Avengers: Endgame truly had it all. And after debuting, it writhed around in its piles and pools of money, getting bills dirty with sweat and tears and becoming the highest-grossing film of all-time, dethroning Avatar. Those silly billies at Disney and Marvel then had the audacity to push many For Your Consideration campaigns for the film, including Best Actor for Robert Downey Jr. (haha), Best Visual Effects (sure, makes sense) and, most importantly, Best Picture (ooookay). Despite their efforts, though, Endgame now has a distinct difference from every other Highest Grosser Of All-Time, as it’s the only one to not secure a Best Picture nomination.
In fact, Endgame was only nominated for Visual Effects, which it lost to 1917 and its faux one-take existence. Every other at-the-time highest grosser throughout the ages had been nominated for the top prize of the year at the Oscars. Gone With The Wind, the original highest grosser for almost 40 years, swept the Oscars in 1939 as that year’s Best Picture winner. When The Sound of Music dethroned it in 1966, it took home five Oscars, including, once again, Best Picture. Similar stories can be told of The Godfather, Jaws, Jurassic Park and all the way through to my nemesis James Cameron’s 3D blue people film. While not all were Best Picture winners, all were at least nominated. Not Endgame though.
It’s kind of surprising that the most commercially-successful film of all time didn’t really get a lot of awards attention. Just the concept in and of itself, if you removed any context like, for example, knowing Endgame is a superhero flick, seems ludicrous. No awards for a movie that everyone’s seen at least once? Talk about not giving the people what they want, eh?
Then again, uh, no. No offense, but while I think Endgame did a good enough job tying up a decade’s worth of stories, it’s nowhere near Best Picture territory. Perhaps Best Picture Featuring Spiky Alien Fruits – sure, why not? But as a standalone film, judged on its own merits, it’s hardly a movie, you know? It’s in and of itself only a summation of multiple stories. Not quite a coda, but basically the last few chapters of a book we’ve all been reading for years.
I really wonder if Disney thought anybody would take their Oscar campaign for Avengers: Endgame seriously. I also wonder if Disney knows about this streak of highest grossers getting nominated. In any case, awards don’t mean a whole lot anyway when you can literally buy multiple countries just off of how much one film made. Take that, Gone With the Wind!