Steven Spielberg feels that The Dark Knight should have gotten a Best Picture nom
Steven Spielberg praises Best Picture blockbuster contenders like Avatar 2, says The Dark Knight should have been first
Aux News Steven Spielberg
For all the times he’s grouped in with cinema’s old guard these days—and with good reason, considering he’s now tied with Martin Scorsese for second-most Best Director nominations in Oscars history—Steven Spielberg is still the godfather of the modern blockbuster. Those megabudget superhero movies can trace their roots back to Indiana Jones; colossal franchise films like Jurassic World can trace their roots back to, well, Jurassic Park. Given that, Spielberg has less outright snobbery about today’s blockbuster than perhaps his peers do. He welcomes those films into the Oscars fold, and in fact, thinks it should have come along a lot sooner.
Speaking with Deadline, the director says he was “really encouraged” by the Best Picture noms for Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way Of Water, films that stood a much better chance now that the category has expanded up to ten nominees. That change “came late for the film that should have been nominated a number of years ago, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight,” he adds. “That movie would have definitely garnered a Best Picture nomination today, so having these two blockbusters solidly presented on the top 10 list is something we should all be celebrating.”
Spielberg has historically been softer on comic book films than some other directors we could mention. He’s expressed his admiration for The Dark Knight before, alongside Richard Donner’s Superman and the first Iron Man before saying (at Cannes Film Festival in 2016, as reported by Omelete) that the superhero movie that “impressed” him most “is one that does not take itself too seriously: Guardians Of The Galaxy. When his projection was over, I left with the feeling of having seen something new in movies, without any cynicism or fear of being dark when needed.”
Nevertheless, he also predicted that superhero movies would go “the way of the Western” and eventually die out. “I’m only saying that these cycles have a finite time in popular culture,” he told The Associated Press (via THR) in 2015. “There will come a day when the mythological stories are supplanted by some other genre that possibly some young filmmaker is just thinking about discovering for all of us.”
But the genre might stick around long enough to cause the “implosion” of cinema, something The Fabelmans filmmaker also predicted back in 2013 (per The Hollywood Reporter): “That’s the big danger, and there’s eventually going to be an implosion—or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen megabudget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”
Perhaps Spielberg has regained some optimism in the last ten years that he’s able to celebrate the critical success of the year’s megabudget movies. In his conversation with Deadline, he’s even hopeful about the future of the theatrical release: “I think it will come back, but it’s coming back slowly, especially for dramas.” Time will tell if any of his predictions come to pass.
36 Comments
Well, Steven, if you believe, clap your hands!
Agreed.
Eh, sure, fine. But Heath Ledger made that flick, so it makes sense that he got the only major acting nod.
Such a simplified way of looking at that masterpiece. Everything was great about that film, but for folks like you: to each their own.
Avatar isn’t gonna win. Nor is Top Gun. That’s not why they’re there. It’s a nice thought to have nominated The Dark Knight but they hadn’t expanded the category yet but even if they had I don’t think it would have had a different fate than Avatar or Top Gun will. People love to forget that The Dark Knight was about a half an hour too long. When I saw it I got that same feelings when I saw Return of the King where it felt like the movie cycled through four different endings. When it cut to an establishing shot of the two ferries I was like “what there can’t be another action-set-piece this late in the film”. Like I didn’t hate it but The Dark Knight isn’t a flawless film.
So the Dark Knight should’ve been an hour long? Less when you take end credits into consideration.
The boats should’ve exploded. It’s the clear culmination of the events that preceded it. And the only way the actual ending makes sense.
What are you smoking? The movie is 2.5 hours long. Cutting 30 mins would give you a 2-hr movie, slight less when you take end credits into consideration.
Heath Ledger holds that movie together with duct tape. Like many Nolan movies, the plot makes no damn sense and falls apart in the third act. Like the Joker’s supposed to be chaos personified, right? And yet he’s got the most elaborate schemes we’ve ever seen, like putting a bomb in the belly of a guy in case he got caught and jailed, and having the bomb explode in the jail cell and kill EVERYONE ELSE in the jail cell and somehow leave his door open? His movies are 45 minutes too long and overly indulgent. He needs to stop writing with his brother, stop trying to make superhero movies more complicated than Momento, and just direct/produce. I’ll admit he has some of the best LOOKING movies out there; his direction and photography are usually absolutely stunning (Interstellar). But he can’t write his way out of a wet paper bag.His best movies will always be the ones at the beginning of his career: Following, Momento and The Prestige. He’s been getting worse with each one since, although I’m still cautiously optimistic for Oppenheimer.
