Star Wars’ Oscars history is a quietly interesting one. While the franchise garnered a handful of nominations and wins, laypeople and fans likely would say the most popular film series of all time deserves better. Most characterize the Academy Awards as uptight and exclusive gatekeepers that rarely showcase “the movies people actually saw.” Examining that reputation through the lens of the most broadly appealing and successful trilogy of all time, we can perhaps get a better sense of how true that holds. Let’s rewrite the narrative and turn back the clock. Open your minds to a more genre-friendly Academy, for what Oscars should the original Star Wars trilogy have earned a nomination or a win?
Star Wars at the 1978 Oscars
The original film is the most recognized of the franchise at the Academy Awards. A New Hope was nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness, Best Director for George Lucas, and Best Picture. The original Star Wars won the Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, and Best Editing. With six wins and four nominations, including Best Picture, it’s not bad for an academy amid the height of new Hollywood prestige.
What’s most impressive about this lineup is that it acknowledges right up front the people who made Star Wars what it is today. Of course, George Lucas walked away empty-handed, but the Oscars represented every other filmmaker who created the Star Wars ethos. John Williams’ iconic original score, Marcia Lucas’ ever-so-crucial editing, and Ben Burtt’s sound design received gold alongside technical categories like effects and sound design. Star Wars’ Oscars chances were looking up for the future.
Should the original film have won any more? There’s not a case in any of the acting categories. Not that any one of them was terrible, but it’s pretty clear that the main actors are untrained in their early work. The same goes for Lucas’ solid but unnoteworthy screenplay. You could make a weak case for a Best Cinematography nomination. However, there was no beating Vilmos Zsigmond and Steven Speilberg’s work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Star Wars garnered almost every technical nomination and win it could at the 1978 Oscars. This leaves Best Picture and Best Director.
This is the point where things get controversial. The winner of Picture and Director that year was Annie Hall, the best film by writer/director Woody Allen. Of course, in retrospect, many would consider Allen’s real-life behavior a disqualification for either award. But the movie is a romantic comedy masterpiece with an influential effect. The superb postmodern take on the genre is ahead of its time. Its successors in style are the careers of Nora Ephron and Cameron Crowe. The performances of both Allen and Dianne Keaton hug the hilarious wit of the screenplay tightly and make for outstanding work. Cinema scholars may debate, but in this article’s eyes, Annie Hall deserved the top prize that year.
The Academy got it right with this one.
The Empire Strikes Back at the 1981 Oscars
Ask every Star Wars fan which episode is the best one, and you’re likely to get a variety of opinions, many of them wrong. But the closest to a consensus that the fandom has states that The Empire Strikes Back takes the crown. The year 1980 is also a tough one for movies. Studios are reeling (no pun intended) from Star Wars blowing up the box office. The sequel doubled the total gross of number two at the box office, the Dolly Parton vehicle 9 to 5. Hollywood was entering a new age. Some of the ‘70s auteurs were sticking around, but the ‘80s brought a whole new level of commerce-first mindsets.
So how does the Empire strike against the Academy in this turmoil? Not as well, as they only garnered nominations for Art Direction and Original Score with a win for Best Sound. Additionally, another Special Achievement award was given for the film’s visual effects. That’s nice, but do you really win races you play by yourself? Who else would they have given the award to in 1980: The Gong Show Movie? The award feels like a condescending consolation prize. Also, a score nomination without a win for John Williams’s creation of “The Imperial March” is criminal.
Most fans would probably start with Best Picture. The Academy nominated Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Elephant Man, Raging Bull, and Tess, with Ordinary People taking the top prize. If you’re an average Star Wars fan reading this article right now, your current scrunched-up confused expression is typical. Most people who think Empire should have won haven’t seen the nominees here besides Bull and Elephant. Sure, it could be a thing for animals, but it is more likely because they have still currently lauded mainstream auteurs at the helm in Scorsese and Lynch. This represents our current skewing toward movies with strong, gimmicky fantasy at their center. Who wants Ordinary People when you can have force-sensitive ones?
Nominating Empire for Picture is a safe bet, though it does not win. Ordinary People is a well-made drama about the stigmatizing of mental health issues. Its character, plot, and emotional stakes can boast the depth George Lucas’ carbonited cookie-cutter heroes could only dream of. Additionally, if you’re going to change the winner anyway, it’s ridiculous not to change it to Raging Bull.
The most significant place that Empire improves over its predecessor is in its acting. It could be a strong contender for Best Supporting Actor with Harrison Ford or Billy Dee Williams. Unfortunately, it must contend with a huge controversy to take a nomination from this article. It’s time to speak of the biggest problem the Academy Awards has. Coming in at ten times worse than “The Slap,” it’s category fraud! Occasionally, a performance will be submitted to the Academy in a category that shouldn’t qualify.
In this case, the winner for Best Supporting Actor went to Timothy Hutton, who inarguably plays the lead in Ordinary People. His character is the one going through therapy, and we experience hardships through his eyes. Occasionally, the film will focus on a B plot featuring his parents’ reactions to the events. But it’s so overtly clear that Hutton doesn’t deserve a nomination. There exists an awareness that no one reading this is going to watch Ordinary People, but you have to place your trust somewhere. Hutton plays the lead character and thus should have been disqualified. That’s before discussing the wild choice of Jason Robards’s off-the-wall two-scene work in Melvin and Howard! Again, Ford or Williams definitely can get a nomination from us, but not a win. Even if you discount Hutton, his costar Judd Hirsch is likely next in line, followed by Joe Pesci for Raging Bull.
