Science fiction films always seem to have a tough hill to climb to gain notoriety when it comes to making the final cut once Oscar season rolls around, let alone taking home any of those coveted golden statuettes.
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences came out with their list of official nominees that will compete for Oscars in 2025 and “Dune: Part 2,” “Alien: Romulus,” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” did find some favor with a number of Academy voters.
In 2022, the first chapter of director Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” epic was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and was the recipient of six. This year, “Dune: Part 2” received the expected nods for Visual Effects, Sound, Production Design, and Cinematography, and a seemingly consolatory thumbs-up for Best Picture, but sadly Villeneuve missed out on a Best Director nomination for a second time.
“If he doesn’t get nominated this year, I’ll quit acting,” Brolin quipped for a Variety chat. “It was a better movie than the first one. When I watched it, it felt like my brain was broken open. It’s masterful, and Denis is one of our master filmmakers. If the Academy Awards have any meaning whatsoever, they’ll recognize him.”
While we’re pretty sure Brolin won’t hang up his impressive career over this omission, it is a bit puzzling that “Dune: Part Two” was also excluded for categories like Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
The Academy had ample opportunity here to repair a glaring oversight in Villeneuve being ghosted back in 2022 for Best Director, especially since the second installment of this sci-fi saga was not only a bigger critical achievement, but also (in our humble opinion) a far better and more entertaining movie!
Another big budget success in the speculative fiction realm this year was director Fede Alvarez’s “Alien: Romulus,” which was released this past summer and hauled in a global box office total of $350 million against an $80 million budget. Its lone nomination for Visual Effects is quite appropriate when considering it was mostly created via practical effects and marks the first time since 2012’s “Prometheus” that an “Alien” movie has joined the ranks of Oscar contenders.
These futuristic heavyweights will join “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” in the Best Visual Effects arena when the gala ceremony takes place in March. This will be the fourth “Planet of the Apes” reboot feature to be acknowledged in that same category along with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014), and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017).
The 97th Academy Awards airs on March 2 from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.