The Golden Globes gave the inaugural award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement to Barbie. Star and producer (through her production outfit LuckyChap Entertainment) Margot Robbie accepted the award on behalf of the movie. It was already the highest grossing movie of the year. So why exactly did we need to go through the charade of selecting nominees and announcing a winner when we already have a box office ranking?
Barbie grossed over $1.4 billion at the global box office, and broke numerous records on its way there - highest grossing movie from Warner Bros, highest grossing movie by a solo female director, and many others. A movie about a doll, it was far from a sure thing when it was being made and marketed. Even its makers were surprised when it topped the box office in its opening weekend and swiftly made its way to an improbable billion. It was undoubtedly an incredible achievement, but the reward for making nearly $1.5 billion is… the $1.5 billion. You don’t need an award to mark that.
Awards ceremonies fall into 2 categories, televised and non-televised. The non-televised ones serve their members and nominees. The televised awards have one more master beyond those first 3 - their telecast partners who are in turn looking for an audience. For over a decade now, ratings for awards shows have been declining and that affects the revenue that these awards shows can make.
The popular wisdom is that the awards have veered too far into niche and artsy movies, ignoring mainstream popular movies that the majority of people watch. It’s led to a narrative that the awards season is more of an intellectual exercise for an elite few rather than a celebration of moviegoing enjoyed by millions of people around the world. Case in point, the last time Best Picture was won by a movie that was in the top 10 box office list for that year was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
Things came to a head in 2009, when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), a commercial and critical success, was not nominated for Best Picture. There was huge backlash as many felt The Dark Knight exemplified the best of cinema, this was true of WALL-E (2008) as well, to a lesser extent. At the time there were only five nominees for Best Picture, and the Academy responded by raising the number of nominees to 10.
The Golden Globes are not the first to have instituted a “popular picture” award. The Academy proposed an Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film back in August 2018, with the Academy President confirming that this was in response to declining ratings. The Academy reversed course within a month to “examine and seek additional input regarding the new category”, after the decision was met with fierce backlash from media critics and the industry alike.
Naysayers felt that the award ghettoized popular films and reduced their chances at being nominated in the traditional Best Picture category. This is the same argument made by some animation fans who believe that great animated movies do not get recognised in Best Picture because they already have Best Animated Film. In addition, the name of the award was criticized for implying that the nominees in the existing Best Picture were not ‘popular’.
That’s not to say that there aren’t genuine positives to recognising popular movies at the awards ceremonies. Just look at the list of nominees for the Globes Box Office Achievement Award - Barbie, John Wick: Chapter 4, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Oppenheimer, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. All movies that the average cinema-goer has watched, or at the very least, heard of. From a cynical point of view, having Keanu Reeves, Taylor Swift, and Tom Cruise walk the red carpet and feature in the telecast would certainly generate clicks and eyeballs.
We can all agree that there are cinematic achievements worth applauding that don’t fall into the existing set of categories. Last summer, the Barbenheimer phenomenon took what would normally have been an either/or choice pitting two types of movies and audiences against each other, and turned it into a joint celebration of cinema. The result was the highest grossing non-franchise weekend of all time. Later that year, Taylor Swift’s concert film The Eras Tour released at the height of the twin strikes that crippled Hollywood. Swift took a non-traditional distribution route by going directly to cinemas, and ended up becoming the highest grossing concert film ever.
Each of these are unique achievements that reminded movie-goers about the magic of cinema. One could argue this is exactly what these Award shows should be celebrating; the error the shows are making is turning this into a competition when it should be a celebration of cinema.
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