This Week in Bad Pop Culture Ideas: Giving Suicide Squad an Oscar
Suicide Squad is an Oscar-winning movie. This is not a fiction, this is actually real life, and it seems way too strange.
They say that the truth is stranger than fiction, but I never bothered to believe it until last night’s Oscars. Now my fellow FanSider, Josh Hill, has argued that we should not complain about Suicide Squad winning an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
This is This Week in Bad Pop Culture Ideas, and this week’s Bad Idea is giving Suicide Squad an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. (Even Josh, in the above-linked article, pointed out that the film is a “gigantic disaster.” His words, not mine.)
This is not to knock the wonderful work of the three men who won an Oscar last night. Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini, and Christopher Nelson managed to work within the Hot Topic aesthetic of that movie and make Killer Croc — Killer Croc, people — look reasonably realistic and fit into the world, whatever sort of world the movie was shooting for. One can tell that this was important to the Academy, since the little clips introducing each nominee showed him off quite a bit.
But let’s face it. When you see Suicide Squad, you’re probably not watching for Killer Croc.
You’re probably watching for Harley Quinn and the Joker, because they were all over the marketing. Harley was even noted as one of the most popular costumes of 2016 by outlets like USA Today, and we think the three-toned pigtails probably had something to do with it. Ditto with the “Daddy’s Lil Monster” shirt. That one was pretty much everywhere.
(We’re not so sure about the tattoos, though.)
There were exactly three nominees in this category: A Man Called Ove, Suicide Squad and Star Trek Beyond. Suicide Squad had Killer Croc and the Enchantress. Star Trek Beyond managed to pull off Krall in several different forms and also had an alien who literally has the back of her head open up as if she has a crab on her head that curls and uncurls its legs. Part of that was probably an effect. However, the design of the character overall made that idea seem perfectly believable.
Maybe the Academy just couldn’t stomach Spock having his bangs not perfectly straight.
No, really, they aren’t straight after two movies of looking like he used the futuristic version of a ruler to make sure they were fine. (Rulers probably don’t exist in the future.) You can see it in the trailer below. Pay close attention to the center of his forehead.
Come to think of it, it’s probably why the movie lost the Oscar. To go for the low-hanging fruit here, it’s simply illogical to have Spock not have completely straight bangs. Never mind the excellent work that went into the design of Jaylah, since she happens to feature pretty heavily in the entire movie. Spock’s bangs are not perfectly bowl-cut, and that’s just unacceptable.
The Academy is particular that way, we suppose.
Presumably, the silly facial tattoos of the Joker and Harley were slightly less of a bad idea than not giving Spock logical hair.
Going up against these two films, it seems like A Man Called Ove didn’t really have a chance, but it’s an honor just to be nominated, right? I think that’s the standard response you have when you lose.
Next: Highlights from the 2017 Oscars
Maybe the wrong card was in there, just like how they gave Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong card for Best Picture.
However, the crew didn’t rush out to switch the envelopes, so I suppose we’ll just have to accept this outcome, even though Moonlight did win Best Picture, and that really does matter a little more in the grand scheme of things, don’t you think?
Call us some heathens (pun intended), but we would have picked Star Trek Beyond any day.