As I run awards for the DC Film Festival and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award, as well as being tangled up with the Hugo mess in the past, I tend to take awards seriously. The Saturn nominees came out recently, and they’re hardly a guide toward the best in genre film. That is, being nominated this year is not much of an honor. Ā As I think a genre Film (and TV) award is a good idea, this saddens me (well, not all that sad…but it is unfortunate).
My first thought was that everyone involved in voting had rotten taste (no “Kubo and the Two Strings” Really?), and that could be true, but that isn’t the big problem. Structurally it simply isn’t going to honor the best–not in nominations anyway. And that has to do with the categories. For a start, there’s too many.
Let’s look at the “Best Comic-to-Motion Picture Release” category. That is going to open up some strange comparisons–“A History of Violence” doesn’t really fit with “Superman.” So, a Superhero category would work better. But that wouldn’t make much difference this year–nothing to pull out, and adding “Max Steel” to those that qualify is unlikely to change anything. The problem is too narrow a category with too many nominees. Sticking with American films, there are only seven wide-released “Comics to Motion Picture” films: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,Ā Captain America: Civil War,Ā Deadpool,Ā Doctor Strange,Ā Suicide Squad, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, andĀ X-Men: Apocalypse. All the nomination process did was eliminate one film: TMNT: Out of the Shadows. I’d have dumped “Bats v Supes” if ranking them all, but it is silly to argue it as neither should be there. Equally it is hard to justify Suicide Squad and X-Men on the list. A nominee list should not include almost everything out there. So either have a lot fewer nominees (three would do), or merge the category in with others. Any award is only as good as what it honors. If it honors trash, then the award is trash, and my forming a category that has to end up taking everything, it is going to end up honoring films that should not be honored.
Then there is Fantasy. There’s a reasonable number of fantasy film, so it is a workable category in theory. But the Saturn Awards has a separate Animation category that siphons off films. It has a separate science fiction category that gets Star Wars films (even though Lucas called the series fantasy). Comic book movies, like “Doctor Strange” are out of the running as well as Horror films, that also have a category. Basically, they yanked away every good film, leaving a category of weak, also-rans, including two on my worst of the year list: “Ghost Busters” and “The BFG.”
Generally I think sticking with the three main sub-genres of fantastical film (SF, Fantasy, and Horror) is a good idea, but OK, they wanted to expand a bit into action, but they are confused on their categories. The Saturn Awards has an Action/Adventure category and a Thriller category, and those two are going to butt heads (and butt into Horror as well). So not only do we again run into some of my worst of the year picks as nominees for best of the year, but we get some strange choices. “The Accountant” was a good action film, but here it is nominated as a Thriller. OK, but now I really need to know what those terms mean. More amusing is “Hidden Figures” as an Action film. You remember that scene where the mathematicians get in that shoot out. Ā Yeah, me neither. I understand wanting to recognize it, but they don’t have a category. Perhaps dumping both those categories and putting in a “Science-related” category would work out better. That would also allow for documentaries.
Like most Awards that have a popular vote (or semi-popular in this case), they don’t have the breadth of viewing to pull off the awards in general, but certainly not with so many categories. Where is “The Love Witch“? It has gotten great responses, but it pretty much just made the festival circuit, so probable these folks missed it. Where is “The Girl With All The Gifts“? Every review I’ve read of it (including my own) declares it as one of the best films of the year and one of the greatest zombie films ever. But it had a limited release, so the Saturn voters never saw it. “Kubo and the Two Strings” is unquestionably the finest animated film of the year, but it didn’t get the advertising budget that “Zootopia” did, so again, the Saturn voters missed it. These folks don’t know cinema well enough to be voting.
I tried my best to fix their voting, to put in what I’d nominate in there categories, but it just doesn’t work. My first attempt gave me:
Comics-to-Film
- Captain America: Civil War
- Deadpool
- Doctor Strange
SF
- The Girl With All The Gifts
- Morgan
- Passengers
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- Star Trek Beyond
Fantasy
Animated
- Gantz: 0
- Kubo and the Two Strings
- Zootopia
And then I gave up, as I’m sticking in films that shouldn’t be nominated (Hello “Passengers“), even if they are the next best the field had to offer this year, and I can’t come up with the numbers with these categories. Fantasy comes up…sparse.
So The Saturn Awards were doomed before they even began voting. Too bad. Guess I’ll just have to do it myself.
