Award Nominations Show Much Love for Sci-Fi
The Academy Awards® have long had an arms-length relationship with genre, seemingly only recognizing the red-headed stepchild of Hollywood in public when it couldn’t be ignored. And even then, the big wins of late have gone to epic-scope fantasy productions (oh, hello The Lord of the Rings!). But this year, the industry is showing mad love for science fiction, at least in the nominations: four SF films (Mad Max: Fury Road, Ex Machina, The Martian, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens) collected 24 Oscar® nods between them, and, for once, they weren’t all in the below-the-line technical categories.
The biggest story of the day is the 10 nominations for George Miller’s magnum opus Mad Max: Fury Road, which brilliantly dragged the post-apocalyptic ’80s dieselpunk saga into the 21st century with a progressive screenplay that ladled powerful, relevant doses of feminism and representation (gender, race, and age) into a whitewall-to-whitewall gonzo action extravaganza. Miller is a heavy favorite to win Best Director honors, and the film also earned nominations for best film, cinematography, costuming, makeup, production design, editing, sound effects editing, sound mixing, and visual effects. Sadly, Charlize Theron’s instantly iconic turn as Imperator Furiosa was overlooked, which makes us, well, furious.
Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s breakout novel The Martian was no slouch either, staging a repeat performance of the success of spiritual sister film Gravity a few years back. It picked up 7 nominations, including Best Picture (though Scott himself was surprisingly snub). Matt Damon is a Best Actor contender for bringing to life the eternally optimistic, relentlessly foul-mouthed astronaut Mark Watney. Drew Goddard’s (The Cabin in the Woods) adapted screenplay also earned a nomination, which, I believe, makes him the first Buffy the Vampire Slayer writing alum to vie for an Oscar®. Other nominations include best visual effects, production design, sound editing, and sound mixing.
Though Star Wars: The Force Awakens echoed A New Hope‘s story beats, it wasn’t quite able to capture the same success at the Academy Awards® (the 1977 original remains the only film in the saga to be nominated for Best Picture or Best Director). The mega-blockbuster did pick up five nods, however, including the gimmies: John Williams for Best Original Score (his fourth for a Star Wars film) and Best Visual Effects. The certified biggest film of all time also earned nods for editing, sound editing, and sound mixing.
And let’s not forget the year’s most successful small-scale SF drama: Alex Garland’s A.I. chiller Ex Machina earned two nominations, for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Screenplay.
Here’s hoping some of this success carries over to the ceremony itself, which will take place February 28.
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