Flasz On Film

A little over a week ago the nominations for this year’s Golden Globes were announced. Interestingly, in the sea of nods towards some of the most important movies of the year (like One Battle After Another, Sinners, Bugonia and others that remain likely contenders in the slowly brewing Oscar race) nominees for the recently introduced category of “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement were also listed… which also included a nomination for James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, a movie yet to be released.

This award was introduced in 2023, likely in response to the incredible success and cultural penetration of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which also became a part of Barbenheimer, a double-bill meme phenomenon capitalizing on the fact that Gerwig’s movie was released alongside Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on the same day. However, the cynical interpretation of this move to introduce a category where most popular and financially successful movies of the year could find their spot regardless of the critical consensus around them would most likely suggest that it was dictated by the fact that the Golden Globes, and awards shows in general, have consistently waned in popularity over the years. Younger generations and wide audiences simply do not care about what’s seen as self-serving displays of glitz and excess where very rich people give each other little golden knickknacks while everyone else is clapping in show of superficial support and affection. That is unless someone like Ricky Gervais is hired to host the gig and make wildly inappropriate jokes at the expense of those dolled-up and tuxedoed celebs.

Therefore, it seemed like a good idea to introduce this category where movies like Barbie, Deadpool & Wolverine or Inside Out 2 could find representation, i.e. movies everyone saw and someone you work with likely enjoyed. However, Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash hasn’t really been enjoyed by anyone yet. It has had its official global premiere and at the time of these nominations being announced it had opened in a few smaller markets but the global rollout is still forthcoming; which makes everything a little bit weird.

Now, at the end of the day it is up to the awarding bodies to establish their own internal rules governing the process of nominating awards contenders, so I’m going to resist the temptation to pull them on their own published rules. At the end of the day, it’s all make-believe. Nevertheless, they (what used to be Hollywood Foreign Press Association and now I’m not sure who exactly is in charge any more) stipulate themselves that to qualify, a movie has to cross a certain box office threshold or a streaming equivalent thereof. Problem is that at the time, the new adventure of the Na’vi had mostly been shown to critics.

Had it been nominated for Best Picture, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow because it does happen that critics and voting bodies would nominate movies that did not have a wide release or maybe were completely overlooked. Seeing an obscure title among Oscar nominees is nothing new. But this particular award is supposed to acknowledge cultural impact of the movie and one of the key criteria is a metric tied to the public’s exposure to the movie. Granted, they have left themselves a loophole in the rulebook by stating that a movie can be nominated based on projected box office numbers, which is why Avatar: Fire and Ash ended up nominated for this award. Everyone expects that once it opens worldwide on the 19th of December, Cameron’s newest addition to the Avatar franchise will go on to earn in excess of two billion dollars in box office receipts.

But this is where I have a problem with all this. Things happen. Projections are merely just that—projections. Assuming that a movie would do well because it is highly likely it would do so based on the box office performance of its two predecessors is still a game of probabilities. It most likely will make a lot of money, but it is not guaranteed. We might find that for some reason the new Avatar ends up boycotted globally. Maybe it will become a black swan event and will bomb mercilessly after a one week on the back of poor word of mouth. We don’t know. The word of mouth has yet to come out of said mouth.

In all honesty, this decision to nominate a movie that has yet to make its mark in a category meant to single out movies that have made the biggest mark on the culture at large by becoming the “cinematic and box office achievement” of the year is at the very least preemptive and perhaps presumptuous. There is a reason why Usain Bolt, the fastest man to ever live, had to run in qualifying heats at every event, even though he was almost always the odds-on favourite to not only win but to win comfortably and leave his competition far behind. And that’s because it was always possible that something would go wrong. He could get disqualified on account of a consecutive fail start or end up outmatched by a new up-and-coming talent. Placing him in the finals would have spoken to the likelihood of him getting there anyway, but it would have been totally unfair for other competitors. If athletic events governed themselves like this, we wouldn’t need tournaments. Why play in the Wimbledon tournament when we can simply organize a single match between the two highest ranked players and see who’s better? Simpler and cheaper.

It just looks as though in pursuit of cultural relevance, while consistently out-competed by short-form social media and alternative modalities of entertainment younger generations choose to engage with more consistently than old-fashioned broadcast TV, the Golden Globes decided to outwardly rig the competition to an extent. Otherwise, a movie like KPop Demon Hunters would have been a the only shoo-in, despite the fact it had not been released theatrically, apart from small-scale singalong engagements. However, to be completely honest, it has probably left a larger mark on the world than the entire Avatar franchise combined with its diffuse and shallow cultural footprint. I should know. I haven’t even watched it willingly start-to-finish and I somehow feel as though I knew it intimately. I have learned all the songs against my will. Meanwhile, I think I’d struggle to find an Avatar lunchbox, if I wanted to buy one.

This decision makes it look as though presumptive box office success—most likely combined with very limited and short-lived cultural presence—of Avatar: Fire and Ash was equivalent or superior to actual cultural penetration enjoyed by that little Netflix musical that ensnared kids the world over or A Minecraft Movie with its lava chicken.

Who knows? Maybe this is the way forward. Perhaps I should engage in some preemptive reviewing myself and write a thousand words about what I think I will think about the third Avatar movie based on what I thought about the previous two. Projections suggest that I am staring down the barrel of three-and-a-half hours of two-star entertainment tomorrow and If the Golden Globes were the example to follow, there wouldn’t be any room for a pleasant surprise in there, would it?