The Academy Takes The Bait Again

With press tours, smear campaigns and the paparazzi, early spring marks the most important, yet most divisive time of the year for the film industry: Oscars season. 

What was once a 15 minute award show at a private Academy banquet in 1929, is now the most prestigious award show in the film industry, spanning three hours and streamed on TV. The Academy, originally consisting of white men, votes for which movies get nominated and who win. Changes have been made to the Academy since 1929, but not enough to warrant a big difference.

In 2024, the Academy was only 35 percent women, 20 percent POC and 20 percent from outside of the U.S. With so many groups being underrepresented, it’s not surprising the Academy’s opinions still don’t reflect the public’s. Filmmakers have noticed this, causing the increase of production of Oscar bait movies.

Oscar bait movies pander to the majority and don’t take risks, despite trying to seem deep. Oscar bait movies are usually overly dramatic with big budgets and an A-List actor. The main struggle usually has to do with family drama, a real event set in the past, or the holy grail of getting the Academy vote: racial tension. It’s when the viewer is spoon fed that racism is bad without any critical thinking. Oscar bait movies encourage the use of simplistic formats in order to win an award, overshadowing innovative, risk-taking movies, usually made by smaller filmmakers.

This year “Emilia Pérez” was the most nominated film with 13 nominations. “Emilia Pérez” is a crime thriller musical following three women in Mexico. Karla Sofía Gascón plays Emilia, a trans cartel leader, Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, an unappreciated lawyer hired to help Emilia secretly transition, and Selena Gomez plays Jessi, Emilia’s wife before transitioning. It fits the Oscar bait format perfectly with overly dramatic shots, well known actresses, family drama, racial tension and a harmfully sensationalized view of Mexico. The plot is hard to follow, the songs are uninteresting and the characters do more harm than good for the groups represented.

While only winning two Oscars out of the 13 nominations, “Emilia Pérez” still took up nomination spots which could’ve gone to more deserving and creative movies, and this happens every year with Oscar bait movies.

Overall, winning an Oscar is not the bragging right it should be due to the far from diverse group of voters in the Academy, and the film industry as a whole should be giving more attention to smaller, more creative independent films. 

In the words of 2025 Best Director winner Sean Baker, “Long live independent film.”