The 2018 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Movie
2018 is now coming to its close, which means the entire year in entertainment is now being [...]
2018 is now coming to its close, which means the entire year in entertainment is now being quantified and tallied into "best of" end of year lists. Here at ComicBook.com, we've put together the third installment of the Golden Issue Awards, our in-house awards ceremony to honor the best and brightest moments in geek culture during the year.
This year, the Golden Issue Award for Best Movie brought us into serious debate about what constitutes "best" in the ever-evolving landscape of genre fare, and whether there were any big pop-culture movies that aren't based on comic books, but had nonetheless earned the right to receive a Golden Issue nomination. It took Tom Cruise nearly killing himself doing fight and aerial stunts to get Mission: Impossible - Fallout onto our list, but it couldn't outdo the fantastical grandeur that the comic book genre managed to convey to the screen. Sequels like Ant-Man and the Wasp and Deadpool 2 really stepped up their game the second time out, and any other year that might've been good enough. In 2018, however, Marvel Studios dropped not one but two new groundbreaking films that became billion dollar-plus phenomenon. Black Panther opened up a whole new world of the MCU up to fans, but even that was a smaller achievement than what Marvel pulled off for its biggest victory yet.
And the winner of Best Movie is...
Infinity War was the culmination of an entire decade of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, bringing together no less than 10 separate franchises into one cohesive shared story for the very first time. It was the boldest attempt at synergistic development that the movie business has ever seen, and it (literally) paid off spectacularly. Avengers: Infinity War walked away from the worldwide box office with $2 billion in tow, and left a gauntlet-sized fist print on the landscape of pop culture.
Even as we hand out this award proudly, the memes of Josh Brolin's Thanos or the deadly "Snap" effect of the Infinity Gauntlet are still being rolled out all over the Internet. More than anything else, Avengers: Infinity War set the stage for Avengers: Endgame to follow it and quite possibly become the most popular and profitable movie of 2019. It had such deep impact to go along with the grand spectacle that we're never going to be truly healed until Endgame can finally set things right.
List of Nominees:
- Avengers: Infinity War [WINNER]
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Black Panther
- Deadpool 2
- Mission: Impossible - Fallout