The new Oscar rule that people have to watch nominated movies before they vote in the final round is already being questioned.
Rules at the Oscars are always being tweaked, whether it’s new awards for casting directors or stunt designers or changes in the way that awards campaigns can be staged. As detailed in epic detail in Micheal Schulman’s book Oscar Wars, the time since Miramax forever changed awards campaigning in the 90s has required the Academy to keep evolving its rules, to try and ensure that nominated films are given as fair a shout as possible.
One of its new methods of achieving that kind of seems so obvious that you wonder why it’s taken the Academy almost a century to impose it. But from this year forward, members of the Academy will have to have actually watched the films in a category before they can vote for a winner.
The rule is said to have been imposed because of lots of chatter regarding The Brutalist's ten nominations at this year’s ceremony, with buzz around Hollywood suggesting that lots of Academy members simply didn’t watch it because of the film’s hefty 215 minute runtime.
The goal then is certainly noble, to give ‘smaller’ films that voters might otherwise choose to overlook the same chance as every other movie in a given category. However, a new Variety report has already poured cold water on the idea that the new rules will change anything, with some unnamed executives expressing doubt that it will alter much. There are already examples of how the system can be gamed being given, such as pressing play on a screener then popping out to do other things, or getting an assistant to play it instead.
Still, the new system does require members to sign something to say they’ve watched each film in a category so perhaps the ‘honour-based’ nature of the new system will have some impact. Personally, we’re not sure the words ‘honour’ and Hollywood have ever been directly correlated, so whether this changes anything, beyond placing the watching of each film as a clear ideal, we don’t know.
