A message to rabid fans of "The Dark Knight"

Obviously, The Dark Knight had quite an amazing year. Not only was it a commercial smash, becoming the second biggest domestic hit of all time (behind Titanic), but it also received rave reviews, and not just for Heath Ledger's performance. And now there's the increasingly likely chance that The Dark Knight could take another massive leap forward for "comic book movies" (although it's much more than that) and become a Best Picture nominee. In spite of what I'm getting ready to say, I would actually be thrilled it that happened, considering that so many of the end of the year "Oscar-bait" films have either underwhelmed, or simply been very-good-but-not-great. Now, that being said, there are some who are taking The Dark Knight's Oscar campaign a little bit too far. Take the opening of this "review" written back in July just after the film's release....

Note to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Usually you have a tendency to stick your nose in the air at genre films. Your taste has become less and less based in reality, and you are in danger of becoming irrelevant. If you want to avoid this, you must nominate “The Dark Knight” for Best Picture, and not only must Heath Ledger be nominated for Best Supporting Actor; he better win it. Otherwise you will become the joke many already suspect your organization of being.

There are so many things wrong with this. First, since when is this guy in a position to try and bully The Academy? This is, after all, from a website that was only started in mockery of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Yes, one could say that the Academy (particularly the older/more traditional members) does sometimes ignore "genre films" (although, isn't EVERY film part of at least one genre?). But apparently the Oscar success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or even the fact that the original Star Wars was nominated for Best Picture, isn't enough to appease some of the true rabids. Perhaps the weakest argument the writer makes is that the Academy's taste is, "less based in reality" (what on earth does that mean?) and that they are in danger of, "becoming irrelevant". Okay, so maybe he's upset that the Academy tends to go for movies that don't make a lot of money (again, completely ignoring the Oscar love for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Titanic and Chicago) but is that really a real reason to call someone out? According to his logic, the Academy is almost a joke because they reward films that don't always make a bunch of money, thereby implying that the masses didn't rush out to see them. However, is it really the Academy's fault that a lot of the movies they nominate don't have massive box office returns? No, that blame goes to the studios who open films in 10 theaters and expand them across the nation at a glacial pace. And going back to the issue of popularity, if the 2007 Oscars had been based purely on "what the greatest number of American people saw", then the Best Picture nominees would have looked like this:

• Spider-man 3
• Shrek the Third
• Transformers
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the only really good film of the five)

Yikes. So, back to that review excerpt, the other issue that infuriates me is that he demands that The Dark Knight be nominated for Picture, and that Heath Ledger must not only be nominated for supporting actor, but that he MUST WIN or else the Academy will be a complete joke. While I do think that the movie should be nominated and that Ledger should win, to say that Ledger MUST win isn't just whiny, but it's insulting to all of the other supporting actor contenders throughout the year; this guy is saying that those other men don't matter, because "OMG HEATH LEDGER GAVE LIKE DA BEST PERFORMANCE EVAAAAH!!!" And if The Dark Knight doesn't get nominated, maybe it's not because of an anti-comic book bias, but maybe the Academy simply thought that there were five movies more deserving of the spots. Get over it. If all this whining and moaning continues, it could very well spoil Ledger's increasingly likely Oscar. No one likes sore winners.