved upon things that hampered Lucas in the first film because of budgets and technology. And Return of the King's win not to mention Godfather II showed a sequel wouldn't be disqualified. Another film I think deserved consideration was Forbidden Planet. Although it DEFINITELY wasn't an original story (being based upon Shakespeare's The Tempest) it nonetheless was a film of a type that moviegoers in the early 1950s had not seen in years -- a serious science fiction film that was not aimed at children and thrill-seekers. Yeah, it had comic relief characters and Robby the Robot, but it was still the Battlestar Galactica of its day (it and Rocketship XM which shocked the heck out of me when I first saw it). Alex
If I were to pick one I think should have won, 2001 basically tops that list. I mean, besides being an amazing, landmark sci-fi film, it lost to Oliver!... yeah. Hidden Fortress, actually, but close enough.
Forbidden Planet, ET, 2001, Gattaca, Children of Men-all great films. And what about the love for Wrath of Khan? I'm not saying an Oscar but a nomination would have been nice...