Regardless of whether Killers of the Flower Moon is a "dud" quality-wise, it is indisputably a financial dud.physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2023, 2:05 pmIt's interesting you say this was a Scorsese dud, since usually I find that I'm the one telling my cinephile friends that I couldn't click with yet another film in Scorsese's filmography, haha (for instance, it took me three viewings in order for me to find Goodfellas entertaining, let alone the question of whether I thought it was a good film, and I know that says more about me than about Goodfellas). However, where many of his other films didn't work for me, somehow this one did; I was invested in the story it was telling and absolutely loved it to the point where I genuinely do consider it strong competition for Oppenheimer. But that's just my opinion, of course.Lionheart wrote: ↑November 2nd, 2023, 10:36 amA Scorsese dud should not be competition. But yeah, you're right, it could win. Because of reasonsphysicshistoryguy wrote: ↑November 1st, 2023, 10:46 pm
I mean, I love Oppenheimer as much as the next guy, and likewise hope it wins as much as it can, but at the very least there's competition in Killers of the Flower Moon.
There hasn't been a great film that contends in awards so dramatically superior to competition since No Country for Old Men. Oppie should easily sweep all and Nolan leave the stage screaming he's the king of the world. Film-making-wise, he kinda is.
There was a time before the culture of Rotten Tomatoes took hold when the box office numbers was the only real gauge that the Academy had on a film's reception at large outside the L.A. bubble. To ignore the only verifiable, real-world metric of a film's reception would have been madness, and so the Academy would lavishly reward box office smash hits (see: Forrest Gump, Titanic, The Return of the King, etc.).
In such times, Killers of the Flower Moon's embarrassing, disaster-worthy box office performance would have ensured that it would be shut out of genuine Oscars contention. Maybe it would get consolation nominations, but that's it, and there wouldn't be talk of "It's a frontrunner and could actually win."
Nowadays, with Rotten Tomatoes, Film Twitter, etc., the box office is no longer the only way to measure a film's reception. That has allowed the Academy the wherewithal to reward "the best" movies (as they see it, anyway), even if they bombed, failed to reach an audience, and are forgotten within a year, if not months.
