The Academy Awards – as they do every year – just tumbled down upon our heads like a basket of wet laundry, and now all we can do it comb the hair out of our eyes, mop up the dampness, and sort through the old socks for recognizable trends. The big winners this year were Spotlight (which, perhaps unexpectedly, won Best Picture), multiple wins for Mad Max: Fury Road including Best Costumes, and, most hearteningly, Ex Machina for Best Special Effects.
The most notable absence from this list is, of course, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams’ boffo supra-blockbuster was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Score, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing. It won none. While the quality and artistic merits of The Force Awakens can be debated, it’s not an enormous leap of logic to assume The Academy would want to give some notable honor to what has become the most popular film of the year. It’s been said that the Oscars are a popularity contest, so why not honor Star Wars?
Also: Oscars 2016 | The 5 Biggest Surprises
I think it has to be said: Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn’t win multiple Oscars because, well, it’s just not that deep. Oh sure, it’s a rollicking adventure film, and the myriad fans of the series found it to be a nostalgic salve, especially after the poor reception gathered by the Star Wars films of the early 2000s. But, at the end of the day, Star Wars was thematically flimsy and dramatically unambitious.
A24
Let’s put Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ex Machina next to one another. We see one pop entertainment, and one complex, heady essay. One ride and one thesis.
Ex Machina is a complex examination of the way humans relate to technology. It’s about how we determine artificial intelligence, and whether or not building AI is a noble goal. It’s about the way we perceive ourselves. And, more than anything, it’s an underhanded jab at misogynist thinking. You can bet that a story of two men trying to create a robot of the perfect women is most certainly going to be about gender politics. The conclusion arrived at by Ex Machina regarding the male ego, and about how tech and misogyny are weirdly linked, are timely, salient, and clearly thought out. Ex Machina will start conversations. It’s about something.
Disney
Looking at Star Wars: The Force Awakens reveals very little. Like many movies, The Force Awakens is not a film about its themes, but a film about its plot. It’s about story beats and what the characters go through. There is no message under the actions. The best themes I could come up with were a few obvious allusions to family, to legacy, and – to make a leap – how the family unit is doomed in this universe; sons are destined to defy their fathers. The biggest questions in Star Wars are about whether or not you’re going to imitate your parents. These may be relevant to real life, but the themes are vaguely and perfunctorily explored. It’s just a little extra tidbit of actual substance in a pile of opulence.
Ultimately, though, it’s not those themes of legacy and family that people are going to take away from The Force Awakens. The real function of the film was to link up with a previously beloved film. Many of the emotions evoked were grandfathered in from whatever good will you have toward the Star Wars movies in general. The Force Awakens cannot exist in a vacuum. It’s most important themes lie in its very sequel-hood. It may have new characters, but those characters are merely a comment on older ones. The Force Awakens is, then, a movie about other movies. It doesn’t link directly to the grander notion of cinema. It has other Star Wars movies as intermediaries.
A24
Ex Machina is a well-written, striking, original drama that comments on real issues. The Force Awakens is a super-slick and perfectly exciting adventure fantasy that is doomed to comment on the Star Wars series and nothing else. I suppose the real difference is this: One film seeks to stimulate the mind with new ideas and intriguing themes. The other sought to deliver an adrenaline rush. I appreciate a good adrenaline rush, but it doesn’t take much to get one. It’s a worthy goal, but not a very sophisticated one.
So when Ex Machina is honored by awards, it is deserving. When Star Wars, meanwhile, gets nothing, it is equally deserving. Besides, Star Wars is one of the most popular things ever. It doesn’t need Oscars. It’s already here to stay.
Top Image: Disney
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. He also contributes to Legion of Leia and to Blumhouse. You can follow him on “The Twitter” at@WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
8 Actors Who Won An Oscar For The Wrong Film:
8 Actors Who Won The Wrong Oscar
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Leonardo DiCaprio
Won: Best Actor, The Revenant
Should Have Won: Best Actor, The Wolf of Wall Street
Leonardo DiCaprio's icy endurance test will forever be remembered as the film that won him an Oscar, not as his best work. For that, turn to Martin Scorsese's ebullient and damning recollection of 1980s excess, with a performance by DiCaprio that is equal parts horrifying and hilarious.
Photo: 20th Century Fox
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Meryl Streep
Won: Best Actress, The Iron Lady
Should Have Won: Best Supporting Actress, Adaptation
To be fair, Streep had already won two Academy Awards, but her win for The Iron Lady was her first Oscar in 29 years, and she had been nominated 13 times in the interim. Sadly, her turn as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is one of her worst films from those three decades. Adaptation, on the other hand, gave her one of the most remarkable roles of her career, and is still celebrated almost 15 years later while The Iron Lady, less than five years later, has been all but completely forgotten.
Photo: The Weinstein Company
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Colin Firth
Won: Best Actor, The King's Speech
Should Have Won: Best Actor, A Single Man
Colin Firth gave a perfectly respectable performance as the stammering King George VI, but it's such an unremarkable film that his win can't help but play like an apology. The year prior, Firth gave one of the best performances of the decade in the insightful character study A Single Man.
Photo: The Weinstein Company
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Kate Winslet
Won: Best Actress, The Reader
Should Have Won: Best Actress, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Best Supporting Actress, Sense and Sensibility
After nearly 15 years of Oscar-worthy performances, the Academy finally gave Kate Winslet a trophy... for one of her worst films. Her iconic turns in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility and Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine should have already made her an Oscar-winner twice over.
Photo: The Weinstein Company
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Morgan Freeman
Won: Best Supporting Actor, Million Dollar Baby
Should Have Won: Best Actor, The Shawshank Redemption
One of the most respected actors of his generation, Freeman only received an Academy Award for an unremarkable supporting turn in Clint Eastwood's once-popular, now mostly disregarded boxing drama. And yet his Oscar-nominated turn in The Shawshank Redemption, a modern classic, remains one of his greatest performances.
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures
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Russell Crowe
Won: Best Actor, Gladiator
Should Have Won: Best Actor, The Insider
Russell Crowe was in the middle of an epic streak at the turn of the century, starring in one great film after another. And yet while Gladiator may be a solid flick, it's a generic action hero performance from Crowe, who did more nuanced and impressive work in Michael Mann's cigarette company exposé The Insider just one year earlier.
Photo: Dreamworks Pictures
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Judi Dench
Won: Best Supporting Actress, Shakespeare in Love
Should Have Won: Best Actress, Mrs. Brown
Dame Judi Dench's win for Shakespeare in Love is considered one of the funniest jokes in Oscar history. She's barely in the movie and has very little to do or say when she does appear on camera. It seems to be yet another apology: her incredible performance as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown was nominated, but not rewarded the year before.
Photo: Miramax Films
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Al Pacino
Won: Best Actor, Scent of a Woman
Should Have Won: Best Actor, Serpico and Best Actor, The Godfather Part II
Al Pacino, one of the most celebrated actors in history, only has one Oscar, and it's for... well, not his WORST movie, but easily his most mockable. His mannered performance in Scent of a Woman comes complete with a quirky catchphrase ("HOO-ha!"), and pales in comparison to many of his great performances, particularly from the early 1970s, when he did some of the best acting of his career or anybody else's.
Photo: Universal Pictures
