Lord of the Greenbacks
I was wrong. I said two months ago that The Return of the King didn’t stand a chance in the Best Picture race, but the third Lord of the Rings film took home the Best Picture trophy. The fantasy film also won an award for each nomination as it became one of only three films to win 11 Academy Awards, the most in Oscar history. After a week’s worth of contemplation, I’m willing to say the film deserved its awards, just as much as any other Oscar-winning epic. For the Academy, a billion dollar film and Hollywood’s golden god was a match made in heaven.
The union of a popcorn blockbuster and the elusive Oscar is easily acceptable considering their special night was the most commercialized Oscar ceremony in history. While only Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson overtly advertised their film Starsky and Hutch, other stars from Jennifer Garner to Julianne Moore were treated more like guests on The Tonight Show than Oscar presenters.
Blame it on declining ratings. That’s what show producer Joe Roth will do, but the thought of Will Farrell and Jack Black presenting together only for comic relief, instead of advertising forAnchorman and Envy, respectively, is something I’ll question until next year’s ceremony.
When you look at the money, it’s really no wonder that “The Return of the King,” the second film in history to gross over one billion dollars worldwide, stole the show. It’s hard to ignore a billion dollars in Hollywood, even if the guy who directed the cinematic spectacular also made the morbid Muppet-parody Meet the Feebles. The truth is if The Lord of the Rings wasn’t a blockbuster, if it merely made a half billion dollars over the run of the entire trilogy, Peter Jackson would have three nomination certificates instead of three Oscars.
I don’t want to undercut the achievement of completing the trilogy. A project like The Lord of the Rings will likely never happen again, but I stand by my reviews when I say these films weren’t good enough to be taken as seriously as they have been. Fans were blinded by their utter devotion to J.R.R. Tolkien or the fantasy genre or the mindless spectacle. As for the Academy, it focused on the cash. Cash was also the reason Johnny Depp was nominated for The Pirates of the Caribbean and the reason Finding Nemo took the trophy for Best Animated Feature.
When great cinematic achievements are mixed with a $300 million domestic gross, the truly exceptional achievements are overlooked. The cash-over-quality phenomenon is something most independent or foreign language film fans have become used to during the past 15 years, but now even studio masterpieces that bring under $100 million can’t compete with the flashy billion dollar blockbusters that other studios are releasing.
The trend isn’t completely new. Gladiator took in $187 million domestically on its way to being crowned the Academy’s Best Picture of 2000. Its only challenger was the foreign language filmCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was nominated for Best Picture only after it proved to be a profitable film. Even Mel Gibson’s Braveheart didn’t have to come close to $100 million in order to steal the Oscar from four superior candidates.
Chicago, Best Picture of 2002, was well on its way to $150 million when it won Best Picture (it eventually took $170 million) and Universal’s 2001 Best Picture winner A Beautiful Mind had $154 million in the bank when it won the Oscar. Both films did beat out the first two installments of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but neither The Fellowship of the Rings or The Two Towerswas the billion dollar juggernaut that eventually brought home the gold for the fantasy epic.
Some people might now claim that the arrogant Academy is simply over its contempt for the eccentric fantasy genre, but not every fantasy film is worth a billion bucks. What the Academy is over is its willingness to give a film that takes in less than $100 million domestically the Oscar for Best Picture. Just think, if the same commercialized Academy that voted for King was voting back in 1994, Spielberg’s $96 million-grossing masterpiece Schindler’s List may have seen its Best Picture trophy walk away with the $184 million nominee, The Fugitive.
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