An Honor To Be Nominated: X-Men: Days Of Future Past

THE CONTENDERX-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014)

Number of Nominations: 1 – Visual Effects (Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer)

Number of Wins: Zero

By now, it’s widely accepted that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a blind spot when it comes to superhero movies. Even though the decision to increase the number of Best Picture nominees was largely seen as a corrective to the specific omission of The Dark Knight back in 2009, there still haven’t been any superheroes in the category since then. (Unless you count Birdman and you shouldn’t.)

Granted, there hasn’t been an overabundance of superhero movies recently that have really deserved a Best Picture nod. Deadpool’s surprise nomination for a PGA Award only raised its Oscar chances from impossible to unlikely. But perhaps more surprising is how poorly superheroes have done across the board, even in categories they might be expected to dominate. It barely requires two hands to count the number of superhero movies that have won any kind of Academy Award: Tim Burton’s Batman, Spider-Man 2, The Incredibles (which wasn’t based on a comic book but I’ll allow it), The Dark Knight, Big Hero 6, and now (sigh) Suicide Squad. If you want to stretch it, we could include Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy, which received a comparatively warm reception from the Academy, and Men In Black, a movie most people either don’t realize or don’t remember was based on a comic book. That’s almost as bad a showing as movies based on toys, games and theme park attractions.

Today, superheroes are an inescapable part of the pop culture landscape, generating billions of dollars and dominating both movie theatres and television. But when 20th Century Fox gambled on X-Men back in 2000, superhero movies were still risky. These days, we seem to get a new superhero movie every few weeks. But that first X-Men movie was the only one of its kind that year and the first real superhero movie we’d seen since Spawn and Batman & Robin fizzled out back in ’97.

(Note: Marvel did have its first taste of success with Blade in 1998 but the marketing downplayed its comic book DNA to focus more on bad-ass vampire action. And yeah, M. Night Shyamalan’s deconstructionist take on superheroes Unbreakable also came out in 2000 but I think we can agree that it’s a different type of beast than the movies we’re discussing here.)

Perhaps because it was a little early to the party, the X-Men franchise has never quite received the respect some of its contemporaries have enjoyed. At first, it lived in the shadow of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies. The fact that Bryan Singer’s X2 outperformed the original both with critics and at the box office was soon overshadowed by how much Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 improved on its predecessor’s reputation. Both franchises were damaged by their third installments. But while Raimi decided to cut and run and Sony chose to start over after Spider-Man 3, Fox kept on truckin’ after Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand stumbled with critics. After all, the money coming in was still good.

Shortly after the Marvel Cinematic Universe launched with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in 2008, the X-Movies entered the spinoff/prequel stage with the misbegotten X-Men Origins: Wolverine. While Marvel was being lauded for their ambition and scope, Fox was beginning to look like they didn’t know what they were doing with the X-Men. At this point, it would have been easy for Fox to follow in Sony’s footsteps and do a hard reset on the franchise. Instead, they doubled down on their previous work with X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days Of Future Past, two movies that allowed them to keep all of the elements that were working and get rid of those that didn’t.

The culmination of all these years’ worth of world-building, Days Of Future Past is, if anything, a little too ambitious for its own good. By its very nature, it was always going to be a little complicated in its attempt to reconcile multiple timelines. But while the X-Men movies have always featured sprawling ensemble casts, DOFP seems to go out of its way to introduce even more characters, some of whom are barely given more than a minute or two to establish themselves. At times, it feels like the movie should come with a cheat sheet just so you can keep track of who’s who.

Still, whenever a franchise can still surprise and impress audiences and critics with its seventh installment after over a decade, it must be doing something right. After Marvel and Sony worked out an arrangement to incorporate Spider-Man into the MCU, fans began to hope Marvel might work out a similar deal with Fox. Besides the X-Men, of course, the studio also has the rights to the Fantastic Four. Since that property has been thoroughly botched, fans would love Marvel to just take control of the FF lock, stock and barrel. But even fans who want the X-Men to fight alongside the Avengers don’t want to see these movies wiped clean. Ideally, they’d like the timelines to somehow merge or blend together so that they can be incorporated into the MCU. It isn’t likely to happen but it does prove that Fox has made more right decisions than wrong ones when it comes to the X-Men.

