Wonder Woman has turned into a bonafide phenomenon, with great box office, stellar reviews, and positive word of mouth. It can be rare to please all facets of moviegoers, yet Gal Gadot’s titular superhero is genuinely resonating as a force of strength and compassion. The buzz has grown so strong that Oscar bloggers are now wondering whether Wonder Woman can continue its success by scoring major nominations.
Scoring an impressive 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, Wonder Woman is well above the abysmal scores for other DC films like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and even Man of Steel. The film, directed by Patty Jenkins, also made headlines for having the biggest opening weekend at the box office for a female director ever, at $103 million. Critics have lauded Gadot’s star-making performance, Chris Pine’s warm supporting turn as Steve Trevor, the humanity of the film’s characters, and the balance of comedy with authentic emotion. Some are already proclaiming that Wonder Woman has saved the DC Extended Universe from its own gloomy muck.
While many are sufficiently won over by the film, the discussion becomes whether Wonder Woman jives with the traditionally artsy taste of Oscar voters. Voters have mostly had a distant relationship with superhero movies no matter who they are about, a genre bias that does not discriminate. They may get plenty of technical nominations, for categories like Best Visual Effects or Best Sound Editing, but outside of Heath Ledger in his iconic role as The Joker in The Dark Knight, Oscar voters are perfectly fine with shunning them from the main categories. Not even Hugh Jackman’s gruff yet charismatic performances as Wolverine or Michelle Pfeiffer’s slinky, campy Catwoman managed to impress voters.
The Oscars invited a wide swath of new members to the Academy last year, including women, minorities, and young people. Such voters could propel Wonder Woman to unexpected Oscar contention, though it’s hard to ignore the previous 89 years of bias against anything fantasy or comic book. There are always exceptions, like The Lord of the Rings trilogy’s many victories, but there’s an undeniable pushback when it comes to taking flying superhumans seriously — why else do you think Birdman resonated with them so much?
Many women in the industry have embraced Wonder Woman over the past few weeks, including Oprah Winfrey, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Elizabeth Banks, Bryce Dallas Howard, Mindy Kaling, Rosario Dawson, Octavia Spencer, Kerry Washington, and Ava DuVernay. This kind of support from major show business talent is a powerful thing, and could definitely be a sign of what’s to come. It’s more likely, however, that enthusiasm for the film simply won’t be enough to overcome the nature of its genre. Gadot may get more attention than her fellow superhero actors, especially because she’s given such strong material in the first place, but it’s bound to be an uphill battle that even the likes of Wonder Woman will find it tough to overcome.
Wonder Woman can still get multiple nominations from the Academy, which would be significant for any superhero film, even if it gets shut out of the main categories. Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing are very likely nominations considering the number of elaborate battle sequences, and there are multiple impressive sets, from the island of Themyscira to the trenches of World War I, to suggest Best Production Design is in play. The film’s visual effects and makeup are solid but not showy enough to make a dent in either category.
The question of whether a Best Picture nomination can happen is a tricky one. The Academy voted to expand the Best Picture lineup from five nominees to 10 the year after The Dark Knight was snubbed in 2008 and the public was outraged. The suggestion was that an expansion would make room for more blockbusters and popular films that the mainstream audience actually saw. We got some inspired Best Picture nominees as a result, including District 9, Inception, Toy Story 3, and Up, but voters complained about having to pick 10 nominees, so they changed the rules again in 2011 where voters only had to pick five nominees, and the number of official Best Picture nominees could be anywhere from five to 10 depending on the amount of votes received. As a result, those popular films that probably landed somewhere towards the bottom of those 10-nominee ballots were left out in subsequent years, outside of a few exceptions like Mad Max: Fury Road and The Martian.
So what does this have to do with Wonder Woman? It shows that while the film could have contended in 2009 or 2010, when voters could pick 10 nominees, the chances of Wonder Woman making it onto enough top fives to get in now is sadly rare. Films like Wonder Woman need a huge push from their studio to get anywhere close to a nomination. Will Warner Bros. and DC bother creating a big campaign for Wonder Woman despite the genre’s rocky history with the Academy?
The truth is, Wonder Woman does not need the validation of 6,000 Academy members in Hollywood. What the movie has done for little girls (and little boys) all over the world is enough of a victory. Hell, it’s a more important victory.
data-lang=”en”>
“why is wonder woman even so important???”
me: pic.twitter.com/rPV9AuBbS8
— pinned tweet (@wonderdianas) May 29, 2017
Girls and boys now see that women can kick ass just as much as men, and they don’t always have to be saved. They can be likable but tough, earnest but not sentimental. Young women with big ideas and dreams of inspiring others through cinema now have a hero in Patty Jenkins. Even the most conservative of studio executives have to realize the demand for female protagonists at the movies is real and necessary. The success of Wonder Woman is huge, and as much as I as an Oscar obsessive hate to admit it, it is destined for a legacy more powerful than most of next year’s Oscar nominees.
As Anton Ego says in the Pixar classic Ratatouille, “the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.” Voters may turn their noses up at Wonder Woman, thinking it to be just another average piece of superhero junk, but the thrill millions have felt and will feel from watching Diana soar through the air with her golden lasso is that much more meaningful.
Pre-order Wonder Woman on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD below: