Tom Holland Won’t Win an Oscar for This Film, But He’s Not Mad About It
So many awards for film exist now that it seems which one is the most prestigious depends on one’s point of view in how the voting goes down. In the world of the Oscars, not everyone is pleased with how voters pick nominees and winners. If other movie awards are based on internal academies and public opinion, Rotten Tomatoes goes on an average scoring system.
Anyone who visits Rotten Tomatoes’ website often knows they hand out an annual award called the Golden Tomato. Recently, Avengers: Endgame won this award under Best Wide Release Movie.
Tom Holland took to Instagram to celebrate this, even if there must be ongoing griping the movie didn’t get any Oscar nominations. Maybe Rotten Tomatoes now has equal importance.
‘Endgame’ beat out a lot of other strong contenders
The fact that Endgame beat out major titles like Us, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Knives Out says a lot about the taste of Rotten Tomatoes itself. Or do they just choose their winner based on their overall scores?
According to RT, they ranked the winner based on how well reviewed it is rather than going by personal opinion. Not that they don’t place a little opinion in their summary at the top of the page. They note Endgame was the culmination of 11 years while praising how the Russo Brothers were able to pull it off so well.
It’s true not many production teams would be able to tackle a plot so complex and make it emotionally satisfying to casual and devoted MCU fans alike. What this award doesn’t take into consideration is the real merits of the film production.
Even more so, there’s an argument to be made there’s still plenty of internal bias at the Oscars about wanting to reward a comic book movie, despite stellar performances.
How good were the performances of Tom Holland and the others?
As what’s already known, Robert Downey, Jr. took himself out of contention for Best Actor at the Academy Awards late in 2019. Why he did this might look like the ultimate in humility. From the perspective of Downey, he might have done it because he knew the acting field this year was far too great to go up against.
No doubt he also knew the insurmountable internal bias against comic book movies. If Black Panther was maybe an anomaly, no one should overlook that Downey (and Holland) were both award-worthy in their roles as Tony Stark and Peter Parker.
Being rewarded for this may take some time if he ever moves away from the MCU. In the meantime, Holland celebrated the above Golden Tomato award by eating tomatoes with the Russos in an Instagram video.
Maybe Rotten Tomatoes is what really matters in awards
Considering the scores Rotten Tomatoes puts together are a culmination of critic and public ratings, their awards may mean more in the long run than anything else.
When looked at through a more realistic lens, who wouldn’t want to be recognized by something that took critical response seriously as well as the public? Not many movies have such a positive score from the public at large.
Even though the Oscars still have prestige by brand name only, it really only represents a fraction of reality in how people perceive a movie. Outside of Martin Scorsese knocking the Marvel franchise, nobody can deny Endgame merged serious themes in with a genre once considered too cartoonish to matter.