Despite fan loyalty, critical acclaim (most of the time) and box office grosses of over 4 billion dollars, no X-Men movie received a single Oscar nomination until Days Of Future Past was recognized for Visual Effects. Why this one? Not that the effects work isn’t impressive but is it truly that much better than what had come before?

Well, it is and it isn’t, which is probably a big reason why it didn’t win (it lost to Interstellar). Visual Effects is actually a tough, somewhat strange category. It’s one of those categories where, if the voters aren’t all that impressed by the year’s eligible films, there can be only three or two nominees or they’ll just give it to somebody outright. Some years, it’s not unheard of for the Academy to turn this car around and nobody gets an award. Lately there’s been no shortage of effects-heavy movies for their consideration but if you want a shot at this prize, be prepared to show audiences at least one thing that is impossible.

The effects in the X-Men movies have always been a bit workmanlike. They’re fine. There’s nothing really wrong with them, for the most part. But there also isn’t anything like the opening sequence in Gravity or that tidal wave in Interstellar that lingers in your memory and has audiences asking how they did that. Claws coming out of hands, girls walking through walls and folks massaging their temples or waving their hands in the air while they manipulate ice or fire or whatever? That’s all very nice but we’ve seen it plenty of times before.

The post-apocalyptic hellscape of DOFP’s future scenes and the shape-shifting Sentinels certainly didn’t hurt the movie’s chances at a nomination. But if one thing put the movie over the top, it was the “Time In A Bottle” sequence featuring Evan Peters’ Quicksilver making short work of an attack in a cramped, sprinkler-soaked kitchen. As entertaining as previous entries had been, none of them really had this kind of conversation starter setpiece before. Nightcrawler’s infiltration of the White House in X2 came close but it wasn’t scored to a Jim Croce tune. Never underestimate the power of a pop song to help land a scene in the film history books.

Even though the X-Men’s first time at bat didn’t bring home a trophy, there’s no reason to suspect Days Of Future Past will be the franchise’s last nomination. Even though Hugh Jackman (and apparently Patrick Stewart) are saying goodbye to the series with Logan (out this weekend), the series itself will continue. Considering the rapturous reviews Logan has been receiving, it isn’t too far out of the realm of possibility that it may find itself in contention next year. Jackman’s 17-year stewardship of the character is unprecedented and an impressive achievement in its own right but arguably the biggest hurdle standing between him and a Best Actor nomination is the calendar. Oscar voters are not known for their long memories and nomination time is a long way away. And while actors aren’t often recognized for this type of role, it would be kind of nice to see Jackman’s work given the validation of a nomination.

The X-Men movies have been taken for granted for too long. They’ve been doing this longer and more successfully than most of their contemporaries. And they haven’t been content to simply rehash the same formula over and over again. Movies like Deadpool and Logan (not to mention TV shows like Legion) show a willingness to innovate and expand the genre’s parameters. After all these years, you’d think they’d have more than a single Oscar nomination to show for it.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past is available on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

An Honor To Be Nominated: Star Wars

THE CONTENDER: Star Wars (1977)

Number of Nominations: 10 – Picture, Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), Director (George Lucas), Original Screenplay (George Lucas), Art Direction/Set Direction (John Barry, Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley & Roger Christian), Sound (Don MacDougall, Ray West, Bob Minkler & Derek Ball), Original Score (John Williams), Film Editing (Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas & Richard Chew), Costume Design (John Mollo), Visual Effects (John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune & Robert Blalack)

Number of Wins: 6 (Art Direction/Set Direction, Sound, Original Score, Film Editing, Costume Design and Visual Effects) plus a Special Achievement Award to Ben Burtt for Sound Effects

Whenever people complain about the Oscars (which happens pretty much any time the Oscars are discussed), they’ll often say that the Academy is a bunch of elitist snobs. Popular movies, the ones normal people actually like to go see and enjoy, are almost never nominated and they certainly never win.

But even a cursory glance at a list of nominees over the years shows this isn’t true. Plenty of blockbusters have been nominated over the years. Some of them, like The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, Titanic, and Gladiator, even won. In those rare cases where a movie actually becomes a phenomenon, it becomes almost impossible for the Academy to ignore.

That was certainly the case back in 1977 when Star Wars, not yet Episode IV or A New Hope or any of that other nonsense, crashed Hollywood’s biggest night with ten nominations. I don’t imagine anyone believed that an homage to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers would actually win Best Picture and I’d give just about anything to have been a fly on the wall to hear Alec Guinness’ reaction at being nominated for Best Supporting Actor. I’d bet that he a good, long laugh over that one.