I, for one, hope he and his brother never stop writing together
You’re allowed to, but I’m just grateful I called it quits before Tenet
I DO think the movie is overrated. And I hate to say it, but I do wonder if Ledger would have won the oscar if he had lived.Still, Black Panther got a best picture nomination, so if the bar is that low? TDK should have gotten one. I say that as someone who loved the BP movie, but it’s not best picture worthy. I mean, I understand why it got nominated(to pander) but still.
Ledger would have almost certainly not got the Oscar if he lived, they award Oscars posthumously mostly as a “lifetime achievement” award to pay respect.I forget the year they inflated the Best Movie category from 5 movies to 10, but it’s my conspiracy that they did this to promote more DVD sales of 5 additional movies going forward. Like, they got to put a sticker on the case that said “Oscar nominated”, back when DVD sales were still a thing.
And TDK really is a movie best watched only once. If you rewatch it you realize Joker’s plans made no sense and mostly relied on luck and the stupidity of law enforcement in Gotham.Either that or some sort of cosmic entity was pulling the strings making the timing of everything go just right.
The cops got even stupider in Rises, when Bane managed to trick all of them into getting locked in the sewers (I think? I’ve never watched the movie since its original release).
lol I forgot about that, they sent the ENTIRE police force down into the sewers, which was an obvious trap?I couldn’t get past Hardy’s dumb accent the entire movie. It’s like he just decided to do it on set one day and no one wanted to tell him otherwise so they just let him do it.
It did give us the delightful Bane on the Harley/Ivy cartoon, though.
“The streets will run RED, with RAZZIE-ZAZZIE”
I liked his earlier films (Memento in particular), but The Dark Knight Rises was one of the most depressing filmgoing experiences I’ve ever had—I genuinely felt like a worse person after seeing it. I finally tried to watch Inception just recently (so I could better appreciate Betty White’s appearance on Community), and I think I gave up after about ten minutes. I just don’t give a shit.
it was a ratings thing. they thought adding to the category and allowing more ‘popular/mainstream’ movies would boost ratings.
Nolan also loves to orphan scenes that have no logical conclusion in sake of just moving the narrative forward, knowing that most people won’t notice the first go-around. TDK, as much as I love it, has one of the most egregious examples: Joker and his henchmen invade a party with dozens of people in attendance, searching for Harvey Dent Rachel stands up to Joker right before Batman arrivesJoker pushes Rachel through a high rise window while all in attendance look onBatman throws himself out the window to rescue Rachel, leaving behind the Joker and his henchmen, still ostensibly looking for Dent, with all those dozens of people still there and under threatBatman and Rachel land on top of car, survive, share a quick quipEnd of sceneWhat happened with the Joker and his henchmen at the party? Did they continue to terrorize the party looking for Dent? Did they just leave? Who cares, apparently…
There wasn’t even a classic supervillain monologue about “you can only choose one, save this pretty lady or a bunch of other people!” ala Green Goblin. Like fuck, Batman just doomed an entire room full of people to be tortured at the hands of the Joker to save Maggie Gyllenhall, didn’t he? Joker himself must have been surprised.
It wasn’t super clear in the movie, but the Joker mentioned he thought Batman was Harvey based on the way he threw himself off the roof to save her. If we take that as truth, then the Joker would have had no reason to stay at the party. Of course, this is the Joker, so he more than likely would have caused some mayhem before leaving, but in his mind Harvey was no longer there.
Totally agree. It should have ended when Harvey turned into two-face. That would have made it a bit too short, but Nolan could easily have filled 20 minutes fleshing out the characters some more.
“What there can’t be another action-set-piece this late in the film…” Do you know how many action movies end on an action-set-piece? And you’re wrong about this one, The Dark Knight doesn’t even nearly draw out the ending like Return of the King, which has almost 25 minutes of remaining film time after Sauron is destroyed.But lots of other movies drop an action sequence within the final moments.Take The Batman with Robert Pattinson for example, a movie that’s about 30 minutes longer than The Dark Knight. The very end of that movie resolves shortly after the whole flooding incident and fight sequences with the goons in the rafters, which occurs within the final 30 minutes of the film.How about Gladiator? Which is exactly the same length as The Dark Knight. That also basically ends mere moment after the fight sequence between Maximus and Commodus in the final 20 minutes. How about a different movie…? Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone ends about 5 minutes after this whole giant action sequence at the cryo-prison. Terminator 2, another movie that’s exactly the same length as The Dark Knight also ends right after the whole action sequence in the molten metal factory.Seriously, this list will go on and on… grouping in lots of action movies with an approximate 2h30m runtime that have ending action-set-pieces within the final 20-30 minutes of the film. That’s such a standard thing and so much of an absurdly hypocritical point that you basically made yourself sound like someone that’s never seen an action movie before. I’m sure you have, but again, the point you’re making might as well just be aimed at the entire action genre, rather than just The Dark Knight itself. So if that’s all you got, then The Dark Knight is flawless.IMO, the only major problem I had with film was Batman’s deeply pitched voice, but it wasn’t all that terrible compared to his yelling voice in Batman Begins.
