Audio By Carbonatix
We’ve all been there. You finally get around to watching this year’s nominees, and you think, “Didn’t I see pretty much this same Oscar-bait movie last year?” You probably did, thanks to the McKee/Weinstein-driven formula behind most Best Picture noms. You can even build your own! Just mix and match elements from the six surefire nominees we’ve broken up into these five categories:
Hero:
• A minority professor (Eddie Redmayne) finds love while facing historic challenges
• Leonardo DiCaprio as a man mourning the death of his wife
• Tom Hanks as a man resembling what Steven Spielberg wishes his dad had been like
• An American soldier (Bradley Cooper) who is super brave and super scarred but screwed over by bureaucrats
• An immigrant from times when immigration seems quaint and exciting rather than scary (Marion Cotillard and/or Saoirse Ronan)
• An action hero who kicks ass in the only nominee that normal people have seen
Setting:
• Old-timey Princeton
• The Old West, but monochromatic and sad
• The Cold War, but with buttery, heavenly light blasting through every office window
• Middle America’s idea of the Middle East
• A CGI New Amsterdam that goes kind of watery in the couple shots you see of it
• Mars or the wasteland or Middle-Earth or something
Villain:
• How hard physics and/or oppression are
• How hard making the movie is
• The Russians and the Germans and also some American bureaucrats
• 1. Taliban 2. ISIS 3. Liberals
• The old world’s (and screenwriters’) insistence on making women prostitutes
• Tom Hardy’s probably available
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No-Hope Low Point 15 Minutes Before the Happy Ending:
• Walton Goggins makes a big thing out of using a slur white folks actually used all the time back then
• The white hero dies, weeping for his wife, until a Native American heals him with spirit magic
• DEFCON 1/The hero’s son cries because he has no one to play catch with
• The extended scarification of the Americans’ flesh
• That louse might be married already!
• He’s been shot, and he already lost his bulletproof vest!
Dialogue That Producers Will Quote in Oscar Speeches:
• “An action and reaction comprise one single interaction — especially in matters of the heart.”
• “You, Pale Man, fight for us all.”
• “You’ve taught me that you Russkies hug your kids, too.”
• “That flag never means more than when it’s holding in your entrails.”
• “What does it matter where I’m from? I’m an American, now.”
• “I always wear a second vest.”
