You may or may not have heard the story, but thanks to a nice old puff piece on Deadline.com by Pete Hammond, an obvious bit of awards-season news has been confirmed: Walt Disney Studios is dedicated to blanketing Los Angeles with For Your Consideration ads for Toy Story 3. The logic behind the idea makes sense--here we have what is likely going to be the highest-grossing film of 2010, one of the best-reviewed films of the year (and depending on what you read, it's the highest-reviewed film of the year), and the final chapter in what is arguably one of the best film trilogies ever. So far, so good, yes? Because of this story, some awards pundits have taken to analyzing whether or not this plan is actually going to bear fruit.
Before I go further, I'll make this clear: I love Toy Story 3. I love Pixar movies. I will be so thrilled if Toy Story 3 wins the Best Picture award (the first that would go to Walt Disney Pictures, actually). Since we're not actually talking on Oscar night, I can't say it definitively, but to say Toy Story 3 winning Best Picture is doubtful is something of an understatement. The most important reason isn't that there are equally strong contenders; there are, including The Social Network, The King's Speech, and Inception. No, the reason is bias. Even before they had a category to use as evidence, a vocal group of pundits and voters don't want to side with animation at the Academy Awards.
Remember, only one animated film got nominated for Best Picture prior to the inception of the Best Animated Feature category--Beauty and the Beast--and Disney animation hadn't been slouching beforehand. So what pisses me off about the bias? It's the idea that animation could be--GASP!--as good as, if not better than, live-action movies. See, to some folks, live-action movies are always going to be the best, no matter what. I was set off today by a post on Awards Daily that basically scoffs at the notion of Toy Story 3 being victorious for a number of ridiculous reasons, and a bare minimum of discussion about those reasons that spell doom for the film's chances. Instead of discussing the bias against animation, specifically among the actors' branch (short explanation: actors don't appear in animated movies, so they wouldn't be predisposed to vote for such films), the post itself is biased.
Among the arguments against Toy Story 3 winning are that it's not as good as Ratatouille or WALL-E. Whether or not this is true is superfluous, first because a film's quality is opinion, not fact. It's an idiotic reason because, as you may have noted, Toy Story 3 was released in 2010, while Rataouille came out in 2007 and WALL-E came out in 2008. Thus, these films are not competing. If anything, Toy Story 3 is potentially squaring off with How To Train Your Dragon, an equally lauded animated film from 2010. But no, what matters is that other Pixar movies were great, so Toy Story 3 flops. The article then states that if Toy Story 3 won, it would degrade the film (which is interesting, because usually a Best Picture Oscar does, you know, the opposite, what with it being the BEST PICTURE OSCAR), and that it would be an embarrassing Oscar decision.
The main issue I have here is that people who have no voice or vote seem to think that their opinions are right, because...well, look, it just is, OK? They've been around the block, they know these things, and you should just shut up. Clearly, these people know what they're talking about. What really frustrates me is that the discussion should be about the bias. Let's not discuss whether Toy Story 3 has a chance or not. Let's discuss why it may be doomed even though it may have enough quality to merit the top honor. The people who vote for the Oscars are allowed to be biased, even if those biases speak against them, such as when some notable older voters didn't vote for Brokeback Mountain because it was about gay people. But there's room for a discussion, as opposed to what amounts to a condescending tsking.
See, at times like these, I wonder what the point is of caring about something so trivial. Now, I love TV and movies, and discussions about them, and all of these things are inherently trivial. But the awards-season chatter has become navel-gazing, and it's annoying because I'm tired of looking at these people's navels, especially when it turns out that all of their concern trolling and whining amounts to nothing. If there has become such a thing as hot, dead air on the Internet, look no further than the awards circuit.
Yeah, saying TS3 isn't BP material because it's inferior to other Pixar films in other years is completely bogus. I'm one of those who doesn't think it has a chance (though I'll publicly and gladly eat crow if I'm wrong), but we should be talking about why the most successful and among the most critically acclaimed movies of the year isn't being taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteI think it has a lot to do with there being a separate animation category. It automatically marginalizes animated movies as though they're somehow different from movies that happen to be live action. On the other hand, the animation category opens up the field to films that might not in other years get any recognition at all.
In a perfect world, there's no distinction and films of quality get through on their merits regardless of how they were made, but that'll probably never happen.