Oscars, the pinnacle of cinema talent. However, the truth is that a lot of times, the winner of the Oscars are the money. Okay, before you (or the editor) clicks away in disgust pleases try to finish reading this article. According to BBC, besides movie talent one thing that determines Oscars is money.

For example, back in 1967, Fox’s over-budgeted musical turkey Doctor Dolittle was ridiculed and bombed at the box office. So how did the get an Oscar? By giving all the voters that decide the Oscar nominees lavish parties. As well as millions of dollars in bribes. There are of course other ways too, like perfectly timing your release and cynically choosing your scripts etc.

Does that mean all Oscar nominees are unworthy? No, many Oscar nomination/winning movies are really good like Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. But it gets worse, sometimes politics shape nominations. For example, Trump’s anti-immigration policy has caused many film documentaries on immigration to win/be nominated for an Oscar. Like Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, which only scored a 6.8 on IMDb. Finally, 93 percent of best picture winners are dramas, while only 2% of winners are action and/or fantasy.

But why do movie directors want the Oscar so badly? This is because on average nominating/winning an Oscar can make a movie again $19 million dollars. For example, The King’s Speech was only estimated to gross $30 million dollars, but it made over $414 million dollars after it won and was nominated for an Oscar. There are numerous other factors that shape who gets the Oscar, like movies over two hours win more Oscars than ones below 120 minutes. But really, in my opinion, when you look at the Oscars it seems that it was maybe once a great institution. But today bribes and politics (and other stuff) have made the Oscars feel more opinion based than objective. But that’s just my opinion.