And no costume design? Sure, Vader mostly remains unchanged, dark eyes notwithstanding. But without Empire’s costume, you don’t get Lando, Boba Fett, and the main trio’s Hoth outfits. Polanski’s Tess ends up taking the win. It is the peak of the period piece drama this category celebrates. The Elephant Man, My Brilliant Career, Somewhere in Time, that’s a lot of time periods. Then the other nomination is When Time Ran Out, a volcanic disaster movie with barely a personality. The win would be too far, but clearly, Empire deserves a nomination here, edging out Ran Out or at least one of the period pieces.
After that, with the technical categories mostly cleaned out, Empire doesn’t have much else. Even its usual place in editing is a tough pick in a year, with legendary Thelma Schoonmaker taking the statuette. The directing category seems to have chosen a theme. It’s a year where the Academy wants to honor the up-and-coming auteurs: Robert Redford, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and, unfortunately, Roman Polanski. Irvin Kershner just doesn’t fit that mold, and his movie’s direction, while strong, doesn’t reach the heights of its competition.
The Empire Strikes Back should have been nominated for Best Picture, Supporting Actor, and Costume Design, with a win for Best Score.
Return of the Jedi at the 1984 Oscars
1984 was significant for movies now entering their last gasp before the corporate-driven 80s take over. It’s the year of Terms of Endearment, and the rest of Hollywood is just living in it. James L. “Not just The Simpsons credits guy” Brooks’ directorial debut took the movies by storm. Not only did it garner 11 Oscar nominations and five wins, but it was the second highest-grossing film of the year. I bet you can’t guess who beat it.
The problems that would later plague George Lucas’ prequels come to the forefront in Return of the Jedi, the most childish of the original Star Wars run. The Return storylines are not as character-focused as the first two. Characters that don’t brandish a lightsaber are given very little to do. Much of the film feels like filler that eventually becomes the whole movie. This is best exemplified by the Ewoks, of course, but also by the first third of the film at Jabba’s Palace. There’s a disconnection between the events of the movie and its thematic core. Still, the film remains a beloved one to this day. Children and grown-up children alike still connect with it better than a lot of the other movies of 1983. So, what Oscars did Star Wars return for?
Return of the Jedi increased the Star Wars Oscars count by a respectable amount. The movie was nominated again for Art Direction, Sound, Sound Effects, and Score alongside yet another visual effects special achievement award. Not that they’re undeserved, but by now, Phil Tippett and co probably use those things as paperweights. The technical nominations are fine, with The Right Stuff collecting wins in every category. Even if you’re not a fan of Ed Harris and NASA, it would be hard to deny the technical ability of that film. With the supporting cast being sidelined and the usual technical achievements already in the can, there’s not much for a Jedi to do.
Marcia Lucas’ editing remains mostly strong, of course. The iconic cutting between characters over the Sarlacc pit lets us know the franchise still has juice. But the classic George Lucas split of the action loses much of the film’s emotionality. Marcia Lucas’ editing can’t save it from her former husband’s grasp. For this, it’s hard to argue it over this year’s nominations like Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, or, again, The Right Stuff. The two were also going through what would become their divorce, which may explain this soulless lack.
In terms of Costume Design, there’s not really an argument here. Sure, we got Luke’s black jumpsuit and the Imperial Guard. But our heroes spend a lot of time in dull Endor fatigues. Even Lando’s new costume doesn’t stand out next to the brilliant blue original. Barely worth mentioning is that this film is responsible for the slave Leia look, which is both a point for and against it. There is no nomination here.
In above-the-line categories, there’s similarly nothing there. Hamil gives a touching but broad performance that keeps him committed but, again, doesn’t show anything significant. Master film critic Pauline Kael best summarizes the performance in her review of the film.
“The emotional peak of the whole mythic trilogy- the moment when the young protagonist, Luke Skywalker, removes the black visor and the helmet that have concealed Vader’s face- has no thrill… Luke looks into the eyes of his nightmare father, and he might be ordering a veggie burger.”
Pauline Kael, “Fun Machines”
Unfortunately, that apathy goes double for both Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, who have plenty of better places to be than an Endor moon and let us know through childish performance. Finally, the film has no competitive edge to bump out competition in Best Directing, Best Cinematography, or indeed Best Picture. Terms of Endearment earned most of the wins across the board, and with lions like Fanny and Alexander and The Big Chill in the wings, there was just no chance for the third-best Star Wars movie at the time.
The Academy got it right with this one. That places the Academy in the right for the majority of the trilogy. Sure, some would argue for whatever “this was my childhood” nomination or win they please. Maybe you’re an Anthony Daniels defender and wish C-3PO got to hold a gold statue. That would be a sight! But this article has showcased the Academy, at least at the time, being willing to recognize a good blockbuster when they see it. Try watching some of the films nominated in the Star Wars Oscars years, and you’ll discover a world of great work.
