Five Biggest Academy Awards Mistakes Of All Time

The Academy Awards are this Sunday, and by Monday morning I’m sure we’ll all be debating the pros and cons of the awards given. That’s sort of a fact of life about the Oscars—every year people are upset that their favorite movie was snubbed or not awarded. Usually this sort of talk has died down within a week or so. Sometimes, however, mistakes are so baffling that they’re worth discussing for years or even decades after the awards were given. The history of Hollywood’s most prestigious event offers up plenty of examples of this very phenomenon, but some are more grievous than others. In preparation for this week’s ceremony, we take a look back in time at some of the biggest screw ups the Academy has ever committed.

WHAT WON (1994):

Forrest Gump:

Forrest Gump is like a box of chocolates: it sounds like a great idea at the time, but if you think about it even a little bit then you see that it’s kind of a thoughtless gift and it makes you feel like shit if you take in too much at once. This movie bored me in 1994 and it angers me today. What is it that we’re supposed to get from it? I think they’re trying to tell us that any of us can achieve whatever we want, despite the odds against us, if we work hard and have a good attitude. Or maybe it’s don’t judge a book by its cover? Most likely, though, it’s that American audiences are more interested in nostalgia-laced revisionist histories that don’t do anything but skim the surface of the realities of tumultuous times than they are in actually good movies. Let’s call Forrest Gump what it is: white-washed pap that so defies logic or reason that it’s better suited to be labeled fantasy than drama. It’s a terrible movie based on a terrible book, but at least the book features a trip into space, a NASA-trained chimpanzee, and an adventure involving cannibals in the jungle.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON:

Literally anything else nominated that year

Think I’m being hyperbolic? Let me hit you with this list: Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Quiz Show, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. If any of these movies were nominated in any other year, they all would have won Best Picture. In fact, all of them have more lasting appeal and brought more to the cinematic table than Gump ever could. Even Four Weddings and a Funeral, the weakest of the non-Forrest movies nominated, proved that it was possible to make a romantic comedy that elevated the form. I submit to you that Forrest Gump doesn’t even deserve to be named among these movies, unless you happen to be discussing movies that were released in 1994. Though, in that case, it’s worth noting that 1994 also saw the release of Street Fighter and the Pauly Shore “classic” In the Army Now. Both of those movies may have been objectively god awful, but unlike Gump they didn’t have the audacity to pretend that they weren’t.

WHAT WON (2005):

Crash:

I count this as the biggest mistake the academy ever made. I’m not even sure why it was nominated, to be honest. This trite, contrived, and heavy-handed film can be summed up by saying “racism, like, totally exists and that’s, like, way bad or whatever.” Try as it might to make us take a serious look at the problems with race in America, this Paul Haggis helmed piece of filler falls mostly flat. Admittedly, there are some stellar performances here: Don Cheadle puts in some serious work (as he always does) and even Ludacris does well in his first dramatic role. Not even Sandra Bullock’s widely acclaimed performance (which clocked less than ten minutes of screen time) could save this movie from being too preachy and too dull for its own good. While I admit that the state of race relations in America is a topic more than worthy of serious discussion and serious art, Crash ultimately fails to add anything to either.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON:

Brokeback Mountain:

It seems as though everything Ang Lee touches is a masterpiece (well, except for Hulk, although if you got me drunk enough I could probably make a good argument for that as well) and this was no exception. Featuring amazing performances from Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain was more than just a love-story about gay cowboys. It was a meditation on prejudice and self-repression, a warning about the ever-looming dangers of homophobia, and an exploration of the power of love. It’s telling that Brokeback Mountain’s acclaim and renown has done nothing but grow in the decade since its release, and that Crash has all but faded from memory.

WHAT WON (2000):

Gladiator

The Academy loves sweeping epics and period pieces and this Russell Crowe vehicle certainly fits those bills. From that perspective, I suppose I see what they were thinking when they awarded this film their highest honor. On the other hand, it’s a bland story that’s been told in one form or another countless times throughout history and really doesn’t add much to, well, anything. Oh sure, ancient Rome has never looked better on the big screen, and certainly some amount of acclaim is deserved for the work put into the making things look right. Though it’s celebrated as an example of the advancements of digital imaging, it can just as easily be used to show examples of limitations. For every shot of the Coliseum returned to its ancient glory, there’s a shot like those damn tigers. You know the ones I’m talking about; the ones that looked so painfully fake that it ripped you away from the suspense of the scene by reminding you that no one was ever actually in real danger. So maybe on second thought, it’s not even worth the acclaim it gets for that. Gladiator is just the latest in a long line of gladiatorial films that all seem content to copy each other rather than show us anything new. Yes, it might have looked somewhat better than the films of yesterday, but nothing new was achieved.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON:

