Should The Avengers Be at the Oscars?

[Nazgual]

Loki's tricked Thor before with that whole clone thing. Yet, somehow he didn't think the Hulk was a big enough threat to use on him, even though he was counting on the Hulk to take down the entire superhero team. Plus he apparently decided to never get up and walk away at any point.

Everyone keeps pointing their guns at Bruce Banner, even after he just gets done telling them he put a gun in his mouth and the Hulk just spit the bullet out. That one really ground my gears.

If Bruce Banner's always mad, why isn't he always the Hulk. (face it, they wanted to give him something cool to say, but it doesn't make any sense)

How come Fury didn't dispatch any of those soldiers he's got all over the carrier with some experimental weapons Agent Coulson had? Even if they just had the one weapon, those elite soldiers would probably have been at least as helpful as the girl with a pistol and the guy with a bow.

1) Loki didn't get much of a chance to see him coming.
2) Because he's shit scary and not everyone heard him say that. Only the main characters were in the room. It's easy to forget that the viewer can have more information than some of the characters.
3) He can control his emotions because as he demonstrated right after that line he learned how to bring out the Hulk at by his out accord and 'direct' his rage. When he transformed in the Heli-carrier attack he was pushed over the edge into direction-less rage. This is because he was already mad from the argument with the other avengers, the sudden attack on the ship would have got his heart pumping and he was likely injured when he fell through the floor.
4) It was an untested prototype. Plus he wasn't near an armoury, he was cornered in the flight deck.

 

[yellowhead]

I think if 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2' was nominated last year I would have said yes but that wasn't the case. It's clear that the Academy don't care about big elaborate projects that span multiple films and take years to assemble (no pun intended) but mildly entertaining escapism that last about 90 minutes and then you forget about it instantly ('The Artist', 'Slumdog Millionaire', 'Shakespeare in Love').It's for this reason that I think the Academy Awards are becoming more irrelevant.

They refuse to look at the big picture.

They don't care that thousands of people worked their asses off for over a decade to bring an amazing saga to the big screen with one cast of characters in the form of Harry Potter. They keep thinking that all that matters in terms of filmmaking is the lead actor. They barely even consider the hundreds of people who work on special effects or the writer/s and editors who make scenes memorable. For example in 'The King's Speech' it had a great lead performance but Tom Hooper's direction wasn't exactly noteworthy, yet he won the award for Best Director JUST because the Academy liked the film and he happened to be attached to it. The direction in 'The Social Network' was much better but without the great editing of the conversation sequences and the score it wouldn't have been as memorable.

It takes more than one person to make a movie.

Joss Whedon had to balance a huge cast from 4 previous franchises of different genres and tones into one cohesive experience and he pulled it off with flying colours.

I think if 'The Avengers' will be nominated for anything it will be the technical awards and if we're lucky it will be nominated for Best Screenplay. Just because 'The Avengers' could be the biggest box office success doesn't mean it should automatically win but it should be considered because it's an AMAZING MOVIE.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I don't actually care one fig for the Oscars or the Avengers. But I'm confused as to why it's being called a phenomenon or an "it" event. I know 1 person who've seen it and she said it was pretty good. That's somewhat incongruous with the praise it get's here.

I think this is mostly that people want a movie they like to win. Hell, I wanted Moon to win but that has zero to do with the real world. Just because you like something doesn't make it good. And frankly, despite my love for Firefly and by extension Whedon, I very much doubt that this is a movie that rises above it's pulpy comic book origins.

I fucking love comic books (not the Avengers though) but it would be moronic of me to claim it's actually worth the time I spent on it. It's basically literary sugar. Hell, I enjoyed the GI Joe movie a ton, but I know it's a shit movie objectively. Pulp is highly entertaining but it's also devoid of substance.

Anyway, millions of fans does not a good movie make. Only popular. McDonalds surely aren't fine cuisine?

 

[StriderShinryu]

No.

Sorry, but for all its billion dollar box office and witty dialogue, The Avengers is just another popcorn movie. An entertaining one, true, but nothing more. And there's too much coming out between now and the end of the year for it to stand a chance at the kind of recognition you're talking about. war. The Avengers... was about CGI dudes in rubber costumes beating each other up.

Pretty much echoes my thinking.

I think it's a little unfair to use Avengers as some sort of statement about genre movies probably not getting the awards season respect they deserve. Avangers was a fun movie and a very worthy way to spend a couple of hours, but it is not awards worthy. And, sorry, but that's nothing to do with it being a comic book movie.

