The Oscars hates films with audiences: what happened to Dune: Part Two?

The very best film of the year was snubbed on Oscars night, apparently because it was just too damn popular

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Let’s face it, this year’s Oscars race was a pretty low interest affair, at least as far as actual cinema goers are concerned. While Anora was a great indie flick, it had very little following, being the smallest grossing film to win the big prize since The Hurt Locker in 1990.

Not that box office returns should be the primary way to judge a film’s worth but the problem comes when richly deserving, highly artistic films are snubbed because they also have been immensely popular at the box office.

Dune: Part Two is the film in question, with that awkward ‘Part Two’ seemingly proving enough to put off sniffy academy voters. It ended up with two Oscars for Best Sound and Best visual effects.

The first Dune film won six Oscars, but they were all technical awards too. Both films were nominated for Best Picture, though neither were realistic contenders. Particularly this time around; a sci-fi blockbuster sequel just didn’t feel right.

Too many spaceships. Too many large worms. Too many people paying to see it ($715 million worldwide earnings thus far).

Inverted snobbery was the problem. How can such a juggernaut be given serious industry awards? Barbie fell foul to a similar way of thinking, although Dune 2 surely had more in common with the Barbie-beating Oppenheimer.

Alright, Christopher Nolan’s work was a historical biography with considerable weight, but Denis Villeneuve used Frank Herbert’s novels to display some serious visionary auteur skills.

Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part Two

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

And I don’t simply mean in conjuring spectacle, although the black and white fight sequence in the film featuring Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was worth the ticket price alone.

No there was a sense of thematic integrity to the film and showed a new maturity to Villeneuve’s film-making which took it way above his previous patchy show-off affairs like Enemy or Blade Runner 2049. At last, he had made something meaty, which dealt not just with ideas around capitalism and religion, but explored ways of living and how to understand and shape our fates, what with the whole arc of Paul Atreides discovering the Fremen completeness of spirit, only to bend it - or be guided by genetic destiny - into messianic violence.

This was a film-maker hitting the top of his game, only to be duly snubbed on the film’ industry’s biggest night.

It has not always played out like this. Think of the success of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. Or The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Both hugely successful and artistically exceptional films.

Then again, we also have to remember that David Lynch’s quick obituary nod in last night’s show was about as much recognition as he ever received. Alright, he won an Honorary Academy Award but this may as well be called, the ‘We Fucked Up’ award, as Lynch was snubbed again and again at the peak of his powers, snubbed for Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. One of the best directors of all time was pretty much ignored by his own industry.

And let’s not forget that Martin Scorsese didn’t win a Best Director Oscar until 2007 for The Departed, which was 40 years after he released his first film. He didn’t win for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Goodfellas. What was the issue? That they were too good?

And this is the fundamental issue with the Oscars, and with all award ceremonies: they make no rational sense.

They don’t seem to operate with any cohesive ideas of how to judge one film against another. Decisions seem heavily influenced by outside opinion, media campaigns and scandal. You imagine that were it not for the negative news stories around Emilia Perez, it would have had as a big of a night as it did at the Golden Globes, before the outcry started.

Well done to Anora, but in years to come it’ll be Dune: Part Two that people return to watch again and again.

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