Oscar 2013: Avenging the Marigold Kingdom
By Tom Houseman and David Mumpower
June 13, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It has come to my attention that there have been whispers across the winds of the internet that a few of the films that have already been released in theaters this year are threats to be Best Picture nominees. The films in question are The Avengers, which is currently in the process of making all the money, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, AKA British porn for old people (although I should note that my grandmother did not enjoy the film nearly as much as I did) and Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson's latest love letter to Wes Anderson. There is also some talk about Prometheus being a contender, but until we see what happens to it critically and commercially before we can start talking about it seriously.
Yes, The Avengers, Marigold Hotel, and Moonrise Kingdom are all popular with critics, and all of them are going to make money (in the case of The Avengers, all the money), but does that alone mean that we have to take them seriously as potential Best Picture nominees? Right now, if I were to make a list of the ten films most likely to be nominated for Best Picture (and at this point we have no way of knowing how many films will actually be nominated) I would not include any of those films. I am tempted to come up with a bunch of straw men arguments about why they might be nominated, just so that I can tear them down, but considering that you are from Tennessee and therefore probably spend most of your days making literal straw men, I figured I would offer you the opportunity first.
Please, David, enlighten me as to why some people think that these films are going to be in the Best Picture race at the end of the year. I am very curious to hear your reasoning, no matter how wrong I am certain it is going to be. Who knows? You might even be able to convince me about the chances of one or more of them, but, in all honesty, you almost certainly won't.
Tom Houseman, you ignorant slut
(This is a reference from before your time, by which I mean one from prior to 2008). I guess because you are barely out of diapers, you do not have the requisite attention span to follow any trend before 2011. Since I keep up with movie trending the entire year rather than just December-February like you short attention span awards trackers, I've noticed that many over-hyped November/December releases bomb while titles from the summer and earlier in the year have a tendency to hang around long enough to linger in the memory of the Academy.
I won't ask you to do research because I realize that as a child of the internet era, you only know what Google tells you to know. So, I will save you the trouble by pointing out a few films that you must have forgotten while you were busy trying to create the next great Carly Rae Jepsen viral video. What do think the grouping of The Kids Are All Right, Inception, Winter's Bone, Toy Story 3, The Hurt Locker and Up represents? Since this is a column about Academy Awards contention, one you narrowly confined to Best Picture, I will cede that you (probably) deduced that these are recent category nominees. And I don't mean ones from the Hitchcock era, either. These are all from 2009 and 2010 when you were (presumably) post-pubescent. How could you have already forgotten them?
In the digital era, a movie exists far beyond its initial release. Master manipulators (i.e. The Weinsteins) have an easier time than ever reminding the Academy how much they should enjoy releases that are more than a few weeks old. This is exactly why The Hunger Locker attained renewed interest during a timeframe wherein its primary competitor, Avatar, was still making ALL THE MONEY AND THEN SOME. It's not like voters look at the ballot and go, "Hmm, was this released after Halloween? Ooh no. Then I can't vote for it."
Why don't you reboot and offer me your specific thought process on why Exotic Avenger Kingdom (now there's an amusement park I would frequent) doesn't have a chance at Oscar glory? And can you tell me which summer blockbusters other than the afore-mentioned Prometheus you believe have a legitimate chance at joining the very long list mentioned above?
Until then, I guess I'll name my Tennessee Straw Man Sir Factsalot.Text 1-900-Facts-A-Lot to kick your nasty reply. Thus far, baby lack facts. (Ask Papa Google to explain this joke to you.)
Dear David,
I'm going to take the high road (I don't know if they have paved roads in Tennessee) and stay respectful during this conversation. I'd like to first mention that I have thoroughly enjoyed your recent pieces about the cloud, which is not, as I initially assumed, about your impending battle with dementia... because you're really old.
