Oscar category for Best Science Fiction film?

[Wrong John]

Director Roger Christian is now arguing that the Academy Awards needs an Oscar category for Best Science Fiction film. With Avatar being snubbed, is it now time for such a move, or are we just laying fresh bricks in the genre ghetto's walls?

You can hear Roger's thoughts as a podcast on YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ucVd1-95C7A

And there's a big debate on the subject on FaceBook now too over at http://www.facebook.com/SciFi.Fantasy

[Gwyn Dolinar]

I think this is the same debating point that Stephen Hunt took with the BBC when he led the genre authors' protest against SFF being airbrushed out of literature by the Beeb's coverage of the written word. Little has changed there, and World Book thing is coming up again. Scifi? Fantasy? Horror? Dirty words in any media!!!

 

[Vinxlady]

This has me slightly torn. On the one hand it would be great to see more recognition of science fiction (and fantasy) films, especially with so many of the big Hollywood films these days covering that genre. Star Trek, Avengers, Avatar, Prometheus to name but a few.

But, and this is a big, capital-letters all round kind of BUT... why should science fiction have to have it's own special category? Does this not immediately demean it and say yeah, scifi is less than other genres so will give it a separate category to make it feel good. Science fiction is every bit as good as the other films and it shouldn't need to have a special category made for it just so that occasionally it has a chance of winning a few awards.

And that's before you start in on the arguments of what actually constitutes a science fiction film.

And then you get the other genres saying "well hey, why don't we have our own category too?"

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea. I think that Hollywood is just going to have to get used to science fiction and other seemingly 'lesser' genres and change the way its critics think and  review films.

Vinx

[Geoff the head Uncle]

Hello Vinx

If a separate category is available for SF, then the same should apply for all genres and then the overall winner chosen from them. This wouldn't have to apply to acting roles themselves which require different perspectives of believability. Whether the awards ceremony can tolerate going on for several hours is debatable. The one benefit for the studios is that they know they might have a better than odds against chance of winning something occasionally.

I agree with you, it'll be fun to see what Hollywood categorises as SF though.

Geoff