Genre movies finally found their path to legitimacy in 2004
“It’s a clean sweep,” Steven Spielberg said before presenting director Peter Jackson with the award for Best Picture at the 2004 Oscars. Collecting the 11th statue of the night for The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, Jackson thanked the Academy for looking “past the trolls and wizards and the Hobbits” to recognize fantasy, “an F-word that, hopefully, the five-second delay won’t do anything with.”At the time, The Lord Of The Rings was an Oscars anomaly. In the decade since The Silence Of The Lambs became the first horror movie to win Best Picture, the Academy Awards had snubbed Batman Returns, Starship Troopers, and The Sixth Sense, proving the durability of genre movies’ glass ceiling. But while Lecter didn’t start a revolution at the Oscars, Frodo Baggins did. Lord Of The Rings’ wins kicked off an evolutionary era for fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero movies that would deliver fans the industry legitimacy they’ve always wanted. Jackson’s Best Picture win was a starter pistol for 2004’s revolutionary superhero mindset, which leaned into the comics. Guillermo del Toro didn’t share the insecurities that led to Wolverine ditching the yellow spandex. He went full-bore into the material. Released roughly one month after the Oscars, Hellboy would prove an essential step toward our modern cinematic landscape. A relative unknown among mainstream moviegoers, Hellboy operated like Guardians Of The Galaxy, proving that even the most outlandish and bizarre superhero could perform like Batman. It didn’t matter how silly it looked, del Toro treated the material with care and sincerity. While del Toro saved story innovations for his superior Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Hellboy represented a significant step in the director’s style. Uncorking his obsession with latex and prosthetics, del Toro designed the film to look like a lavish version of Mike Mignola's comics and found his muse in actor Doug Jones, a Mimic holdover turned breakout star. Audiences rewarded Hellboy with a near-$100 million box office, while critics (outside The A.V. Club) praised its originality and sincerity.Oscar voters ignored the film, but not del Toro. Del Toro's advancements on Hellboy carried over to his subsequent work, Pan’s Labyrinth, which would chart a course for the complete del Toroification of the Oscars. Ironically, though, by the time del Toro got his moment in the sun, genre movies were the boring pick. The Shape Of Water won four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture…but nearly 15 years after Return Of The King, a movie about a deaf woman boiling eggs when she isn’t banging the Creature from the Black Lagoon was considered the “consensus choice of older voters.” And here we were thinking it was older voters keeping genre movies out.But it wasn’t just Big Red who gave fantasy an upgrade. Released simultaneously with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Chris Columbus’ initial Harry Potter movies weren’t exactly at Middle-earth’s level. Columbus gave the series a firm foundation with some legendary casting decisions and a cinematic language for the series to adopt. However, his first two installments were lumbering tours of Hogwarts more interested in translation than adaptation. Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban would put an end to that. Released in June 2004, Prisoner Of Azkaban treats fans to a darker, more irreverent version of Potter. Cuarón infused the film with more stakes, horror, and dark magic, creating thrilling sequences from throwaway gags. Opening from the horrifying heights of the Dursleys inflating Mr. Creosote’s stomach in Monty Python And The Meaning Of Life, the movie speeds along on a doubledecker Knight Bus driven by a shrunken head and arrives at Hogwarts where the whereabouts of Sirius Black actually conjure a dread-soaked atmosphere. Cuarón entered Hollywood on the back of two adaptations of beloved works of literature, A Little Princess and Great Expectations. With Prisoner Of Azkaban, he proved one could take Harry Potter seriously without ruining the party—no wonder many consider Prisoner Of Azkaban the series' high point. Like del Toro, Cuarón’s ability to elevate genre fare wouldn’t receive its due for another few years. Children Of Men would introduce him back into the Oscar picture three years after his Y Tú Mama Tambien screenplay nomination. But Children Of Men’s innovations would pale in comparison to Gravity, the director’s attempt at 2001 notoriety. Once again, a genre movie, this time a Marooned-style thriller that would clear the field for Arrival and Dune, made Cuarón an Oscar player. While these future Oscar stars were beginning their journey, another director in Jackson’s mold was about to set the standard for superhero movies. Following Jackson’s Karo-syrup-stained footprints, Sam Raimi rose to prominence in splatter films and Looney Tunes-inspired capers. The inspiration for Jackson’s Bad Taste and Braindead, Raimi’s Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 exhibited boun
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