Black Panther Has Changed The Superhero Game
As of the writing of this piece, the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made close to $728m worldwide in just under two weeks. It’s received near universal acclaim, landing a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%. Ryan Coogler’s masterful adaptation of the Black Panther character isn’t just a critical and commercial smash hit: It’s a cultural moment whose influence will be felt long after the movie has left multiplexes. It doesn’t seem unfeasible that such a film, so beloved and impactful, may stick around long enough to garner some legitimate awards love come the end of 2018. As early as it may seem for us to even be talking about this, the chances are that the executives at Disney have been asking themselves the same question. Why not push Black Panther as a genuine Oscar contender?
The long-accepted status quo of the Academy Awards is that big-budget summer blockbusters don’t win Oscars. The assumption that they are not and cannot be viewed as prestigious remains in place, despite countless examples to the contrary. There are Oscar films serious dramas, often period pieces, full of big acting and noble intentions and then there are the movies for the masses, the ones designed to entertain but never invite consideration of cinematic legitimacy. This wasn’t always the case.
Why Superhero Movies Struggle At The Oscars
Once upon a time, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars were all Best Picture nominees, and it wasn’t unusual for them to be considered alongside Barry Lyndon, Chariots of Fire and Annie Hall. Various forces led to the increasing division between Oscar bait and the Lucas-Spielberg pioneered blockbuster film-making. A big reason such films stopped being considered for awards in the ways they used to be is that studios no longer needed promotional boosts like the ones the Academy Awards provided. Star Wars would make money regardless of whether or not it got a Best Picture nomination. Smaller films, more adult-oriented dramas without that international reach, did still desire that push. Studios didn’t need to put money behind getting the latest Indiana Jones movie award nominations. That cash could be better served in reaching international markets. Generally speaking, a film’s prestige isn’t what brings in audiences to the latest multi-million dollar special-effects heavy explosion fest.
This continued well into the mid-2000s, with obvious exceptions like Titanic and The Lord of the Rings, but it wasn’t until the Academy widened the Best Picture category to 10 potential nominees that mainstream blockbuster fare started to be recognized. Inception got a Best Picture nomination, as did Mad Max: Fury Road and Gravity, among others. Most of these films didn’t go home empty handed, particularly in technical categories, but the bigger awards eluded them. Their achievements as dazzling spectacles would be rewarded, but not viewed as an overall package of film-making excellence in the way more Oscar friendly movies are. Sure, Mad Max: Fury Road can sweep the technical categories, but you always knew it would never win Best Picture.
Amst this incremental change, there remained a growing gap between the prestigious norm and the new forces of blockbuster cinema: Superhero films didn’t make the cut. It’s a repeat of the previous generation in that regard - the next Avengers movie is easily going to make a billion dollars, and it doesn’t matter if it is seen as a good film in the eyes of 6000 or so Academy members. It doesn’t help that good old fashioned snobbery has kept genre cinema out of the running with the Oscars for decades. Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and even comedy struggle with this group of voters. Add in lots of special effects and it becomes easy for them to be written off as mere popcorn fare. As those movies have grown in both popularity and quality, it seems inevitable that one will land a Best Picture nomination one day. Even the Academy can’t ignore this. Right now, Black Panther feels like the most likely option, and deservedly so.
Cinema is different now, but so is the Academy. After the push back to the institution’s glaring lack of diversity, inspired by the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, they announced plans to double their membership’s female and people of color numbers by 2020. The first fruits of that efforts seemed evident in last year’s Oscars, as Moonlight surprised all predictions to win Best Picture. A 2016 boost in membership numbers saw 683 new additions to their ranks: 46% of them were women, and 41% were people of color. We’ve no idea how they voted, obviously, but it’s not hard to imagine that such a change to the old white male demographics of the Academy had a measurable influence on the awards themselves. These are voters who aren’t as averse to recognizing the merits of superhero cinema like their elders, particularly one with a majority black cast and creative team.
What Awards Could Black Panther Win?
The Academy is younger now, less white and less male, and their tastes are different to their predecessors. We see that in this year’s nominees. A recent piece by Vulture interviewed new Academy members on their feelings over the 2018 batch of nominations, and it’s Get Out that seems to have inspired most of them. One anonymous voter asked about the exclusion of Wonder Woman, a hotly hyped film that was also a cultural milestone of 2017 and had a major awards push behind it, yet it failed to land a single nomination. The absence of Wonder Woman is something that feels glaring in the context of discussing Black Panther if that movie of the moment couldn’t get in, why would this one? but it’s worth remembering that the latter was more strongly received critically than the former.
Black Panther definitely has strong chances of awards acclaim in various categories. Costume designer Ruth E. Carter has received universal acclaim for her work on the film, and she’s already been nominated for Best Costume Design in the past thanks to her work on Malcolm X and Amistad. Cinematographer Rachel Morrison just made history by becoming the first woman to be nominated in the Best Cinematography category for Mudbound, and her work in Black Panther has been equally as acclaimed. Superhero films are more likely to be found in the special effects category, and it would be a deserved nomination to see this film repeat that. This year, Logan landed a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, which presented major change in the way the Academy sees superhero films. The screenplay by director Coogler and Joe Robert Cole could easily be pushed for consideration next year too. It’s certainly good enough and avoids many of the structural pitfalls superhero films are prone to.
Can Black Panther Run An Oscars Race?
Talking about its Best Picture and Best Director chances this early in the year has its problems, mainly that we’ve no idea who the competition is. It could be a crowded year for the category or it could empty up enough to make Black Panther’s chances even better. A lot of this will be dependent on if Disney give it a proper awards push. They’ve seemed hesitant to do this with their major movies over the past few years, except in those tech categories. Even when Star Wars: The Last Jedi got rave reviews and had real potential for an awards run, they seemed to hold off on doing so outside of technical categories.
That could change with Black Panther. Here is a film that not only cost a little more than their typical Marvel movie, but they also put a lot into its marketing, to ensure that its presence couldn’t be missed. Couple that financial venture with the massive payoffs, and it would seem like a good investment to keep it going into awards season. Disney have the money, the clout and the fan support to pull it off. A Best Picture Oscar nomination for a superhero movie would be the cherry on top of the cake of their continuing worldwide domination.
Black Panther doesn’t necessarily need awards. It already has record breaking box office numbers, critical adoration and wildly enthusiastic fans to its name, and that doesn’t even include the sheer cultural impact it’s made in such a short amount of time. By all measurements of success, Black Panther is one. Yet it seems like this block we have in terms of cinema the idea that the biggest, most popular films in the world can never be viewed in terms of prestige or quality remains in place.
It’s time the Academy caught up on this front, and this would be the perfect and well deserved film to do that with. It’s not set in stone, but the Oscar game has changed a lot over the past couple of years, and Black Panther being a top awards winner is, delightfully, more likely than ever.
- Black Panther Release Date: 2018-02-16
