The Oscars are nearly upon us. It’s the biggest night of the year in Hollywood.
All of the stars gather together to honor some of the best work from that year in film — the highlight of which is usually the award for best picture. This is essentially the movie of the year in Hollywood. This year, it looks like Everything, Everywhere, All At Once will completely run the show, but we’ll see soon.
What’s a bit odd about the best picture award, and just the Academy Awards in general is that the blockbuster films that we see almost never get shine at these sorts of things. We’ve particularly seen that with Marvel properties over the years.
Despite absolute dominance from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Hollywood and some pretty great performances from other Marvel films done by Sony and FOX, a Marvel movie has never actually won — or been nominated for — a best picture award.
But there have been more than a fair share of Marvel films that should absolutely have been considered. Now, would these movies win? No idea. And we’re also not going to play the game of, “Movie X didn’t deserve the award” because that’s unfair and totally untrue.
But what we are going to do here is highlight some Marvel films that could’ve won it. Let’s dig in.
Black Panther (2018)
Black Panther is an easy one to place here because it’s actually the only MCU property to win a few Academy Awards so far. In 2019, it took home Oscars for best production design, best original score and best costume design.
It’s definitely worth a look at for best picture considering Chadwick Boseman’s performance as T’Challa and the heartbreaking story of what turned out to be the beginning of the collapse of his family.
The Avengers (2012)
2012’s Avengers didn’t win any awards, but this film has influenced a generation of others.
Before this movie, there were so many film franchises that struggled with mixing and meshing different stories together within their own universe. This succinctly placed the pieces together to give us one of the best superhero movies of all-time with epic performances from Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Samuel L. Jackson.
Yes, it’s a CGI-packed action movie. But it’s got a lot of heart in it, too. It definitely is worthy of consideration in my mind.
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Once again, this was another masterful performance from Chris Evans as the main star of this movie. But he may have actually been outshined by a couple of cast members in this one.
Downey Jr. absolutely deserved a look as one of the best-supporting actors in this film doubling as both a protagonist and an antagonist. However, Boseman’s debut as T’Challa on a quest for vengance in this film was perhaps the most captivating thing about it.
This line alone is still bone-chilling.
https://t.co/vHAOtaHOK1 pic.twitter.com/gNzWOUf1Q5
— Kofie (@Kofie) March 2, 2023
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Avengers: Infinity War was every MCU fans’ true introduction to Josh Brolin’s Thanos, the Mad Titan.
Yes, we knew who the dude was before this. But we didn’t know who he was. He started the movie off taking out some of our favorite heroes and delivering one-liner after one-liner. It was just an epic performance that shined in what was otherwise a fantastic film.
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
We honestly didn’t get as much Thanos as we probably wanted in this one, but when we did? Man, it was epic.
Just….listen, man.
The one and only pic.twitter.com/PY10nJ1V5u
— ⚡️ Virgil Hawkins⚡️ (@ColeWorldSIMBA) March 2, 2023
That is COLD. And that was the sort of performance we’d gotten from Brolin throughout the span of these two movies.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
When debating what the greatest of the Spider-Man movies might be, 2018’s Into The Spider-Verse doesn’t come up quite as often because it’s animated and not MCU canon — for now.
However, this is easily the best project any rendition of Spider-Man has been involved in.
It’s fantastic. From the classic coming-of-age story of Miles Morales to the relationships he builds with his Spider cohort to the understandable and relatable pain of losing a loved one we all experience through Kingpin, this movie had it all. It’s perfection.
Logan (2017)
Our final entry here is 2017’s Logan. It’s also not MCU canon. It’s honestly unclear where it actually exists in the FOX X-Men continuity. But, man. It’s the best Marvel film I’ve ever seen in my life.
It doubles as both a coming-of-age story for Dafne Keen’s X-23, a companion flick as she travels with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and a blaze of glory for one of our favorite heroes to ever touch the big screen.
This movie wasn’t your typical hero flick. It was gruesome, brutal and, even at times, very hard to watch with how many downturns it had. But, above all, it was human. It connected us to Logan on a level we hadn’t seen yet through nearly two decades of watching Wolverine. It felt impossible, and yet it was done.
This movie didn’t get the love that it should’ve from Hollywood and that’s simply a shame.
