It’s obvious that superhero movies have taken over the box office, with films like Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther being the highest grossing movies of the last year (bringing in $680 and $700 million, respectively, with Incredibles 2, Deadpool 2, and Aquaman, not far behind), but the Oscar nominations prove that superhero movies have taken over Hollywood, too. Roma and The Favourite may lead the way with ten nominations each, but Black Panther was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, alongside the aforementioned films plus BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Green Book.
Not only is Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther the first ever Marvel movie with a black superhero and a majority black cast, something to be celebrated in it’s own right, but it’s the first superhero movie to ever be nominated for the prestigious Best Picture award. In 2009, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, received eight nominations, including a posthumous Best Supporting Actor win for Heath Ledger’s Joker, but the film was controversially excluded from top honors. The Academy then amended their rules, expanding the Best Picture pool from five to ten films, in order to serve a wider range of nominees. “I would not be telling you the truth if I said the words ‘Dark Knight’ did not come up,” Sidney Ganis, the academy’s president at the time, told The New York Times. Well, it only took ten years and about a thousand terrible superhero films to pave the way for the groundbreaking Black Panther. At the same time, the Oscars managed to leave women out of the Best Director and Best Picture categories, yet again — preferring male contenders — and one film in particular, with a penis-flashing director and an allegedly racist screenwriter. And Crazy Rich Asians was snubbed entirely. No wonder the majority of Americans don’t care about the Oscars anymore.
