Last year I bore witness to one of the greatest cinematic triumphs of the 21st century.
David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy” is up there with “The Fugitive” in terms of transcending movies based on TV shows. With an absolutely stacked cast led by Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, “The Fall Guy” is everything a movie should be: funny, exciting and devoid of excessive world building and sequel baiting.
Perhaps the highlight of the film, however, is the stunts. This should come as no surprise as the main character of the film, Colt Seavers, is a Hollywood stuntman. As a former stuntman himself, director David Leitch knows how to block and film insane shots and create a story from the stuntman’s perspective.
This is clear in the way Colt answers the question of whether or not there is an Academy Award for stunts. In the most meta way and with the weighty exasperation of an entire profession, Colt responds that there is not. And I could not be more disappointed.
I understand that the Academy Awards are bogus and make bad decisions about what should and shouldn’t be considered for Best Picture (with the exception of “Oppenheimer”; great film) and who should be awarded for their efforts in filmmaking. But their persistent refusal to award people who put their lives and safety on the line for the sake of amazing shots is absolutely unacceptable.
This wouldn’t be so infuriating if the Academy didn’t recognize “Best Makeup and Hairstyling” and now “Best Casting,” two categories that could either not exist or be absorbed into another category. “Suicide Squad” has an Academy Award because of this nonsense, but “The Fall Guy,” a superior movie on every level, wasn’t nominated for anything.
Yes, of course there are larger issues with the Oscars, like the biases that persist in the awards or the fact that “Emilia Perez” was nominated for anything.
But at the end of the day the lack of a stunt category at the Oscars reveals where the Academy’s priorities lay; with the pandering, Oscar-bait garbage that made no impact at the box office or on American popular culture.
Except “Wicked.” That movie was astounding and should absolutely win Best Picture this year. But I digress.
Stunts are certainly more prevalent in action movies, which are almost always overlooked by the Academy. It feels like the focus of the Academy on artsy movies has the tendency to lock out casual moviegoers in the U.S. The last two years have been a step in the right direction with the Best Picture winners having had a presence in American popular culture. The addition of a stunt category would allow the Oscars to become more accessible to the common person.
And if, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, you won’t do it for them, do it for Colt. Do it for “The Fall Guy.”