It is once again that time of the year where everyone congregates around their televisions to watch the Oscars snub their favorite movies from winning awards. Don’t fear, Delta students, perhaps in between our collective disappointment a celebrity will get slapped or the cameraman will get too close to the nominees, making them uncomfortable for our enjoyment.
The 96th Academy Awards air live on March 10 at 7 p.m. EDT on ABC.
Viewership of the Oscars has gone down from 43.7 million viewers in 2014 to only 18.7 million last year according to a study done on Statista.com.
“It mattered to me a lot more when I was younger,” said Anissa Ming, an art major at Delta College.
Ming says she was more excited about actors winning awards in her younger age, but as the years have passed the weight of the awards have decreased.
“The Oscars just don’t feel as important as they used to,” Ming said.
Many have speculated that this feeling of unimportance that Ming speaks of comes from the Academy themselves, being as the Academy votes on what wins and what doesn’t.
“I feel like ‘Iron Claw’ definitely should have been in the nominees. I feel like I was emotionally tied into the movie the whole time, I didn’t think I’d ever cry by Zac Efron,” Ming said.
Another Delta student tuning into the Oscars this year is engineering major Randy Preston. Preston says that “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” should have received consideration for Best Picture.
“I really enjoyed ‘Guardians 3,’ it was a great movie in general that had times that felt real that you don’t get from most Marvel movies,” he said.
Earlier in 2023, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” dominated the box office upon release; now they appear to be doing the same with nominations.
“Oppenheimer” leads the charge with a whopping 13 nominations while “Barbie” has 10. Both movies are nominated for best picture.
“I feel like ‘Oppenheimer’ does a really good job encapsulating the emotions that it had on the creators of the bomb and the people that were there to experience it,” Ming said, later going on to say that “Oppenheimer” is her pick for best picture.
Preston said that “Barbie” fell more under the umbrella of Oscar bait — a film produced for the sole purpose of winning an Oscar.
“The plot wasn’t really for kids but not really adults either, maybe something produced to be popular and win an Oscar because everyone knows ‘Barbie,’” Preston said.
Animated feature film is another hotly contested category, with Hayao Miyazaki’s final movie “The Boy and the Heron” up against “Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse.”
“Overall it was a great story with a great soundtrack and it was just great if not better than the first one,” Preston said, later saying he hopes “Across the Spider-Verse” takes home the Oscar.
Actor in a Leading Role is one of the more prestigious awards that one could win on Oscar night, this year the category is flush with great performances.
“I think [Oppenheimer’s] Cillian Murphy should win, his delivery as an actor is always immaculate and in that movie I feel like he did a really good job encapsulating the message and emotions that testing the nuclear bomb had,” Ming said.
2023 was a great year for movies and for the most part the nominations seem to be spot on. However, as we all know the Academy is gonna Academy, all we can hope for is another crazy celebrity moment to fuel our memes until next year.
