Oh what the hell, Academy!?

24Jan09

In recent history, the Academy has been… very disappointing with their ability to give awards to films that truly deserve it. It’s even worse when movies that deserve nominations are completely ignored. Case in point: The Dark Knight.

The Joker is not pleased.

The only big nomination the film received was Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger. Seriously? [/end pun] While yes, Ledger is completely deserving of the nomination (and Golden Globe win), the thing about the film is that while it is a Batman film — the Joker kinda stole the show. I mean face it, the point of the comic book hero are the villains they face. Without them, then there is no point or use for the heroes.

Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker was brilliant. Villains are more complex to play than heroes, and Ledger nailed it! He was frightening, but is still somehow able to bring a sort of dark humor that the Joker is known for. Some actors let themselves show through and thus not being fully “in character,” but Ledger fully immersed himself into the role. He took measures such as living in a hotel for a month to get the feeling of complete isolation and keeping a journal to help him connect with his character. Very few actors are willing to take measures that far for their job.

The film didn’t get nominated for Best Picture, which I think is bullcrap. The only other film that really deserves the nomination is Slumdog Millionaire. Both TDK and Slumdog share something that the other nominees don’t have. An original and complex plots that portrays the human psyche at its most ugliest.

In the case of TDK, award shows in general have yet to take the comic book genre seriously. Since the reboot of the Batman film franchise, it ushered a new era of the genre. None of the type of superhero movies of the past where the plots and writing were subpar and just did it to milk the franchise for all its worth. [Cough]Superman[/cough]. The stories are becoming more serious and complex. Yet, award shows can’t seem to understand this yet. TDK is a new type of superhero film where the hero of the story does not completely prevail by the end of the film.

Another surprising thing was that Christopher Nolan wasn’t nominated for Best Director! The man is brilliant! If it wasn’t for him, then the Batman films wouldn’t have been rebooted into the awesome glory it has today. Instead we would still be recovering from the Schumacher disasters. Nolan was able to bring a type of Batman that was only really known in the original comics, and he did so successfully and made the true Batman popular to audiences. Face it, after the Schumacher films came out the popularity of Batman kinda dropped… a lot.

It’s too late to really change the Academy’s mind about this. I am happy that Slumdog did receive ten nominations including Best Picture and Director, and hopefully win in those categories. I really hope the Academy doesn’t screw that up, since they have a tendency to give awards to films that lean more towards feel-good fluff than films that reveal something more ugly about human nature. Although since it did win Best Picture in the Golden Globes that maybe it’ll give it the momentum it needs for the Oscars.

Also very disappointed with the Academy for not nominating any of the actors in Slumdog as well.

FAIL!

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Tags: award shows, Batman, Christopher Nolan, Danny Boyle, Heath Ledger, Oscars, rants, Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The Academy Awards, The Dark Knight (2008)