This "Best Popular Film" category is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. It raises thousands of questions and answers none.
The problem is that the Oscars or Academy Awards are usually looked upon as the highest possible achievement in film making, even on an international level. It had its fair share of weird choices for winners, almost every year there's a sort of controversy, and every sane person must understand that marketing your film FOR the jury or whatever is a huge part of the process by which your film might end up as a nominee. So of course it's not a definite statement on any film's merits etc. but I think we can all agree that the world watches the Oscars with the utmost excitement each year and results are usually respected.
There's a possibility that you don't care for the awards and nominees and winners, and I'm sort of in this category, but IF you really care, then this new category is a blow to the whole system. I think the main problem is that it further divides people who see the film industry as being part "popular and exciting popcorn entertainment" and part "boring European tearjerkers".
Just a few points that were already made by several people:
1. How can you define a "popular film"?
2. If a film is "popular" (e.g. seen by a lot of people), does it mean by definition that it's "just" a blockbuster popcorn flick?
3. If they made The Godfather today and it turned out to be an instant classic, and people, simply by the spreading of the word, rushed to the cinemas to see it so that it ended up a box office success, would it be nominated in the popular film or the "normal film" category?
4. Actually, are the saying that the regular "Best Film" category is filled with unpopular films? What the fuck?
5. If there is no distinction based on the quality of the films, only based on certain films' "pop cultural reach", does it mean we need to include franchises like F&F or Transformers or every fucking comic book movie ever made, from now on, in EVERY Acamedy Award season? Do we really need to praise certain movies because they made shit-tons of money, regardless of their actually artistic qualities? As some people put it on Twitter: there's already an award for popular films, and it's called money.
It's just a complete mess and my mind is blown that grown up, supposedly intelligent people came up with this.