It should not be shocking in the least that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” failed to earn an Academy Award nomination for best picture. Only two other comic book adaptations — “Joker” (2019) and “Black Panther” (2018) — have ever earned that honor. Unlike those movies, “No Way Home” failed to earn nominations from any of the top guild awards, and it only earned one other Oscar nomination, for visual effects (as opposed to the 11 total nominations for “Joker” and seven for “Black Panther”).
And yet, in the wake of “No Way Home’s” astronomic financial success — to date, it’s earned over $1.7 billion worldwide, making it the sixth highest-grossing film of all time amid a global pandemic — the movie became something of a cause célèbre for those who believe the Oscars desperately need more popular nominees to remain relevant.
Indeed, this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences permanently expanded the best picture category to 10 nominees in part to increase the chances that blockbusters like “No Way Home” would make the cut. Instead, “Dune” is the sole major box office hit to earn a best picture nomination this year, having grossed $107.6 million domestically and $399 million worldwide — despite its day-and-date release on HBO Max. Meanwhile, the best picture nominees released by streamers — Apple’s “CODA,” and Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” and “The Power of the Dog” — have no recorded box office grosses whatsoever. If anything, the expanded best picture nomination slots ended up going to the kind of art house movies (“Nightmare Alley,” “Drive My Car”) that have been Oscar darlings for most of this century.
Granted, the Oscars haven’t been allergic to box office success, either, nominating recent high-grossing movies like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Get Out,” “Hidden Figures,” “The Martian” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” for best picture — not to mention that “Black Panther” and “Joker” were both billion-dollar grossing blockbusters. All of those movies, however, had a distinctive aesthetic approach more in line with the Academy’s sensibility of applauding standout artistic achievement. Both “Black Panther” and “Joker,” for example, earned nominations for costumes, production design, and score — “Black Panther” won Oscars all three of those categories — and “Joker” won Joaquin Phoenix his first Oscar for best actor.