Don’t get me wrong. When I was a kid, I loved Star Wars. I turned 8 in 1977, so I was the movie’s target audience. I saw it countless times in the theatre, I had the toys and action figures, I collected the Marvel comic book. If it had anything to do with Star Wars, I wanted it.

You’ll note I used the past tense. I don’t love Star Wars anymore. I still like it very much but it’s always dangerous to revisit a movie you loved as a kid. There’s always a risk that you’ll be a little embarrassed by it and wonder why you ever liked it in the first place. Fortunately (and perhaps surprisingly, if you haven’t seen it in a while) Star Wars holds up. Watching it again recently, I enjoyed it and could see why I loved it so much back then. It’s a grand, rousing space adventure and I’d certainly never seen anything like it before.

But I don’t love it anymore. Part of it is simply that I grew up, my tastes expanded, and I moved on. I also loved Kraft Macaroni & Cheese when I was a kid. If I had some today, I might still like it. But I haven’t had any in years and I haven’t really missed it.

But another part of it is that George Lucas couldn’t leave well enough alone. It’s ironic that the version of Star Wars that’s widely available today isn’t the same movie that won six Academy Awards. Starting with the 1997 Special Edition re-releases, Lucas has continued fiddling around with the film, tweaking effects, adding scenes, and generally making a mess of what was perfectly fine to begin with.

All of the new digital effects are unnecessary and distracting. That would be bad enough. But the movie won an Oscar for film editing. Watching the new tinkered-with version, you’d be hard-pressed to understand why. Establishing shots now go on too long, simply to give you enough time to properly appreciate all the added bits of business.

Lucas’ biggest mistake was adding back in a deleted scene of Han Solo encountering Jabba the Hutt before taking off from Mos Eisley. Supposedly, Lucas cut the scene because he couldn’t afford to create the stop-motion creature Harrison Ford would have been interacting with. Maybe so, but it seems more likely that it was dropped because the scene serves absolutely no purpose. It simply repeats almost verbatim the same information we just heard in the cantina scene with Greedo. It slows the movie down just when it should be picking up the pace.

George Lucas’ steadfast refusal to release the original theatrical versions of these movies borders on mania. In 2006, the theatrical version was finally released as a limited edition DVD. But Lucas stacked the deck against them by putting out transfers that were done for a laserdisc release back in 1993. You could almost hear him saying, “See? Don’t my new versions look so much better?”

I know, I know, every time Star Wars gets messed with, the Internet goes ballistic. It would be easy to write it all off as fanboy nitpicking. But it goes beyond whether or not Han shot first. Take another look at the names of the people who won Oscars for their work on Star Wars. George Lucas is not one of them. No matter what he’d like to believe, Lucas did not single-handedly create this film. To continually change it is a sign of disrespect for his collaborators. It says their work wasn’t good enough.

If you want to look at Star Wars as just one small part of a much bigger saga that begins with Jar Jar Binks and ends with an Ewok hoedown, that’s fine. That’s certainly how George Lucas sees it. But if you want to view it as a significant cultural landmark from 1977, that’s become increasingly difficult. Movies are products of the times in which they were made. Audiences should always have the option to see them within their proper context. Maybe someday, we’ll be able to do that again with Star Wars.

Star Wars, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, is available on Blu-ray and DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

An Honor To Be Nominated: The Turning Point

THE CONTENDER: The Turning Point (1977)

Number of Nominations: 11 – Picture, Actress (Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine), Supporting Actor (Mikhail Baryshnikov), Supporting Actress (Leslie Browne), Director (Herbert Ross), Original Screenplay (Arthur Laurents), Cinematography (Robert Surtees), Art Direction/Set Direction (Albert Brenner & Marvin March), Sound (Theodore Soderberg, Paul Wells, Douglas O. Williams & Jerry Jost), Film Editing (William Reynolds)

Number of Wins: None

Pop quiz, hotshot. Which movie was the biggest loser in Oscar history, winning none of the multiple awards it was nominated for? If you answered The Color Purple, you’re only half right. Spielberg’s movie is actually tied for this dubious honor with Herbert Ross’s The Turning Point. But while most remember the Academy’s shut-out of The Color Purple as a form of highway robbery, no one really blinked an eye when The Turning Point lost, even at the time.

