People Who Won Oscars For The Wrong Film
The Film He Won For: Million Dollar Baby
The Film He Should Have Won For: The Shawshank RedemptionMillion Dollar Baby is a wonderful film, but it's not Shawshank Redemption. Shawshank is currently sits atop many a best movies of all time list and Morgan Freeman is the heart of that film. He should have won Best Actor for Shawshank, long before he won Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar Baby.
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: Scent of a Woman
The Film He Should Have Won For: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, Heat, The Insider, SerpicoThis almost goes without saying. Scent of a Woman is a great dramedy, but The Godfather is universally agreed upon as nearly perfect. Pacino not winning for that powerhouse performance is one of the worst snubs of all time.
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The Film He Won For: The Departed
The Films He Should Have Won For: Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Casino, After Hours, The Age of InnocenceAnd the legacy Oscar goes to... Sure, The Departed was great. But how is it possible this was Scorsese's first and only Oscar win? This man made many of the greatest films in history, all well before he made The Departed. Martin Scorsese should not be one-time Best Directing award winner.
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: The Color of Money
The Films He Should Have Won For: The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Hud, The StingIn The Hustler, Paul Newman delivers a legendary performance as Eddie Felson. 25 years later the Academy gave Paul Newman an Oscar for the reprisal of his role as Eddie Felson in The Color of Money. This felt like more of an award for missing that initial performance.
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: The Revenant
The Film He Should Have Won For: Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, Titanic, Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time…in HollywoodLeo has been in so many great films that it was beginning to get awkward when he still didn't have an Oscar in 2016. While The Revenant was a beautiful film, many wondered how much of that was due to Le's actual acting. He has shown far more range and acting chops in other roles - the above mentioned films are just four examples.
Wrong Oscar?The Film She Won For: Ghost
The Film She Should Have Won For: The Color PurpleGhost serves as the ultimate make up award film. It was somehow nominated for Best Picture, and won for both Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress (for Whoopi). Five years earlier (in her big screen debut) she delivered the performance of her career in The Color Purple, which was nominated for a whopping 11 awards... but didn't win a single one.
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: Crazy Heart
The Films He Should Have Won For: The Big Lebowski, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Fearless, The Fisher KingThe entire Crazy Heart Oscar campaign felt like a legacy run. "This is Jeff Bridges! He's been great for decades!" Sure, Crazy Heart was good, but was it better than his other excellent work?
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: On Golden Pond
The Film He Should Have Won For: The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men, My Darling Clementine, Young Mister Lincoln, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Lady EveHenry Fonda is one of the most legendary actors of all time and he was only been nominated for two Academy Awards. His 1982 win for On Golden Pond came just a year after he was given the Honorary "Consummate Actor Award" from the Academy, clearly making it a make up award for his decades long career. Sadly he died months after receiving the award for On Golden Pond.
Wrong Oscar?The Films He Won For: Mister Roberts, Save the Tiger
The Film He Should Have Won For: The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, Glengarry Glen RossFor years Jack Lemmon was a full-on comedic actor. In Save the Tiger Lemmon gives a fantastic, but almost purely dramatic performance. It was his role in The Apartment that required him to use both his dramatic and comedic brilliance, which should have earned him Oscar gold.
Wrong Oscar?The Film She Won For: The Reader
The Film She Should've Won For: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindEven Kate Winslet admits that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the role that got critics and casting directors beginning to see her as a more versatile performer. Coincidentally Eternal Sunshine is the performance she credits with getting her roles like the one she had in The Reader.
Wrong Oscar?The Film He Won For: True Grit
The Films He Should Have Won For: The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Quiet Man, Red RiverJohn Wayne's Oscar for True Grit is one of the most definitive legacy Oscars. After a career-defining an entire genre, he was given an award for a comedic turn nearly spoofing the genre he was known for. The Western was dying out and the Academy knew this may be the last time to honor the man who made it what it was... but they were a bit too late.
Wrong Oscar?The Film She Won For: Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Film She Should Have Won For: A Fish Called Wanda, Freaky Friday, True Lies, HalloweenThe genre-mashup Everything Everywhere All at Once was one of the most surprising Oscar juggernauts in the show's history, and Jamie Lee Curtis rode that wave to her first-ever Oscar nomination - and picked up the win in a mild upset. She's spent her career doing such underappreciated work in genres that often go overlooked by the Academy - horror, comedy, action - that it seems ironically fitting that she won her Oscar for a movie that aggressively combined those genres (and others). And at the same time it only underlines that her versatile abilities and unique screen presence went ignored for far too long.
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The Film She Won For: The Danish Girl
The Film She Should Have Won For: Ex MachinaAlicia Vikander transcended humanity with her portrayal of an artificial, intelligent life form named Ava in 2015's Ex Machina. Her portrayal of a pseudo-intellectual being on the verge of a nail-biting, near-human breakthrough is beautifully haunting. However, she didn't win an Oscar for the role. Instead, she won for a different film that same year: The Danish Girl, alongside Eddie Redmayne (who didn't win). Vikander's Gerda isn't bad by any means; she was brilliant. But Gerda felt far outshone by Ava, and the award should have gone to Ex Machina.
Wrong Oscar?The Film She Won For: Walk the Line
The Film She Should Have Won For: ElectionWalk the Line was Reese Witherspoon's first nomination and first Oscar win, but that's largely due to the Academy's love of biopics. There's no denying she was fantastic in Walk the Line, but she should have won years earlier for Election.
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