Saturn Nominations 2019: Endgame

Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 8:00AM
NATHANIEL R in Aladdin, Aquaman, Avengers: Endgame, DC, Horror, Saturn Awards, Shadow, Sorry to Bother You, Us, animated films, sci-fi fantasy, superheroes

by Nathaniel R

Avengers Endgame dominated with 14 nominations

The Saturn Awards, which used to be held in June each year are moving to September which means the nominations have been delayed for some time now and the eligibility period for the 2019 nominations covers a 16 month period from March 1st, 2018 through to July 7th, 2019. Moving forward, the eligibility should revert to a July to June basis with the ceremony in September (September 13th this year). They're also soon announcing a streaming partner so it will become a televised ceremony starting this year.

We love the Saturn Awards in concept -- it's a worthy goal to honor genre films (fantasy, horror, action, thrillers, and sci-fi are the pet causes) because any genre is capable of greatness -- but they've never quite been able to get their act together and each year's nominations are always agonizing or inexplicable in some way or another...

Each year there a nominations that make very little sense either from a populist or a critical perspective. Not to pick on one film but take the Pet Sematary remake for example. It's one of the nominees for Horror film but who liked that? It was a big meh for critics (scoring in the 50s at both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes) and even general audiences didn't go for it (a CinemaScore of C+ is not a good score - they give out As and B+s like candy for any film comfortably aimed at the mainstream). So how does it end up nominated?

And consider for example that the Saturns are meant to honor the best in genre entertainment so the pool of eligible films and television show is much smaller once you move all the traditional dramas and comedies from the equation. Why then do they have the same amount of nominees or more in each category than regular awards shows? Are these trophies for participation? To add to this problem they split their TV awards into traditional TV and streaming so there are a smaller number of shows eligible, a ton of nominee in each category, and then DOUBLE the amount of categories! Basically if you are a TV show featuring superheroes you will be nominated since they have two categories for you. 

But on to the nominations. Avengers: Endgame dominated like the cross cultural beast its been with 14 nominations.  Here are the nominees in each category with a few more comments. 

 

It seems like every comic book film released got nominated but upon further investigation we realized it isn't truly a "participation" trophy. Turns out there were about double this many releases in those 16 months. The six wide releases they skipped were Deadpool 2, Venom, The Incredibles 2, Dark Phoenix, Hellboy, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, most of which were released near the beginning fo the eligibility period and you know how that goes with ALL awards bodies; everyone's got a short attention span, no matter what organization they belong to, if they don't keep year long lists or get their memory jogged by eager campaign managers.  

Fun to see Sorry to Bother You noticed (very small for what Saturn usually goes for but totally worthy as sci-fi mindbender) but, the problem with lots of nominees per category is it negates the special achievement that might have been otherwise. 

Toy Story 4 and fiiiiiine, then, Aladdin (some people do like it, argh) aside, who really loves any of these other pictures? Most were modest successes or underperformers and some were complained about even by the fans, like Godzilla King of the Monsters. Less nominees would have solved the problem.

A Quiet Place, released at the very start of their eligibilty period, was remembered but in a rare switch for awards bodies they've ignored the final releases within the eligibility period: Annabelle Comes Home and MidSommar released in the last 3 days of the eligibility period was denied. P.S. What is Overlord?

Here we come to the 'who likes this???' problem again. Again, this isn't meant to target these particular films but that's what awards do. Have you ever heard anyone rave about Cold Pursuit (another meh title in terms of general critics and audience response). Escape Room seems a pretty egregious "best" citation, too. 

Only mainstream blockbusters need apply. Note that they passed on low grossing stuff in general like Oscar nominees, flops, and low grossing mainstream stuff like Teen Titans Go! or Missing Link. 

Yay, Shadow. We love that one as you know. It's a pity Oscar has such biases against genre films because Border would have made an EXCELLENT nominee last season for the Oscar, not just in makeup but foreign language film, too. 

Household names only need apply! Given their nominees in the various best film categories, there is really zero excuse for not including LaKeith Stanfield for Sorry to Bother You or Chao Deng for Shadow.