It may not be fair that it will take an extremely exceptional genre movie to break through again as Return of the King did as compared to the middling non genre movies that get considered every year, sure, but it's the truth. And Avengers is not an extremely exceptional genre movie.

 

[Fusioncode9]

Oscar for what? Avengers was a solid film but I don't see why the internet has put it on a pedestal. It's nowhere near as good as The Dark Knight or Xmen First Class.

 

[Nimzabaat]

If Avatar can get nominated, then The Avengers should win. Avatar was all special effects and plot holes (and bad acting, useless characters, contrived plot stolen from other crappy movies, i'll stop). But yes, if Avatar can get nominated for anything, then surely The Avengers should win something.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

Looking at the Avengers as a stand alone film' I don't really think it rates an Oscar. Worthy of consideration, sure. No film should be excluded simply because of its source material.

However, I do think it does deserve recognition for the combination of various narratives into a cohesive story. It popularized the concept of a huge universal continuity existing outside of a single film. Since the Oscars are supposed to recognize artistic achievement, I would say that the Avengers deserves some sort of recognition for that.

 

[malestrithe]

After hearing for over 10 years, "X nerd culture fanservice movie better win or else we will boycott the Oscars forever," I have to say that I don't care any more.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Should the Avengers be at the Oscars? If by "at the Oscars" you mean "parking cars for Oscar attendees," then yes. There was nothing extraordinary about Avengers other than its length. Two plus hours of gravitas-crushing one liners, industry average special effects, and a plot with more holes in it than Dick Cheney's driver do not add up to anything even remotely Oscar-worthy.

Name 1 concrete plot-hole in The Avengers please.

Loki's tricked Thor before with that whole clone thing. Yet, somehow he didn't think the Hulk was a big enough threat to use on him, even though he was counting on the Hulk to take down the entire superhero team. Plus he apparently decided to never get up and walk away at any point.

Everyone keeps pointing their guns at Bruce Banner, even after he just gets done telling them he put a gun in his mouth and the Hulk just spit the bullet out. That one really ground my gears.

If Bruce Banner's always mad, why isn't he always the Hulk. (face it, they wanted to give him something cool to say, but it doesn't make any sense)

How come Fury didn't dispatch any of those soldiers he's got all over the carrier with some experimental weapons Agent Coulson had? Even if they just had the one weapon, those elite soldiers would probably have been at least as helpful as the girl with a pistol and the guy with a bow.

There's four, people can probably come up with more.

1) Loki was using the mistrust everyone has towards Banner and the 'Other Guy'. While I watched that scene where they are arguing, my first reaction was Loki wanted the group to split. By themselves not one of those heroes or a small portion of them could slow or stop the invasion.

2) Has been answered, but I will expand on it pointing out that soldiers on capturing missions will aim their weapons at the target to 'force compliance'.

3) People can be mad without losing control, but with how the Hulk works is either extreme anger, pain/death, or heart rate over 200.

4) Experimental weapons that no-one knows how this unknown technology will work in a stressing environment. Hence Coulson's reaction when he pulled the trigger 'So that's what it does.' I believe is the quote.

 

[MarsProbe]

Just for fun, it should win every award going, including Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Feature. There'll be a single universe out there at least where this is about to happen.

Captcha: Happy Anniversary. Well, I'm not even married or anything, but thanks anyway.

 

[Winnosh]

One of the major reasons that Avengers is such an important movie is that it is the first time ever that continuities from different movies blended together for a single movie.

This wasn't Avengers 1 It was Iron Man 3 + Thor 2 + Captain America 2 + Hulk 2. Forget about the new sequels coming out. This is the Real numbering that should be used for the next movies coming out.


Iron Man 4 Thor 3 Captain America 3 should be the real titles for the next movies

 

[Bill Nye the Zombie]

It should but we all know it won't.
Best Screenplay
Best Special Effects.
Best Actor
Best Movie
I'd really like to see the Hulk get nominated for best supporting actor.

Isn't the Hulk more of a main character? And if he got nominated, I would demand the guy who played Agent Coleson get nominated. He was by far one of the best actors in all the movies.

One of the major reasons that Avengers is such an important movie is that it is the first time ever that continuities from different movies blended together for a single movie.

This wasn't Avengers 1 It was Iron Man 3 + Thor 2 + Captain America 2 + Hulk 2. Forget about the new sequels coming out. This is the Real numbering that should be used for the next movies coming out.


