During the 91st annual Academy Awards telecast, many were crowned winners including Green Book as Best Picture, Rami Malek as Best Actor and Alfonso Cuaron as Best Director. It's the most extravagant night in Hollywood, which has famously opted to shun Marvel and superhero movies entirely. That was not the case at this year's Oscars ceremony.
Marvel was a big winner at the Oscars, taking home four golden statues, three for its own Black Panther—Original Score, Production Design, Costume Design—and one for its disconnected franchise (of which Sony owns the rights to), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—Best Animated Feature Film.
It marked a major recognition the studio and its movies have long sought to earn from the Academy Awards yet were always turned away. But not this time and that's thanks to two truly impressive movies.
Black Panther was a breakthrough in the MCU and in the overarching landscape of movies, with the first black superhero to lead his own movie. Director Ryan Coogler tapped into the African roots of the character and delivered a groundbreaking tale of a young man becoming king of Wakanda.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was nothing short of a monumental achievement in cinema. Using a blend of 2D and 3D animated, over 177 animators created one of the most memorable animated movies of all time. That doesn't even get to the protagonist, Miles Morales, who is a half-African American, half-Puerto Rican teenager weary of taking up the mantle passed on by Peter Parker, but grows into it by the end of the movie.
The two movies delivered big wins for Marvel and superhero movies in general. Sure, they are not the Academy's first cup of tea to win its awards, but this year they opted to look closer in beyond the frills of the Hollywood blockbuster narrative and they saw stark human portraits that do as much as their desired prestige dramas to tell the stories of very unique characters.
That's what movies are about, telling interesting stories. It's very refreshing to see the Academy reward worthy movies like these.
