Are all Oscar-nominated movies the same?

Last week I came across the above video, Trailer For Every Oscar-Winning Movie Ever, and instantly loved its premise. First of all, it's hilarious, but more importantly, it's undeniably true. Yes, on the surface the movies nominated for Academy Awards have different genres, actors, directors, and stories, but if you think about it, how different are they really? It seems to me that at some point in history, someone came up with an equation for the perfect Oscar-winning movie, and decided that for a movie to be deemed worthy of that honor, certain requirements have to be met, such as "inspirational speech that douchebags will quote on their Facebook profiles," or "using tough love to help this Latin American teenager believe in himself," as mentioned in the video. These are characteristics that we all have come across in our movie watching lifetimes. In fact, the only reason we laugh at this video is because we recognize them from our own experiences with film.

What I'm really interested in is why. Why do we as a society value certain movies, especially ones with the stereotypical Oscar-winning characteristics, as better than others? There are myriad possible explanations that I could give you, but my personal opinion is that we as people like to listen to ourselves talk. We love it when big shot Hollywood types seem to agree with things that we believe, therefore, the movies we value the most basically echo our own thoughts. People also want to be able to relate to the characters in these movies, to be able to picture themselves in that situation. I mean, if you think about it, how many science fiction or fantasy movies have won the Academy Awards' top prize? Sure, Avatar was nominated the year it was eligible, but in the end the Best Picture was deemed to be The Hurt Locker, a gritty, realistic drama about the war in Iraq. But what makes bomb diffusing soldiers so much more impressive to us than the creation cutting edge CGI blue aliens trying to save an entire planet? Personally, I think they're both pretty damn incredible.

But what do you think? Do we only love these kinds of movies because we've been brainwashed? Are we forced to like these movies because all of our alternatives just suck? Is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences full of old people who don't like change? Do you totally and completely disagree with everything I've said? Please, be a doll and let me know in the comments.

See you next week!

~Morgen~