Christian – 1990: Dances With Wolves
It’s the beginning of a new decade. The cinematic ventures of the 1980s are coming to an end to make way for a decade of films that would go on to define a generation. Even in the first year of the new decade, highly influential films were already being released to critical acclaim and much fanfare. How would the first Academy Awards ceremony reward the efforts of the films that started the 90s with a bang?
Well, in all honesty, they didn’t. One film in particular swept most of the categories: Dances With Wolves. In all fairness, it’s a good movie; never great, but there have been worse versions of the same story. Not only did the film walk away with a statue for Best Picture though, but it also won awards for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and other such categories.
For a movie like Dances With Wolves to have won that many awards, it must have been a bad year for films, right? Let’s see what else was nominated for Best Picture: Ghost, The Godfather Part III, Awakenings, and a tiny little film called Goodfellas. Wait, what? That sentimental, overly dramatic piece of mediocrity won over Goodfellas, an established masterpiece helmed by one of the most respected filmmakers of our time?
That’s right, Goodfellas lost the award for Best Picture (and Best Director) to Kevin freaking Costner. There is absolutely no reason for this to ever happen, because Goodfellas is an all-around better film. To be bold, it’s one of the best films ever released, and only inches behind The Godfather as the greatest mob movie of all time. This is the film that inspired The Sopranos, one of the finest television shows to ever grace the small screen.
So why did a white bread film with the obvious heart-warming ending and focus on injustice being rectified take the cake? How did the snappy dialogue of Goodfellas lose to the Lakota translations of Dances With Wolves for Best Screenplay? Because the Academy is out of date and predictable? Or because…nope, that’s definitely the reason.
Everything about Goodfellas is miles above Costner’s work, from direction to casting, dialogue, setting, pacing, plotting, and the amount of Joe Pesci contained in each. Scorsese eventually got what was coming to him, winning multiple Academy Awards in the future and snagging Best Picture for the deserving 2006 masterpiece The Departed. But the fact that Goodfellas, the man’s crowning achievement amongst works that have defined the gangster genre, couldn’t beat out Costner’s wet dream of Native American sympathy is just a reflection on the Academy’s failure to adapt.
Perhaps it was too profane? Or maybe the subject matter wasn’t particularly appealing to the Academy? Or maybe it’s because Goodfellas only brought in a fraction of what Dances With Wolves made at the box office? Whatever the reason is, it’s a crying shame that the better film lost to the obvious choice simply because it didn’t conform enough to the Academy’s expectations.
Either way, when Lincoln inevitably wins Best Picture (pure Academy bait, am I right?), remember that Goodfellas couldn’t pull off more than one win, and shed a tear for the shame.
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