Is It Time for the Oscars to Make a Change?

Published: March 2, 2025

Is It Time for the Oscars to Make a Change?

By Movieguide® Contributor

This year’s Oscar nominees hardly represent the movies that were popular in 2024. Is it time for the award show to make a change to better represent the public?

The Oscars have been losing touch with the everyday public for years. While the award is meant to honor the best movies of the year, the criteria for what that means is not so straightforward. Rather than highlighting movies that were popular with the general public, a board of Hollywood elite get to choose what makes a movie great. As Hollywood’s agenda has shifted away from the public, this results in the Oscars, more often than not, recognizing movies that made little to no splash outside of the industry.

This year is no different as few popular movies found much, if any, recognition. In the “Best Picture” category, for example, WICKED and DUNE: PART TWO were the only movies nominated for the category who were within the year’s top ten movies at the box office.

“They are not taking into account popular tastes when making these choices,” said Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo. “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,” Arroyo continued.

READ MORE: OSCARS ON THE OUTS: ‘VOTERS HAVE LOST TOUCH WITH WHAT MOVIE FANS LIKE’

Another issue with the award is that politics have gotten involved in the nomination process. In order for a movie to even be considered for an Oscar, one requirement is that it focuses on groups The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deem as underrepresented: women, racial or ethnic groups, the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities. At least two of these four groups need to have been focused on while the movie was created — whether through on-screen work, behind the scenes opportunities, internships, marketing or the like.

Theoretically, the best movie of the year could be disqualified from even being considered for an award due to the people who worked on the project.

By focusing on politics over what most moviegoers really care about, the Oscars ignore the largest demographic in the United States, also resulting in declining interest in the awards show.

Movieguide®’s 2025 Report to the Entertainment Industry explains:

The mass media of entertainment creates the culture that shapes the hearts and minds of children, teenagers and even adults; and so, through the vast audience, the mass media of entertainment creates the culture controlling society.

However, the Hollywood Entertainment Industry can’t afford to ignore the world’s 2.6 billion Christians, including America’s 245.63 million or so Christians (72%) who say they believe in the deity of Jesus Christ and who believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to Earth to be sacrificed for our sins…

All these facts show why wholesome movies with strong and very strong Christian, redemptive, biblical, and moral content and values make significantly more money on average, year in and year out, than movies with Non-Christian, Anti-Christian, false, crude, or immoral content. This is exactly what MOVIEGUIDE®’s Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry proves.

Many fans of the award are now calling for the process to involve a public vote that would be weighed against the vote of the critics. This would allows both major audiences and the critics to have a say in the Oscar winners, rather than simply leaving it up to the elite to choose. For now, though, this seems more like a pipe dream than anything that would ever actually occur.

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