Iron Man 4 Thor 3 Captain America 3 should be the real titles for the next movies

Whats really shocking is that they made great stand-alone films, gave you hints as to the next movie (like the Thor's Hammer scene at the end of the credits for Iron Man 2), and delivered a movie I think most of us were really worried about not living up to the previous movies, or the hype it was getting.

OT: If a movies like The Kings Speech and The Artist can win Oscars, then The Avengers can at the very least get nominated. It doesn't even have to win, but at the very least they need to start putting movies the average person would watch. Or maybe movies that don't make people want to go and smash their DVD player.

 

[PortalThinker113]

No Harry Potter movie has won a single Oscar.

There's a very simple reason for that: They're not very good films. They're mediocre, ho-hum adaptations of a great series of books that managed to get by on the sheer gargantuan amount of money that WB threw at it. But in their haste to mimic the LotR frenzy, they hired tedious directors to create dull and lifeless phantoms of the books and lost out on their chances for awards that should have been easy grabs.

I certainly would agree with you on some of them (Order of the Phoenix and Goblet of Fire immediately spring to mind in the "dull and lifeless" category- I'm talking about the FILMS, of course), but at the very least, I loved Prisoner of Azkaban and Deathly Hallows: Part 2 quite a bit. The series has certainly had ups and downs, but in my book, those two deserve a bit of recognition. I'm not saying either of them deserved to WIN Best Picture or anything, but a nomination for Deathly Hallows: Part 2 might have been nice. Each to their own, I suppose!

They certainly don't even touch the shoelaces of the Lord of the Rings films, though- you're right about that.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

Oh god no. A million times no.

The Avengers was dumb fun, and nothing else.

It won't get a single nom or win.

I loved the movie, but it was just goofy over the top punch line ridculousness.

 

[algalon]

I honestly gave up on the oscars long ago. The one time I actually agreed with their winners was the year Return of the King walked away with enough brass to outfit an orchestra. And that was more or less an apology to the audience for being so out of touch as to gloss over the first 2 films. I expect Avengers to get a nomination or 2 for supporting actor - Sam Jackson, and special effects. But best picture? The winner will be some WW2 period piece about a downtrodden jew or other underclassman of the era who becomes best friends with a rich man. It will win because the voters have to internalize their guilt for being rich old white men, and to do so in a method they can understand.

 

[Fearzone]

Eh. I gave up on those things after Conan the Barbarian failed to get an Oscar in 1982.

As to the titular question, Academy Awards judges are free to judge movies and distinguish good ones from bad by whatever standard they want. If we demand and force them to consider Avengers for best picture, it is no longer their awards ceremony, it is ours. We may as well print our own gold medals for completing 12 achievements in Skyrim and wear it while walking down the street to show people how cool we are.

The Academy Awards judges are free to judge a film by whatever standard floating around in their heads. I'm accustomed to movies I like--some I remember fondly dozens of years later--not being contenders at the academy awards, yet being very popular among my friends. If such movies ever make it in, that's when I start to worry.

 

[irishda]

Rebuttals to my plot hole comment:

Why didn't Loki use his powers on the Hulk, even though he was counting on Hulk to kill the rest of the heroes?

Because, the Hulk snuck up on Loki, Loki is a talkative villain, and Loki didn't see Hulk as a threat.

But even though Loki's powers are rather dubiously defined, he clearly showcased his ability to replicate even when surprised. Coulson tried to "ambush" him after all. And the worst is the idea that he didn't see the Hulk as a threat. I'm sure he thought he was smarter than the Hulk, but when his earlier plan was counting on the Hulk to kill all the other superheros, including his brother, who he kind of takes seriously. So the idea that he didn't think the Hulk could hurt him doesn't really hold water.

Why do people keep pointing guns at the Hulk

Because the Hulk is scary and people would therefore react irrationally.

You know what else people do when they're scared? Run. People do a lot of running. Especially when the object of said fear specifically says bullets don't harm him. If the Hulk says to me, "hey I can literally eat bullets" I'm pretty sure my first instinct would be to start running if he starts to show up.

If Bruce Banner is always angry, why isn't he always the Hulk?
I'm not gonna paraphrase the two counter arguments because they are just hilarious as is:

There are different levels of anger dude. Also hulk comes out because of his heart rate not his anger. So him being always angry would allow him to control his heart rate so it wont go up since his attitude gets left out of the equation.

