Quick Thoughts on Best Achievement in Popular Film Oscar (or: End of Days)

You probably heard. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in its endlessly infinite (infinitely endless?) wisdom, decreed yesterday that it would be adding a new category to the 2019 Oscar ceremony to honor achievement in popular film. (It also announced that the 2019 Oscar ceremony telecast would, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, run three hours. Las Vegas promptly caught on fire from everyone calling in to place bets on the over.) The blowback, as any marketing sage not employed by the motion picture industry could have told you, was something fierce. This news was ridiculed as a desperate ratings ploy, an attempt to ward off the pop cultural embarrassment of the beloved “Black Panther” failing to land a Best Picture nod, an inadvertent in-advance slight to “Black Panther” as not being worthy of the Best Picture category’s presumed art, or a mixture of all three. The announcement was such a fiasco that, like someone writing an in-depth article that went through multiple editors still prompting the writer to pen a clarifying article about the first article, the Academy was compelled to release a follow-up statement clarifying that movies could be eligible for both Best Picture and Best Popular Picture

None of this, however, means anything, not really, because as of this point we do not even know the Academy’s criteria for what constitutes a “popular” film. And that, as it had absolutely had to, is what got Cinema Romantico to thinking.

Possible Criteria for Best Achievement in Popular Film Oscar 

1.) Box Office. Bo-ring.

2.) Rotten Tomatoes scores. Perhaps only movies that earn so-called fresh scores on Rotten Tomatoes can be considered eligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film. This might be an intriguing possibility, except that, as everyone knows, “nobody cares” about the critics.

3.) Rotten Rotten Tomatoes scores. If “nobody cares” about the critics then maybe bad Rotten Tomatoes scores should be the signifier of what is popular. Except “Black Panther” scores a 97% which would make it ineligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film and so we are back to square one.

4.) Budget. Maybe only movies with budgets north of $100 million should be eligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film since nothing screams Populist like blowing $258 million on “Spider-Man 3.”

5.) Presence of Fantastic Beasts. Maybe only movies that have Fantastic Beasts should be eligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film. The problem then, however, is defining “Fantastic Beasts.” Do they have to be mythical? Do cloned dinosaurs count? Should it even be Fantastic Beasts? Should the lone qualification just be CGI? Your movie must have CGI to be considered “popular”? Or should it be robots? Or explosions?

6.) Maybe movies with quote-unquote Kitchen Sinks are automatically ineligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film?

6B.) Maybe any conceptual connection to Mumblecore renders a movie as automatically ineligible for Best Achievement in Popular Film? (Does that mean A Greta Gerwig Film cannot be nominated for Best Achievement in Popular Film? If not, Best Achievement in Popular Film is stupid.)

7.) Maybe Best Achievement in Popular Film should not have anything to do with the movies themselves? Have we not reached a point where a movie’s rendering is essentially irrelevant in terms of its popularity? Isn’t the ultimate signifier of 2018 popularity GIFs? Should Best Achievement in Popular Film strictly correlate with Best Achievement in Social Media Cinematic GIF? Does this mean “Mamma Mia 2! Here We Go Again” is destined to win Best Popular Film?

8.) Maybe we should just open up the Best Achievement in Popular Film to a Twitter poll?

8A.) Maybe President Donald T*ump can be the Twitter arbiter of Best Achievement in Popular Film since nobody has the pulse of the full populace like His Spray Tan. “Nobody cares about the Oscars anymore. Movies aren’t for People. I liked GOTTI! Won’t Win!”

9.) The sport of college football employs a 13 person selection committee to determine its four-team playoff so perhaps Hollywood can employ its own selection committee to determine the nominees for Best Achievement in Popular Film. I know, I know, you’re thinking that such a committee, one no doubt composed of so many snobbish left coast cosmopolitan elites, will counteract the notion of what is truly popular. But that is why the Best Achievement in Popular Film Selection committee will be chaired by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Problem solved.

10.) Maybe at next year’s ceremony during the newly traditional segment in which Jimmy Kimmel trots a bunch of unsuspecting regular, everyday rubes who think they are seeing a sneak peek in front of the camera, the regular, everyday rubes can, on the spot, in front of the camera, nominate and choose the winner for Best Achievement in Popular Film?