At the time of the nomination, there were 20 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Most Marvel fans will agree that Black Panther is somewhere in the middle quality wise, yet it's the first one to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. I would like to hear just one good argument for why this movie deserves it over all the others, and what makes it stand out.
shareSince Oscars are broken up by year, all this would technically mean in terms of the MCU is that no others were good enough to be nominated against other movies in their individual years.
shareThere is no way to defend it. It couldn't be more a political nomination if it tried, and the Academy is a farce.
The film is fairly decent as far as MCU films go. I'd rate it maybe around a 7 out of 10. In my opinion it's on par or worse than:
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Avengers Assemble
Avengers: Infinity War
Thor: Ragnarok
Doctor Strange
Spider-Man: Homecoming
There are plenty of good reasons:
Because of its racial themes / cast / crew and America's current heightened state of racial sensitivity, it’s the most likely Marvel film to win an Academy Award for the foreseeable future.
Also, Disney owns ABC, the broadcasting network of the Academy Awards, and really wants Marvel to start winning Academy Awards.
Also, Disney needs to block its streaming service rival, Netflix, from winning Best Picture with “Roma”.
If Logan wasn't nominated then this movie has no right being nominated, thats all that needs to be said.
shareThere's honestly no defending it, it was clearly a racially and politically motivated nomination. The film was straight up average, at best.
shareIt's complicated, and has to do with industry politics. You see, Marvel has made an unbelievable shit-ton of money over the last ten years, leaving everyone in Hollywood agog, including the voters of the AMPAS. Ordinarily, they'd reward such Excellence in Making Money with some major awards, but the AMPAS is extremely prejudiced against any films but realistic dramas - they are dead set against giving awards to comedies, sci-fi films, teen films, animated films, movies based on TV shows, remakes, and especially comic-book films!
But... everyone can see the end of the Marvel money train in the distance, with the "Infinity Wars" films they're going to wrap up their current series of moneymakers, and some other fad is going to come along. So they start to consider giving the Marvel people some sort of award while the show is still on, and well, if there are only a few major Marvel films coming up, which ones can they award for what? Well, there's "Infinity Wars" itself, but it's not a fantastic movie and not really comprehensible if you haven't seen all the previous films. There's the animated Spiderman film, but there's double genre prejudice there so that's not happening. And then there's "Black Panther" and "Captain Marvel", which break the color barrier and the woman barrier, respectively, and, well, "Black Panther" is a good movie that everyone enjoyed.
So it got nominated for Best Picture, which is as much recognition as the AMPAS is willing to give a comic book movie.
The movie is diverse?
That beats quality and skill today.
Do you know how many more intelligent and qualified people were passed on for jobs because they needed the work place more diverse.
So sometimes managment says skill doesnt Matter. We need a person of color and these business choose solely based on skin color.
1. It made black people feel good about themselves because they got a superhero movie featuring pretty much only their own race.
2. It made dopey limousine liberals feel good about themselves for making black people feel good about themselves.
3. The Academy feared charges of racism if they didn't nominate it.