Oscars are over, 'out of touch with the audience' and saddled with DEI requirements: expert

The 97th Oscars will be awarded on Sunday, but the road to the golden statue has been a bumpy one, marked with controversies and a lack of breakout frontrunners to draw audiences’ attention.

"I feel really underwhelmed by this year's nominations, wins at other award shows (such as the Golden Globes) and predicted wins at the Oscars," a Reddit user said on a forum dedicated to the Oscars. 

Another agreed, writing, "I’m just not all that excited about most of the films this year. Bit of a meh year especially after last year. And the constant drama this season has been annoying, I don’t care about that."

"So many Oscar voters have told me the Oscars jumped the shark. They feel this is the end of Oscars in some ways," Fox News’ contributor and host of the "Arroyo Grande" podcast Raymond Arroyo told Fox News Digital.

Fox News’ contributor Raymond Arroyo noted a lack of enthusiasm from audiences and Oscar voters for this year's ceremony. (Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)

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"I think most people haven't seen any of these movies to be excited about them," he continued, citing films like "Emilia Perez," "Anora," and "The Brutalist" as some of the contenders bringing in awards at other shows this season that haven’t drawn the kind of excitement from regular viewers.

"‘Wicked’s’ really the only movie that's been a box office success that's nominated for best picture. All these other films, they're small arthouse movies at best," Arroyo said.

"Wicked" is one of only two best picture nominees to crack the top ten at the 2024 box office. (Universal Pictures)

Per BoxOfficeMojo, only two of the best picture nominees, "Wicked" and "Dune: Part Two," cracked the top ten in ticket sales last year.  

"Inside Out 2," and "Deadpool & Wolverine" took the top two spots, with a raft of franchise sequels rounding out the top ten, like "Moana 2," "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," and "Twisters."

"Emilia Perez," "The Brutalist," and "Anora" are three of the best picture nominees this year. (Netflix/A24/Neon)

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"They are not taking into account popular tastes when making these choices," Arroyo explained of the nominees. "And you have a group of people acting in isolation from their audience, which is a huge problem. When you claim to speak as the cultural mouthpiece and center of the country, it's a huge problem. And I think many people in Hollywood are acknowledging it and realize maybe they're out of touch, and maybe the Oscars aren't what they used to be." 

"If they were in touch with the average moviegoer, you would have seen ‘Deadpool [& Wolverine]’ nominated. They didn't go for that." 

"So many Oscar voters have told me the Oscars jumped the shark. They feel this is the end of Oscar in some ways.'

Arroyo has also spoken with several Oscar voters, some of whom are Oscar winners themselves, who appear to share audiences’ lack of enthusiasm for some of the nominees. 

"One said, ‘I'm not even voting. The Oscars is over.’ And the other said, ‘It just doesn't mean what it used to.’" 

Arroyo said that if the Oscars worked more on popularity, "Deadpool & Wolverine," starring Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, would be nominated. (Taylor Hill/WireImage)

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He continued, "They're reflecting an industry that's being, it's been so shattered. You know, it's sort of what happened to us in television. You went from three channels to a cable universe. Now it's the wild west of the internet and every streaming show you're competing with. The world is changing, and it's changed a lot for people in the film industry. These streamers are taking over. But the collective audience doesn't necessarily gather around it. So, we're in a new day. And film is no longer the defining touchstone of the culture that it once was. And that's what I got from these voters, an acknowledgment that the ground has shifted, and maybe it's time for [the Oscars] to shift with it." 

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One of the suggestions from his conversations was to allow for an audience award to vote on their favorite movie "so that you'd get more popular films in the mix."

Arroyo also mentioned a possible hurdle for some productions to be considered is meeting The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ "representation and inclusion standards."

Instituted in 2024 for the 96th annual ceremony, AMPAS now requires films in consideration for best picture to meet two out of four possible categories worth of criteria, focused on underrepresented groups, including women, racial or ethnic groups, LGBTQ+, or people with disabilities.

In 2024, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body behind the Oscars, instituted inclusion requirements for best picture nominees. (Carlo Allegri/Getty Images)

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The representation can come onscreen through casting and storytelling, creative leadership behind the scenes like directors, cinematographers, makeup artists and more, internship and training opportunities for underrepresented groups, or representation in the marketing, publicity and distribution of the film.  

"One of these Oscar winners pointed out to me, he said, ‘You know, my film probably wouldn't qualify for an Oscar now because there's so many boxes you have to check,' many of them DEI-related,’" Arroyo said.  

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He continued, "You have to have so many nontraditional casting here and so many non-White people working on this part of the film. So it's an interesting thing that we're seeing that I think is disqualifying to a lot of films that we'll never hear of at the Oscars, because they just couldn't check those boxes. They didn't have the creative staff or the casting that could accommodate them."

Another factor that may shake up the Oscars and its future is the ratings from Sunday’s ceremony, hosted by Conan O’Brien.

Conan O'Brien will host Sunday's Oscars. (Rich Fury/Getty Images)

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Last year’s ceremony, which started an hour earlier than usual, drew 19.5 million viewers in the 18-49 adult demographic, up 4% from 2023, per Variety. The outlet also reported that it was the third consecutive year of viewer growth since 2021, and the most watched since 2020.

Of the ratings, Arroyo said, "They’ll bump up and down, depending if there's a big movie that year. But this year you get the feeling, aside from ‘Wicked,’ there was really nothing that captured the zeitgeist or that people were really inspired by or moved by or even went in droves to."

"I'm not sure if it has that same power any longer, given the rules, given the times, and given the isolation that the Academy works in," added. 

The ratings for the Oscars ceremonies the past three years have gone up slightly, but it's uncertain if that trend will continue this year. (Frank Micelotta/Disney via Getty Images)

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"Assuming everything that we are accessing in our daily lives. I mean, there's some great television that rivals, you know, the best films that they're nominating this year, and there's great television shows out there. So the creatives have moved on, and maybe the Oscars need to broaden what they're doing and make it a little more democratic and allow the audience a voice." 

Fox News Digital has reached out to a rep for the Academy for comment.