I also never see it discussed that the bat suit actually looks worse in The Dark Knight. It looked way better in Batman Begins. I undertand the practicality of the moveable neck but he looked way more intimidating with the solid granite cowl from the first film.
Begins was the best Nolan Batman because it was relatively coherent. Begins>Dark Knight>Rises
I think he’s making a good point about the cyclical nature of film (and everything) and the way Westerns died off. It also happened to 80s Action movies, Slasher flicks, and a bunch of other genres. It will eventually happen to the Comic Book franchise movies, too. That doesn’t make them bad movies or bad genres; it just acknowledges that we’re in a cultural moment and not a forever shift in movies.I’m not so sure about Dramas bringing people back to theaters, but I hope he’s right that we’ll all want to go back. I suspect it’ll be Comedies that bring us back together—I think there’s far more of a draw to laugh together than there is to cry together. Of course many great movies make us do both.
Agreed, although I rarely go to the theater for comedies either. I typically only go for big budget stuff that needs to be seen on the big screen and horror, where you need the commitment of being in a theater (and the other people) for it to work properly. There are exceptions where the cinematography is amazing, like Banshees of Insherin.
I’d like to agree with your 2nd paragraph, but I think the theater issue isn’t really the types of movies but the theater experience itself. There’s 2 issues at play that are linked; price and availability. For one, ticket prices have gotten pretty expensive and that’s before you even get any kind of snacks. The other issue is most all new movies will be available to watch on a streaming service somewhere within 1 to 3 months of its theatrical release. So why pay 10, 15, 20 bucks (depending on location) for a ticket in the theater when you can wait a couple of months to see the film in your house on a streaming service you’re likely already paying for? This is why comic book movies are still theater draws. It’s big spectacle. It looks better in a theater. Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, Top Gun, these types of movies are more an experience. It’s worth paying the ticket price than waiting a couple months for streaming at home. Standard dramas, comedies, etc most people are just gonna wait. So they either need to lower the ticket price or extend the wait time for streaming release to entice people to go see it. You use to have to wait 6 months to a year before a movie would be on HBO or DVD release (even longer back in the VHS days). Go back to that and I bet more people would catch a movie in the theater.
I love that for a brief moment last year, there was a ridiculous rumour that Steven Spielberg was gonna direct MCU Fantastic Four film. If anyone could get the humoristic family set up, it would have been him.
I feel like I’m back in 2009 reading this headline and article. When the Academy announced the change starting in ‘09 that they were expanding the Best Picture field from 5 films to a maximum of 10, everyone knew (as was widely commented in the media) that The Dark Knight’s omission in ‘08 was the primary catalyst for the change.
And Wall-E.
There’s an argument that it was one of the Best Pictures of the year that year, but the Oscars and noms don’t go to the Best Pictures. They go to what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences liked the most, which given the membership of that body, is an entirely different thing. For example, the Academy is self-absorbed and loves movies about Hollywood and making movies.
Logan, despite its flaws*, is probably the closest that a superhero movie has come to telling a mature, intelligent story worthy of real award consideration. It’s moving, meditative, and anchored by arguably the two best performances (three, if you count the stellar debut of Dafne Keen) ever committed to a superhero story. * [spoilers] I genuinely consider it a plot hole, or at least plot contrivance, that the Logan of Logan is so reckless when it comes to civilian safety. I find it hard to believe that, even in those desperate circumstances, he would stay with that family, knowing the brutal villains would likely track him to their house. That whole interlude seemed contrived for the “shock” value of murdering the innocent family, and defied logic.
Why did the freaking Reader get nominated for Best Picture instead? Weinstein payolla? It’s a sin the Academy has been paying for almost 2 decades, that’s how bad The Reader being nominated was