From Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to Avatar: The Way of Water, action blockbusters broke down barriers at the 2023 Oscars and other awards. Here’s why MCU-style humor may not land as well as James Cameron’s and Ryan Coogler’s sincere conviction.
It’s rare for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — or any critical body, for that matter — to take blockbuster films seriously. James Cameron’s original Avatar was successfully recognized at the 2010 ceremony with nine nominations, and won three, for Visual Effects, Cinematography, and Art Direction. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King famously won Best Picture in 2004, and even the 2010 ceremony saw Avatar joined by the likes of Inglourious Basterds, District 9, and Pixar’s animated movie Up. But more than a decade removed from that moment, few of the big, populist movies that dominate an average year’s box-office top 10 have achieved similar recognition.
So what made 2023’s Oscars so different? While the comparatively small A24 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once took the top honors, two of the year’s highest-grossing films, Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick, were unusually well represented across the Academy’s 24 categories. The Way of Water nabbed four nominations, while Maverick had six. While they only collectively nabbed two awards — Best Sound for Top Gun: Maverick, while Avatar 2 of course won Best Visual Effects — both films clearly managed to break through that tricky barrier between popular movies and acclaimed ones.
What connects these blockbusters with previous Oscar-nominated blockbusters? The creators treated their stories with the utmost sincerity. And when filmmakers take their most outsized impulses seriously, audiences do too.The benefits of shameless absurdity
Just about every genre film is deeply silly in its own way. But the great ones embrace that absurdity, with the creators injecting a much-needed integrity. Up earns its swashbuckling adventures through South America by first grounding viewers (literally) via its iconic “Married Life” opening sequence. Much of the film’s humor centers around outsized fantasy adventures with its crotchety old protagonist Carl, but that devastating introduction underscores all the surreal elements with a deep sorrow.
Everything Everywhere All at Once followed a similar recipe in achieving its historic dominance at this year’s Oscars. The film is dense with jokes, but the filmmakers establish early on that they’re interested in the sad struggles of everyday life. Even as the gags multiply exponentially, they feel earned in a film that’s specifically intended to overwhelm viewers.
As for Return of the King and Inglourious Basterds, directors Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino have spent their entire careers erasing the line between high and low art, appealing to Academy tastes and genre tastes at the same time. Their biggest films walk that line by mixing fantasy elements with strong, specific, simple emotions like desperation and nostalgia, a blend the Academy tends to recognize.
James Cameron is no stranger to that delicate dance, either. His 1997 blockbuster Titanic swept the 70th Oscars in historic fashion, and its box-office gross hit an all-time high, until he broke his own record with Avatar in 2009. Cameron’s technical prowess has always earned him respect from the wide reaches of Hollywood, but it’s still his knack for sincere emotion — in Titanic’s case, with the hunger for freedom, approval, and belonging built into the central love story — that separates a film like The Way of Water from past box-office headliners.
Cameron opens his Avatar sequel by convincing viewers that Jake Sully has mastered the Na’vi language so well that it now “sounds like English.” With that simple explanation, the film’s Papyrus subtitles justifiably fade away. It’s a ridiculous proposition, but it’s presented shamelessly and without a wink or a blush. And so audiences are primed to go along with it, just as they’re primed to accept the rest of a film that features talking whales, 9-foot-tall blue aliens, and a child probably fathered by a planetary god.Having fun with formulas
One of the more intriguing parallels between The Way of Water and Maverick is the skepticism both films faced in the lead-up to their respective release dates. In spite of Avatar’s historic success, it continued to combat accusations of cultural irrelevance throughout the 2010s and early 2020s. Likewise, a late sequel to a notoriously cheesy 1986 action-drama was a bizarre proposition for audiences and critics alike.
