‘Black Panther’ Is The First Superhero Film To Be Nominated For Best Picture At The Oscars
Wakanda Forever.
It’s the day that a lot of us thought would never come: Black Panther has made history as the first comic book movie to ever nab an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
Admittedly, it’s kinda weird to talk about Black Panther as though it’s an underdog, given the film grossed the GDP of a small nation at the box office.
But in terms of Oscar chances, the deck was always stacked against that little old Marvel megahit, given the Academy’s history of repeatedly flubbing the opportunity to honour comic book movies.
In the past, the Academy has usually treated superhero films as a showcase for performances and production design rather than candidates for the bigger gongs. Jack Nicholson wasn’t even nominated for his turn as the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, despite that generally being viewed as one of the all-time great pop culture performances, and The Dark Knight missed out on what critics at the time considered an inevitable Best Picture nomination.
Indeed, the Academy’s decision to expand the number of Best Picture nominations from five to ten in 2010 was viewed by many as a response to the outcry over The Dark Knight missing out on the big prize the year before.
Even though the reality of a superhero movie getting nominated for a best picture Oscar should've happened ten years ago with THE DARK KNIGHT, history could not have been made by a more amazing & wholly deserving superhero film this year than #BlackPanther. Congrats!#OscarNoms https://t.co/SZxM56UcPQ
— Travis Denson (@thefilmginger) January 22, 2019
Oh, and don’t even get me started on Batman Returns and Spiderman 2, two bona fide masterpieces that should have swept the nominations in their respective years, but were instead forced to settle for a handful of technical awards.
So it is genuinely surprising that Black Panther nabbed such a massive award. One can only hope that this is the start of a new trend of genre acceptance for the Academy, particularly when viewed in the context of The Shape Of Water nabbing the big prize last year.
Black Panther is the first comic book movie nominated for Best Picture! Some people are upset but considering last year’s winner centered around a woman banging a fish, I’d say BP had plenty cultural & political resonance. It won’t win but it deserves this honor #WakandaForever
— Chris (@Cactusbix) January 22, 2019
Maybe the Academy are finally waking up to the world outside their window, and are going to start avoiding obvious Oscar bait and embracing new modes of art moving ahead? One can only hope.