The Snubbed Knight

I consider myself a passionate film fan. I love all kinds of movies, from the indie art films that twelve people see to the 200 million dollar summer spectaculars. I can appreciate a subtle documentary just as much as I can enjoy Jonah Hill talking about getting his cock massaged. I am a fair and reasonable person and I know the difference between an enjoyable movie and a film that will become timeless.Yet every year the same thing happens, I find a film I fully invest in, a film I love and a film that is eventually screwed over by the Academy of Motion Pictures. This year that film was the Dark Knight. Yes, the second highest grossing film of all time, the film that sits at 83% on Meta Critic even a film that received eight Oscar nominations was completely shafted by the academy. Sure eight nominations seems like a lot but there are some major oversights in my less then humble opinion. Let's start at the bottom and work our way up.

Best adapted screenplay. For three years straight all we heard about was Lord of the Rings, what an amazing undertaking it was to condense those three novels into 540-minutes of film.

Wow. Three whole novels.

Try taking 70 years of storytelling and building a single screenplay that captures the essence of so many diverse characters. A screenplay that not only builds believable people out of these fantastic characters, but also places them in to a world grounded in reality. The screenplay deals with a man who dresses like a bat and chases a homicidal clown, yet treats them all like fully realized human beings. There is a dimension to these characters and these dimensions allow the film to transcend labels like comic book movie or summer blockbuster.

Where is the director nomination? The Dark Knight was a massive production.It was shot all over the world, had a large amount of practical and special effects and a character-driven story. The director Christopher Nolan balanced all these elements to perfection. Apparently the Directors Guild noticed all the hard work he put in and decided to give him a nomination. Good thing the Academy knows more about good directing then a union full of directors. How can a movie get nominations for all types of technical achievements and acting yet the guy running the whole show gets completely ignored?

Best Picture. I challenge you to think of five people that didn't like the Dark Knight. Most critics put it near the top of their list when it came to the best movies of the past year. So, besides universal acclaim and earnings higher then the gross domestic product of a small country, what does it take to get a best picture nomination?

I think there is only one real solution. A new director's cut that features Batman as a poor homosexual Indian boy who ages backwards and meets a Nazi Richard Nixon. Now that film has picture of the year written all over it.