Tom Hanks robbed Liam Neeson of an Oscar permenantly

The Oscars always vote actors for the wrong reasons. They should only vote them because they think they gave the best performance of the year, but they often vote them for reasons that shouldn't matter. Last year, they voted Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor just because he was nominated so many times before without winning, even though his performance in The Revenant was awful.

In 1993, they voted Tom Hanks for Best Actor just because he played a character with AIDS. That's because of the screenwriter, not Tom Hanks. I feel like they would've given any other actor in that same role the Oscar, even if his performance was terrible. I've never heard anyone give genuine praise to his specific performance, only to the movie and his character.

Don't get me wrong, I think Tom Hanks gave a great performance in Philadelphia, but the script didn't call for him to do anything particularly powerful, deep, emotional, extraordinary or Oscar-worthy. All he really did was read his lines, and he read them well, but that doesn't mean he deserved the Oscar for it. Aside from giving a great performance, you should also do something extraordinary many other actors couldn't do.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Look at Liam Neeson in Schindler's List. Like Tom Hanks, he gave a great performance. But unlike Tom Hanks, he had many deep, emotional and powerful scenes that proved his capabilities as a great dramatic actor. If Philidelphia had those, and Tom Hanks did them well, he would've deserved the Oscar, but it didn't, so he didn't. Liam Neeson should've won, and if Philidelphia didn't have such a huge impact, everyone would agree, and Tom Hanks probably wouldn't have even been nominated.

And what's sad is this was probably Liam Neeson's only opportunity to win an Oscar. Tom Hanks won another Oscar the following year for Forrest Gump, which I think he deserved, and he received three other nominations. But this was Liam Neeson's only nomination, and he'll probably never receive another, especially since he's now an action hero. That would be fine if Tom Hanks actually deserved his first Oscar, but he didn't, he just won for a very superficial reason, and Liam Neeson was robbed as a result.