Oscars 2019: Marvel’s Black Panther Getting Best Picture Nomination Is an Achievement That Deserves to Be Lauded and Thrashed! Here’s Why

Congratulations, Marvel! You have done what your competitor couldn't -  make a superhero movie get nominated for the Best Picture. If you are not aware of this till now, Marvel's last year blockbuster Black Panther has got seven nominations at the 91st Academy Awards ceremony, including the Best Picture. This is quite an honour for a superhero movie, and a double boom for Marvel, whose Avengers: Infinity War has also gotten nominated for the Best Visual Effects. Oscars 2019 Nominations: Roma, The Favourite, Black Panther Lead the Academy Award Nominees! Check Out the Full List Here!

The Academy Award 2019 nominations, while expected considering the hype around the movie, has left the entire Marvel team in awe, with everyone congratulating each other for the honour. The Best Picture nomination, first for a movie of this genre, is something that even Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, arguably the best superhero ever made, can claim (even though TDK still holds the record for the maximum nominations of 8).  Not Black Panther But This Superhero Movie Holds A Record For Most Academy Award Nominations!

However, Black Panther getting this kind of recognition is inviting raised eyebrows from many quarters. They are of the belief that Black Panther had sailed through the Oscars because the movie was playing with the minority (for the whitey people) card.

Now, there are two ways to look at this argument on whether Black Panther deserves so many nominations. Let's look at the positive side first -

Why Black Panther Deserves The Nominations

For one, I am glad that Black Panther was not nominated for the Best Visual Effects, since the CGI in the third act of the film was a mess. Also, its nominations in the technical categories like Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Costume Design are well-deserved. The score for the film was quite popular and hence the nominations for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. Oscars 2019 Nominations: Black Panther Getting 7 Noms to Bradley Cooper’s Snub, 15 Big Surprises From Academy Award List of Nominees!

Now comes to murky part - The Best Picture nomination. Does Black Panther deserve to get one, when The Dark Knight or even Spider-Man 2 didn't get one? Let's remember one thing here - Black Panther was not nominated in the years where The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2 got nominated, so the outrage over thins doesn't make that much sense.

It is chosen for the Best Picture nominee in the year where the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book, two good but not great movies, have gotten nominated. Compared to these two films, Black Panther is definitely a better choice and deserves to be on the list.

Black Panther's nominations also make the Academy jury look relevant to the current times where the superhero boom is on a high. They can't just ignore the fact that superhero movies are to be overlooked just because they serve a mainstream audience. Some of the recent Academy Award Best Picture winners don't even have a shelf-life of more than a couple of years. How many of you actually remember Spotlight that won the Best Picture in 2015 over the more persistent Mad Max: Fury Road?

Black Panther is not just a film, it is a moment in cinema where an ethnicity that has been repressed for centuries got their time to shine at the box office and earn more than a billion dollars at the box office worldwide. And therefore, there is nothing wrong that Oscars wants to give the movie some love.

Now, onto the other side...

Why Black Panther Was an Over-Hyped Nominee

I am ignoring all the technical categories that Black Panther has been nominated and focus only on one category - Best Picture. Sure, Black Panther is a movement that deserves to be cherished - a superhero film that addresses the racial tensions in a very mainstream manner, with some very terrific production detail. However, Oscars are more for choosing the Best Picture and not the Best Culturally Significant Picture. If we look at that aspect, then, in my very humble opinion, Black Panther is not even the best superhero movie of the year.

Don't get me wrong - I pretty much enjoyed Black Panther, each and every time I get to watch it, especially Ryan Coogler's direction and Michael B Jordan's performance, not to mention the score. However, I feel that both Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, released last year, were much better films than Black Panther. Handling multiple plotlines and more than four dozen characters in a movie and yet making it such an amazing watch is what makes Avengers: Infinity War so great.

As for Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, it may not be just the Best Animated film of last year, but also the best superhero movie of the last decade. And yet, both Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse had to be content with one nomination in Best Visual Effects and Best Animated Feature respectively.

Black Panther, while technically great, had a lot of flaws like a very okayish premise and an average third act. It may not even rank into many of the critics' best superhero film lists of the year. Even if we ignore the fact that it is not the best superhero movie, there is also this another observation that there were better films that came out in 2018 that deserved to be nominated. The one at the top of my mind are Hereditary (Toni Colette also not getting a Best Actress nomination is a travesty), A Quiet Place (content with a couple of technical nominations), Eighth Grade, First Reformed all ignored.

However, that is less of Black Panther's fault, and more of the jury for ignoring the better movies of the year and instead of looking to laud the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book. Anyway, it is very less likely that Black Panther would be adjudged the Best Picture, though with the wind waving in its favour, you never know!

So which side do you belong to - do you think that Black Panther's nomination for the Best Picture is well-deserved or is it simply over-hyped? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Till then, it's 'WAKANDA FOREVER!'

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 23, 2019 03:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).