Some of the reasons for this are fairly obvious. For one thing, there’s nothing even remotely controversial about The Turning Point. For another, Steven Spielberg’s reputation has only increased since The Color Purple lost out. Today, the idea of a Steven Spielberg film is so ingrained in pop culture that Super 8 can be simply described as an homage to Spielberg and audiences immediately know what to expect.

Herbert Ross, who passed away in 2001, is most often remembered as a capable craftsman but not a filmmaker with his own distinctive style. He began his career as a Broadway choreographer and many of his best known films were musicals, including Funny Lady, Pennies From Heaven, and Footloose. He also frequently helmed comedies, often written by Neil Simon, including California Suite and The Sunshine Boys. In fact, Ross had two films up for Oscars in 1977: The Turning Point and Simon’s The Goodbye Girl, for which Richard Dreyfuss won Best Actor.

In the immediate aftermath of the awards, the media had a lot to talk about, all of which was more interesting than the fact that The Turning Point hadn’t won anything. Woody Allen won several awards for Annie Hall and literally could not have cared less. Not only did he not attend the ceremony, he didn’t even bother watching it on TV. He was busy playing clarinet at Michael’s Pub in New York, as he usually did on Mondays.

However, the evening’s biggest brouhaha came when Vanessa Redgrave won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Julia. Redgrave’s nomination had been picketed by members of the Jewish Defense League, upset over her very vocal support of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. After she won, she used her acceptance speech to rail against the “Zionist hoodlums” gathered outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. In light of all this, the fact that a ballet movie had just lost more Oscars than any other film in history didn’t really matter all that much.

My mother took me to see The Turning Point back in 1977, presumably because she couldn’t find a sitter. I remembered nothing about it other than my physical presence in the theater. Of course, I was an eight-year-old boy at the time, probably upset that my mom was dragging me to a ballet movie when Star Wars was most likely still playing right next door. So I was curious to see The Turning Point again for the first time, hopefully from a slightly more mature perspective, to see how it held up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hold up all that well.

The movie is really a cliché-ridden soap opera with MacLaine and Bancroft as two old friends who used to be friendly rivals in the American Ballet Company. When MacLaine became pregnant with her first child, she dropped out to marry and raise a family. Bancroft went on to become a star, touring the world and becoming a legend. After MacLaine’s oldest daughter (Leslie Browne) is accepted into the company, old jealousies reignite. MacLaine resents Bancroft’s stardom, Bancroft becomes a surrogate mother to Browne, and every dramatic beat of the story can be recited by heart by anyone who’s ever seen an episode of Days Of Our Lives.

Even so, it’s not hard to understand why The Turning Point garnered so many nominations in spite of, or perhaps because of, its familiarity. Hollywood loves a backstage drama and this one revels in all the old tropes. MacLaine and Bancroft do the best they can with the melodramatic dialogue they’re forced to deliver. After Natalie Portman won her Oscar for Black Swan, there was a minor, pointless controversy over how much dancing she actually did herself. The Turning Point sidesteps this issue by barely showing Bancroft on stage at all, leaving the dancing to trained professionals.

In fact, there really is only one reason to watch The Turning Point and that’s Mikhail Baryshnikov. It’s hard for me to imagine that some may now know Baryshnikov primarily through his stint on Sex And The City. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, he was a big deal and watching The Turning Point, it’s easy to see why. He moves with an almost preternatural grace, spinning, twisting, and leaping in a way that seems to defy gravity. When Ross turns his cameras on Baryshnikov and the company, the movie truly does come alive.

If you liked Black Swan, I encourage you to check out The Turning Point. It may not be as good a film but in some ways, it may be the better ballet movie. At least here, the dancers look like they’re enjoying themselves. Compare their faces to those in Black Swan, where everyone acts as though they’ve been condemned by a vengeful god to painfully contort their bodies for all eternity. In Darren Aronofsky’s film, it’s almost as if the dancers are driven to do something they hate. In Ross’ world, we see them doing what they love. But when they stop dancing and start talking, you realize that this time, the Academy got it right.

The Turning Point was available on DVD from Anchor Bay (under license from 20th Century Fox) but that release is now out of print. For those with region-free players, there are several import options available, including a Danish Blu-ray release.