If you had put on your bifocals this morning you might have noticed that I am not making the claim that no movie from the first half of the year ever gets nominated for Best Picture. However, I do think it's interesting that of the movies you mentioned, Inception and The Kids are All Right were released in July, and Toy Story 3, Winter's Bone, and The Hurt Locker were released in mid-June. I hope your ignorance of these facts isn't a sign that you mixed up your medication again.
But yes, there are exceptions to the rule that films released before June have difficulty getting nominated for Best Picture, just as there are probably exceptions to the rule that everyone who lives in Tennessee is a product of incest. Films like The Hurt Locker and Winter's Bone managed to rebuild momentum at just the right time to score with the Academy, but they overcame the odds. I find it extremely difficult to believe that The Moonrise Avenging Hotel (which is what I am going to call my bed & breakfast) is going to be able to accomplish the same feat.
First I am going to summarily dismiss The Avengers, because it is about superheroes, and the Academy is far too pretentious a bunch to nominate a movie about superheroes unless it is one that is totally impossible to overlook. Yes, The Avengers has made a bajillion dollars, but so did Harry Potter 7.2. The Academy clearly found it easy to ignore The Dark Knight, and I don't hear anybody arguing that The Avengers is as good or important a film as The Dark Knight. Inception and Avatar were made by highly respected directors and were cultural phenomena. The Avengers is made by the guy who made Dollhouse and is nothing more than a really popular superhero movie. It shouldn't be in the conversation.
Now let's talk about The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which you probably know as "that movie with all those young folks in it." Marigold Hotel is an enjoyable, lighthearted, uplifting film, and the cast has quite a few Oscar nominations to their names, but it is extremely rare for these types of comedies to get nominated for Best Picture. Sometimes a film will be hugely popular and/or have the power of Weinstein behind it, but while Best Exotic is proving itself a small hit, it doesn't have the power needed to still be remembered in January. By comparison, Exotic Hotel has a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes, while The Kids are All Right has a 93%, Juno has a 94%, and Little Miss Sunshine has a 91%. Without an enormous amount of guild support (and I don't see that happening) it is impossible to consider Best Marigold a legitimate contender.
Finally, we have Moonrise Kingdom, the only film for which one could make a reasonable argument, although it still wouldn't be a very convincing one. Yes, it has gotten very good reviews, but it is still a Wes Anderson movie, and Wes Anderson's films combined have as many Oscar nominations as the residents of Tennessee combined have teeth: one. The Academy has never bought what Anderson is selling, and even people who love the film say that it is Anderson at his most Andersony. I will not rule out a nomination for Moonrise Kingdom as a possibility, especially if it turns out to be the indie hit of the summer and no other comedy is able to steal it's thunder, but right now it is a long, long shot.
This year I would be only mildly surprised if not a single film released before September was nominated for Best Picture, especially if they revert back to five nominees. Right now Prometheus is a few points behind Madagascar 3 on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not a good sign, and makes it unlikely that it can accomplish what neither Alien nor Aliens could. The Dark Knight Rises is, of course, the big question mark, because if it is even more amazing than The Dark Knight I suspect it will make a ten-nominee slot mostly out of respect, but that's still iffy. Brave looks like a very different animal from the usual Pixar fare, and therefore might not be a hit with the Academy. Still, if there are ten nominees, you can expect Brave to be one of them.
Then there are two wild cards from Oliver Stone and John Hillcoat. It's been a long time since Stone won his second Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July, and it's been two decades since he's had a film up for the big prize. John Hillcoat has made two gritty violent films, The Proposition and The Road, both of which were completely ignored by the Academy. Will the brutally violent new films of either of these directors, The Savages for Stone and Lawless for Hillcoat, earn some love? I don't see it happening.
So if you want to use your walker to hobble over to your computer and make some valid rebuttals to the points I'm making, I would love to hear them. Or you can just yell at me to get off your lawn and make some more cracks about how I'm a young whippersnapper who still has his hair and his original hip bones, feel free. Those jokes, unlike you, never get old.