You know it’s coming and the conversations are going to start fairly soon (if they haven’t already) and that’s the same conversation we have every time there is a summer action movie or tentpole that goes over better with critics and audiences than expected. It’s the conversation that we had when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight came out and again with other movies that did huge business at the box office after getting rave reviews.
In this case, some may be wondering what the chances are that George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road will get nominated at next year’s Oscars and more specifically, is there a chance that it might get a Best Picture nomination?
After all, it’s currently at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes which is almost unheard of for a summer movie, especially with that many reviews in. In fact, that’s better than many Best Picture winners from previous years, including 12 Years a Slave, Argo, Birdman and on par with Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Getting such great reviews puts it ahead of some of Pixar Animation’s recent movies like WALL•E and Ratatouille and on the same level as Pixar Animation movies like Up, which is quite astounding.
Setting aside the “B+” CinemaScore the movie received from audiences, Mad Max: Fury Road is already #25 on IMDb’s Top 250 movies of all time right between The Silence of the Lambs and It’s a Wonderful Life, which seems oddly appropriate considering the movie’s themes. I’ve already seen the movie twice and plan on seeing it at least one or two more times and that’s the case with many people I know, both critics and regular people, and that’s something that just doesn’t happen very often anymore. It used to happen a lot back in the day when movies like Titanic and E.T. The Extraterrestrial and Jaws and such would get a lot of repeat business, but in recent years, it’s not nearly as common.
Although we haven’t seen Fury Road’s second weekend Memorial Day box office numbers just yet, I’ve had a feeling that it’s going to fare better after its opening weekend due to word-of-mouth and repeat business, which would definitely be a good sign of legs, which is such a rarity these days. When a movie is doing that well among audiences and critics, you do have to start to wonder whether a Best Picture nomination is in its future, and there are a couple things to consider.
The first thing is that its May release means it’s part of the discussion right now, but will people still remember how much they loved it in November and December and January when the awards talk starts in earnest? We have to hope that there will be at least a dozen or more equally good movies released this year, because that’s the case every year. Even now, a number of movies have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that will probably be a part of the discussion once they’re released in theaters.
Right now, it also looks like the Academy is going to return to five Best Pictures a year and if that’s the case, then it hurts Mad Max: Fury Road’s odds, because that means it’s fighting for one of five slots against much more traditional Oscar fare—dramas and biopics for instance. There’s some worry that the average age of Academy members might work against Miller’s movie, since science fiction, summer blockbusters and action movies are generally not looked at as favorably as artsier fare.
Then again, movies like Avatar and District 9 and Gravity, all straight up science fiction, have received Best Picture nominations as have some of Pixar Animation’s films like WALL•E – one of the reasons why the Academy expanded the Best Picture category to more than five nominations in the first place. Will that love for genre fare continue if Academy members only have five choices?
The good thing is that like other summer blockbusters, Mad Max: Fury Road will do very well among the “below the line” chapters of the Academy, the technical categories. Some of the possibles there include Best Score (and right now it’s probably the frontrunner tin that category), Production Design, Hair and Make-up and even Costume Design (although that Oscar often goes to period fare). Cinematography is also a strong possibility, because it’s such a visual film. Lots of genre movies have taken home technical Oscars including The Dark Knight, Avatar and even last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy received two Oscar nominations (And mind you, Guardians of the Galaxy is ranked much lower on IMDb’s Top 250.)
It would be amazing if George Miller receives a nomination for his directing, because Mad Max: Fury Road is such a singular vision from the 70-year-old filmmaker that he should certainly get credit for bringing that vision to the screen 30 years after the last installment of the franchise. Miller did win an Oscar for his animated feature Happy Feet, although he’s never been nominated as a director, and that would be a great way to honor him. It’s way too early to put him in any sort of position to win that Oscar, but it almost seems more possible he would get a directing nomination even if the movie doesn’t get a Best Picture nod.
Possibly one of the biggest things working in Mad Max’s favor is that a lot of notable filmmakers like Edgar Wright have been raving about the movie on social media. Having filmmakers and others in the industry being behind the movie is a good sign it will get Oscar nominations, although one has to wonder whether that sort of support can be sustained until the end of the year. (Mark my words that Warner Bros. will hold off the commercially-released DVD and Blu-ray of the movie until closer to November and December and will be sending out screeners of this to remind awards voters how much they liked the movie over the summer.
So there you have it. Right now it looks like Mad Max: Fury Road may be one of the first bonafide Oscar contenders of the year. As far as the other movies that have premiered at the festivals—Sundance winner Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and current Cannes fave Carol—they still have a much longer road to travel before they’ll be accepted by critics and mainstream audiences alike.
So let the games begin!
I’ll be back next week with the regular Weekend Warrior column and a couple more Extras.
(Photo Credit: Nicky Nelson/WENN.com)
