Should Oscars Add A Best Action Movie Category?

Year after year, people anxiously await the Academy Awards nominations hoping one of their [...]

Oscars Best Action Movie

Year after year, people anxiously await the Academy Awards nominations hoping one of their favorite movies is nominated. More often than not, people are usually disappointed that their favorite is overlooked and that the majority of nominees wind up being movies that they haven't seen and sometimes have never even heard of. Of all the movies nominated for a Best Picture for the 85th Academy Awards, Lincoln was the highest grossing, and Lincoln finished 2012 in seventeenth place at the box office. Meaning the sixteen most popular films of the year were shut out of the Best Picture category at the Academy Awards. With this huge disconnect between the movies that people are actually going to see and the movies that get Best Picture nominations, one has to wonder who is going to tune in to watch the Academy Awards recognize a movie that they probably haven't even seen. Of course, if the Academy Awards did fill the Best Picture nominations with blockbuster movies, then they would probably come under criticism that they were just pandering to the public and not recognizing truly artistic movies. What is the solution? Well, a couple years back the Academy expanded the Best Picture category in hopes that it might allow room for some of the more popular movies among the public to be nominated. Did it work? Not hardly, when you consider the fact that the top sixteen movies of 2012 at the box office were completely overlooked this year. All expanding the Best Picture category has accomplished is increasing the number of artistic films that are nominated. And it's not like the Academy doesn't want the ratings. The 85th Academy Awards will have a special tribute to James Bond, even though the James Bond blockbuster Skyfall failed to garner a Best Picture nomination. It's kind of like the Academy is saying "we're going to spotlight a movie series that the public actually watches so they will tune in to see us recognize movies they haven't seen."  We're fully expecting that the Academy will do a special tribute to Batman movies next. Maybe it's time for the Academy to consider expanding its category rather than expanding the number of nominations in a category. Many of the other awards shows have a category for Best Action Movie. Why do they have a Best Action Movie category? So that people will tune in to see their favorite win something that is sort of close to Best Picture. Isn't it time that the Academy follows suit? Just think, by luring the public in with a Best Action Movie category , then viewers might also get exposed to all the artistic films in the Best Picture category that the Academy is intent on recognizing.

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