A fun mix of people and genres, here, don't you think? 

Jeremy Renner? er, okay. Chris Hemsworth would have been a worthier nominee from that particular film. But what about Armie Hammer in Sorry to Bother You or Alex Wolff in Hereditary, or any number of others. There was so much to choose from! Weird unsatisfying list apart from Brolin & Yeun. 

Amber Heard? er, okay. And Hailee Steinfeld is the actual lead in Bumblebee, top-billed and everything. 

Some good choices here though the title is hopelessly vague. "Younger" is too malleable. Should Tom Holland, who is 23, be competing with actual children? I mean Chris Evans is "younger" than Robert Downey Jr in Avengers Endgame, so why isn't he nominated? Kidding. 

Guy?!? Ritchie?!? *facepalm*. Aladdin is one of the worst directed films I've ever seen in my life. He has had moments in other films  here and there but he hasn't a single clue how to shoot a musical sequence, or how to pace a film, or how to give a movie any life beyond "oh here's some freneticism in this short scene. And here's another short scene right next to it. And another. Look, more people are moving around. Here's some slo-mo. Okay, we'll just keep going and hoping some of the shots works and will eventually make it to the end of the picture!" I am NOT a Rob Marshall fan but if you're going to nominate a musical in this category, Mary Poppins Returns is  1000% a better option when it comes to musical direction. 

(The world's general and unending stupidity about the movie musical genre is my cross to bear in this lifetime. Weep for me.)

Hmmm. Avengers: Endgame is a confusing choice given that they spend the entire picture revisiting production design from previous pictures and then there's sort of a desolate smoky soundstage battlefield for the finale. But, okay.

Love the Godzilla mention here. No really, I do. 

I have loved Michael Wilkinson's work before and will again, but shouldn't he get a time out from awardage by forcing Aladdin to cover his chest for literally the entire motion picture?

No Ant-Man and the Wasp here really irks me. Such fun visual effects. But at least they had the sense to skip Captain Marvel. So why did they include the often janky looking Aladdin?

Did they literally nominate every CW superhero show that's on the air? They did, didn't they? This is why awards categories need to be smaller. The idea of "best" is that you actually have to single something out.

Same. Is this all the fantasy shows that actually air on non-streaming television?

No Bob's Burgers? Then this category is cancelled.

Seven nominations and you can't include Jodie Comer from Killing Eve despite the fact that you watch it? You have failed.  If you put Jodie Comer and Emilia Clarke in a cage to fight it out with only their acting skills, Emilia Clarke would look like she'd been burned alive and then devoured by dragons by the end of it. 

I don't watch Game of Thrones regularly (as I've pointed out before) but I do think Lena Headey is brilliant on the show. That said she literally spent this last season (the season that's eligible for awards) just staring out windows and then she cries and dies. Everyone I know who loves the show and watches it religiously were shocked at how little they gave her to do in the final season despite being essentially one of the three Big Bads of the entire series. 

 

STREAMING SHOWS

Is this literally all of the streaming superhero shows. I think it is except Titans... which, LOL. It's definitely all the Marvel shows on Netflix. It's kind of hilarious that they nominated Swamp Thing which DC immmediately cancelled despite their lack of content on a service people are paying for but left off Titans. But Titans is legimiately terrible in every possible way, save for possibly the casting of Beast Boy/Changeling or whatever they end up calling him once they give them all superhero names. So...

Love the inclusion of Maya Hawke and Sissy Spacek here.

Kino Lorber really cleaned up in this category. They've got four of the six nominees.

Kino Lorber has literally every nominee in this category !!!!

We've never really understand what makes a show eligible in this category at the Saturn Awards. 

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF ALL THIS. IF YOU'VE MADE IT THIS FAR YOU ARE A TROUPER. A SUPER TROUPER. WE ARE NOMINATING YOU FOR A SATURN AWARD NEXT YEAR. THERE'S GOT TO BE A CATEGORY WHERE THEY CAN SQUEEZE YOU IN. 

 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).