Thursday Theoretical Oscar Category

Welcome to a new weekly feature here at Movies With Abe. In my love for everything Oscar, it’s always fun to speculate on who or what might have been included given different circumstances. Though there are twenty-four fields recognized on Oscar night, that still neglects a handful of key players. As a result, I’d like to take a look each week at imagined categories, and who or what might have benefited from their existence.

The category: Worst Movie

Why it should exist: The Oscars recognize the best of cinema each year, so why not honor the worst? Smaller critics’ organizations have such categories, mostly designed for a bit of comic relief in an otherwise high-minded ceremony. It would also allow Oscar voters to have some fun recognizing the failed Oscar contenders and taking down actors phoning it in for a paycheck.

Why it doesn’t exist: It wouldn’t behoove the Oscars to stoop to the level of bad movies, and those films nominated would likely already be a step up from the truly awful films avoided entirely by Oscar voters. A group already exists to trumpet the worst in film each year – the Razzie Awards – and they’ve become all about sequels and films that would really give Oscar a bad name.

Who might have been nominated the past five years:
2011: Jack and Jill, New Year’s Eve, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Sucker Punch, Transformers: Dark of the Moon
2010: Alice in Wonderland, The Expendables, The Last Airbender, The Tourist, The Wolfman
2009: All About Steve, Amelia, The Lovely Bones, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
2008: Australia, The Happening, Smart People, W, The Women
2007: Hannibal Rising, Lions for Lambs, Next, Norbit, 300

Who do you think might have been nominated?