Traffic

Steven Soderbergh is capable of sheer genius when he puts his mind to it and Traffic might just be his masterwork. It was one of the first films to truly master the art of the digital camera and absolutely gives the audience a sense of being there. This is a film that works on every level. As an exploration of the pros and cons of the war on drugs it’s at least as good as any documentary on the subject. As an examination of humans doing what humans do, it was as powerful as any work of art has ever been. As a look inside the causes and effects of drug addiction, it was as moving as anything. As a film, it was beautifully constructed, shot, and edited. Every scene is a work of art unto itself and its trio of tales unfolds beautifully. This is a movie that takes no sides and lets the audience reach the conclusions that it will. There’s no right way to view it, there’s no wrong way to view it. It is, in a sense, a work of fictional journalism, with Soderbergh’s voice remaining shockingly detached. Gladiator was fun and everything, but Traffic is a remarkable work worthy of acclaim and dissection.

WHAT WON (1976):

Rocky

Confession time: I’ve never been able to sit through Rocky in one sitting. Every time I’ve tried, I’ve either fallen asleep or gotten bored and wandered off. The one time I managed to watch Rocky in its entirety, it took me three days to do it, and I only managed to do that so that I would have the right to rip it apart should I ever need to. Lucky for me, that day has finally come. Rocky is boring, trite, predictable, and dumb. It’s a meathead movie about a meathead guy who does meathead things. Rocky Balboa is a mediocre boxer who catapults to the height of fame by punching outside of his class. How is it inspiring? I suppose it’s admirable that he refused to give up, but so what? I’m all for dreaming big, but in this case “dreaming big” seems to be a stand-in for “being content to relish in your own mediocrity.” Admittedly, Rocky wanted to be the best mediocre he could possibly be, but again I ask: So what? I know, I know. He wasn’t supposed to win. That was the whole point. But I fail to see anything inspiring about that. There’s a fine line between heroic and stupid and Rocky Balboa never manages to cross the line into heroic. He’s just stupid.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON:

All the President’s Men

This was another one of those years where any other movie that was nominated could have—should have—won. On top of All the President’s Men, you had Network, Taxi Driver, and the Woody Guthrie biopic Bound for Glory. It’s probably only my bias as a journalist that makes me so reverent of All the President’s Men, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was brilliant. This is a film that can be studied by students of journalism, politics, and filmmaking alike, and each student would take something completely different, but just as important, away from their viewing. It turned the art of journalism and the act of reporting into an espionage thriller and, for the first time, offered a glimpse of what a reporter goes through in order to write an important story. I suppose it’s possible that the Academy—and the nation—was just burnt out on all things Nixon and Watergate at this point, making them less inclined to vote for this look behind Woodward and Bernstein’s curtain, but the fact that it lost to Rocky instead of Taxi Driver or Network is an injustice.

WHAT WON (1998):

Shakespeare in Love

Honestly, I can’t even begin to postulate what the Academy was thinking with this award. Shakespeare in Love is a decent enough movie, if not overly saccharine, but Best Picture material? Hardly. I guess it was cute how they used the plot—which was not at all based in fact, despite featuring characters based on real people—to suggest Shakespeare’s works. It was sort of like Shakespeare’s greatest hits; a show medley, if you will. It also featured a couple of stand-out performances (Ben Affleck, in particular, was praiseworthy) and, yes, the writing was sort of clever. Really though, there’s nothing particularly standout about this movie and isn’t really well remembered now that time has passed. Chalk it up to the love of period pieces? That’s the only thing that makes any sense about this win, in retrospect. Shakespeare in Love was and remains positively unremarkable in every conceivable way. It is, at best, a sort of clever romantic comedy that just happens to be about a fictionalized version of William Shakespeare. And, really, awarding anything associated with Shakespeare an Academy Award feels all at once overt and predictable.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE WON:

Saving Private Ryan

Another hard call here; in addition to Saving Private Ryan, there was Life is Beautiful, The Thin Red Line, and Elizabeth. I could make an argument that any of those movies were better overall than Saving Private Ryan except, to this day, I’ve never seen a sequence of film so raw, so moving, so real as that opening D-Day scene. Veterans watching the film broke down in tears and had to leave the theater due to the lifelike and no-holds-barred depiction of that fateful day. True, The Thin Red Line may have been a better look at the visceral nature of war and Life is Beautiful may have been a more powerful look at the horror of the holocaust, but Saving Private Ryan has a way of sticking with you. Never before had audiences been so close to the frontlines than they were during this film. Featuring an incredible cast, who all give standout performances, Saving Private Ryan is truly one of those once in a generation films that showcases the power of filmmaking as a narrative form. It also has the distinction of being Steven Spielberg’s last great film (though we can always hope for another) and more firmly cemented his reputation as one of the greatest of all time (not that he needed it at that point, but hey, we could all use a little resume bolster every now and again, no matter how good it already looks.)