It looks likeGet Out’s chances of winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards this weekend are slim, as some older Academy members have stated that they feel the horror/thriller is “not an Oscar film.” The worst part? Some of them have apparently made this declaration and haven’t even seenGet Outfor themselves. So, even though the movie beat the odds to earn fourOscar nominations this year, it looks like its odds of actually taking home any statues may be lessened for what sounds like pretty shaky reasoning.
The Academy has added quite a few new members over the past couple of years to try and diversify their voters. This was largely due to criticism theOscarsfaced with the #OscarsSoWhite campaign from a couple of years ago, when the nominees largely ignored diverse performers and movies. This year’s nominees, likeGet Out, represent diversity and different kinds of movies, but according to a new, anonymous Academy voter, some of the older members of the organization aren’t keen on Jordan Peele’s groundbreaking directorial debut. Here’s what the anonymous member had to say.
“I had multiple conversations with longtime Academy members who were like, ‘That was not an Oscar film.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s bulls***. Watch it.’ Honestly, a few of them had not even seen it and they were saying it, so dispelling that kind of thing has been super important.”
The 2018 Oscar nominees feel like a mix of old thinking and new thinking. Movies likeGet Out, which isnominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Daniel Kaluuya) and Best Original Screenplay, andThe Shape of Water, which has a great shot at winning Best Picture, feel like movies that wouldn’t have even been nominated just a few years ago. Then there are movies like Steven Spielberg’sThe PostandDunkirkthat feel very much like Oscar movies. Another anonymous Academy member discussedGet Out, saying it doesn’t really fit into any of the typical “boxes” that Academy Award-worthy movies do.What a snub.
“I thinkGet Outis a movie that we wouldn’t have necessarily thought of as an Academy movie two years ago. It doesn’t really fall into any of the boxes that we think these movies do. It came out in February, and that’s almost never worked for the Academy … it actually is provocative. It questions everything. It’s brilliant.”
Currently, it looks like a two-horse race betweenThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, MissouriandThe Shape of Waterfor Best Picture.Get Outhas a decent shot at Best Original Screenplay, but Gary Oldman pretty much has Best Actor locked down and Guillermo Del Toro is likely to take home Best Director. Still, the fact thatGet Outgot this much attention in the first place feels like abig step in the right direction. Now, if the movie can actually win a major award at the Oscars this weekend? That will truly be remarkable. Source of these quotes:Vulture.
