The Oscar broadcast has cut eight awards presentations from its live line-up, including craft categories like Production Design, Film Editing, and Sound that have often been where science fiction and fantasy films have found their most success. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the move is meant to increase viewer engagement and keep the show relevant. The ceremony will begin an hour earlier than the televised show so that these awards can be given out ahead of time, as well as the assurance that all the nominees in all awards categories will be identified on air. Since most Oscar voters don't know the difference between sound and editing, the categories were combined after the 2020 awards. For years, genre film has been the most successful during this and many other international awards shows due to the fact that six of the eight categories are craft awards. The Academy Awards took place in 2015. Spotlight, a critic's darling that received six Academy nominations, but only won two awards, was the Best Picture winner that year. Mad Max:Fury Road received nine nominations across the board and was on the Best Picture slate that year. George Miller's Mad Max didn't win the top prize, but it did win six Oscars, including Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Production Design. The creators of Mad Max would only be able to accept two awards live, the same amount as Spotlight, a film that means very little to genre fans and rarely comes up in the public cultural discourse. Dune is up for 10 awards, but half of them will be taken away if the current decision is not changed in a month. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror films have largely been shut out of the most popular awards. After The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won in 2003 it was the first fantasy film to ever win an Oscar. Star Wars: A New Hope and 2001: A Space Odyssey weren't even nominated for Best Picture.
Don't Look Up, Encanto, Robin Robin, and No Time to Die are genre films. The Academy is signaling that these awards are less prestigious, important, or even engaging, since they celebrate the craft of filmmaking itself and the details that go into the production behind the scenes and behind the camera.
The Academy's decision to eliminate the live broadcast of the categories where genre film excelled threatens to hurt the filmgoers who love films year-round, not just at awards season. The Academy has time to reverse this decision. The Hollywood Reporter says that the current move is causing tension within the leadership of the Academy, after the Academy announced that several statuettes would be awarded off-air.
The #PresentAll23 trend was created by film Twitter, who came to the defense of these categories. Daily Dot columnist Gavia Baker-Whitlaw reminded people that Oscar fans want to see the whole show uncut, uncut and live. People who watch the Oscars religiously are interested in the entire show as a piece of performance, but genre film fans will be left out in the cold because of a program that is pre-recorded and shortened, potentially at the expense of genre filmmakers.
It feels a little crazy to have to defend genre films as if they don't make the most money, inspire the most virulent fandoms, and push filmmaking forward on a craft level. At times science fiction and fantasy films are great. The Power of the Dog is the only film on the docket that received more nominations than Dune, and it deserves to be the focus of the attention. Eliminating the science fiction and fantasy film categories from the live broadcast will be a huge disservice to film fans because they receive well-deserved recognition at the Oscars.
The Oscars will air on ABC.
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