3. The "I'm always angry" line actually make a good deal of sense. One of the defining characteristics of The Hulk is 'The madder he is, the stronger he is.' If he's just a little bit angry all the time, there's no noticeable change(apart from going from looking like Ed Norton to looking like Mark Ruffalo, apparently), but if he's always a bit angry, he's always a bit Hulk, so it becomes simpler to focus the epic-tier asskicking on a specific target.

Okay, that's not how anger works. Anger has physiological symptoms, like any mood. One of those symptoms is an elevated heart rate. Constantly being angry means constantly having an elevated heart rate. And if he's a little angry, then what's the anger level at which the Hulk comes out, and how does he just automatically jump to that level of anger while still remaining in control of the Hulk's actions? This is part of a lot of comic book or sci-fi writer's repertoire: this hero's power will do exactly what the story needs it to do. Personally, I thought it would've been more interesting if Bruce never had control over the Hulk and they had to figure out how to use him without getting themselves killed.

Why didn't Nick Fury send soldiers down to help along with the Helicarrier, along with some of those cool weapons like the one Coulson had.

Because they were trying to keep the helicarrier from coming down, they were useless against Loki, and that weapon was clearly a prototype, so there's no more.

The soldiers probably aren't necessary for the technical maintenance of the ship, and certainly would've been better utilized saving lives. As for the weapon, like I said, they don't necessarily need it. After all, Widow and Hawkeye both proved the aliens could be held back even with less technologically advanced weapons. These are supposed to be elite top-secret soldiers, there's no reason they can't help against aliens that are apparently susceptible to pistol fire and martial arts.

 

[SweetLiquidSnake]

absolutely it had a big name cast, high production value and cleaned house in revenue, it'd be an insult if it wasn't included. Just because its topic is viewed as childish doesn't make it less of a movie

 

[irishda]

1) Loki was using the mistrust everyone has towards Banner and the 'Other Guy'. While I watched that scene where they are arguing, my first reaction was Loki wanted the group to split. By themselves not one of those heroes or a small portion of them could slow or stop the invasion.

You just reminded me of the laziest write off of all. (It's not technically a plot hole, but more of just lazy writing)

Spoiler

Apparently they didn't even need a superteam. They just needed fucking Iron Man and a nuke, because the screenwriters decided to lazily write off how six people stop an alien army with the whole "they're all centrally controlled robots" or something. Hell Iron Man doesn't even need the Hulk to catch him, since if he just flies a nuke in there right from the get-go he doesn't have to worry about power failure. No one knew that at first of course, which keeps this from being a plot hole, but it was just such a cop out how they ended it.

OT: This movie's not exactly the pinnacle of filmmaking, and doesn't really bring a whole lot of groundbreaking. Other directors, mainly Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, have done the whole "bringing separate characters with different storylines together" before, and they've done it in one movie instead of five. It's a fun movie to be sure, and it would stand a chance at the Oscars for special effects, sound editing, or costumes. But there's better scripts, better actors, and overall better movies out there. Hell even Bob doesn't give it the best picture and that guy's got a hard-on for the Avengers.

 

[lord.jeff]

Should the Avengers be at the Oscars? If by "at the Oscars" you mean "parking cars for Oscar attendees," then yes. There was nothing extraordinary about Avengers other than its length. Two plus hours of gravitas-crushing one liners, industry average special effects, and a plot with more holes in it than Dick Cheney's driver do not add up to anything even remotely Oscar-worthy.

Name 1 concrete plot-hole in The Avengers please.

Loki's tricked Thor before with that whole clone thing. Yet, somehow he didn't think the Hulk was a big enough threat to use on him, even though he was counting on the Hulk to take down the entire superhero team. Plus he apparently decided to never get up and walk away at any point.

Everyone keeps pointing their guns at Bruce Banner, even after he just gets done telling them he put a gun in his mouth and the Hulk just spit the bullet out. That one really ground my gears.

If Bruce Banner's always mad, why isn't he always the Hulk. (face it, they wanted to give him something cool to say, but it doesn't make any sense)

How come Fury didn't dispatch any of those soldiers he's got all over the carrier with some experimental weapons Agent Coulson had? Even if they just had the one weapon, those elite soldiers would probably have been at least as helpful as the girl with a pistol and the guy with a bow.

There's four, people can probably come up with more.

The real big one is why no one questioned Loki for just waiting on that hill when Ironmon and Thor fought or why all the aliens just up and died.

[link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZkqC4Lz8dU&feature=g-all-u[/link]

I liked Avengers but I don't think it deserve best picture a Pixar movie is coming out this summer for one, I think it deserves a nod for best adapted screenplay, maybe even screen play, costume and effects.