I think I'm going a little bit against the grain here, but while I don't agree with him, I don't think his comments are entirely meritless and don't like how his statements are immediately being...
I think I'm going a little bit against the grain here, but while I don't agree with him, I don't think his comments are entirely meritless and don't like how his statements are immediately being regarded as "old man yells at cloud". The thing that stands out to me about this whole thing is how, the moment he said the Netflix movies should qualify for Emmys instead of Oscars, so many people just immediately jumped on that comment and said he wasn't giving the Netflix movies enough credit, when he never said that qualifying for an Emmy was any less praise worthy than qualifying for an Oscar. In his interview with ITV News almost a year ago, which is the earliest I know of his comments about Netflix and the Oscars, he in fact praises modern television and talks about the benefits of streaming services in the age of risk-averse major studios.
The argument here is simply that Netflix's business model is closer to that of television than one of a film studio, and their films are made with home viewing in mind, and Spielberg believes that makes their films closer to TV movies. This isn't entirely unreasonable in my opinion, since HBO for example qualifies for Emmys. He would of course have no leg to stand on if TV movies had always qualified for Oscars, or if there was no well known award show for TV movies, but neither of those things are the case.
Now, with all that said, the rules the Academy has for qualifications have always been and will always be arbitrary. Mandy, for example, was a film I loved last year that should've been nominated for Best Score and had a limited theatrical release, but didn't qualify because it didn't follow all of their rules. Netflix does follow those arbitrary rules, so even if they are making something more akin to TV movies than studio theatrical films due to their business model, they should be eligible for nominations. I don't think it should be the Oscars' place to preserve the theatrical experience, especially considering I'm willing to bet that the majority of Academy voters, almost definitely including Spielberg, saw at least one of the nominees for the first time via screener sent to their home, not in the theater, making all the calls for Oscars to aid the preservation of cinema ring a little hollow.
In the long run this is a lost battle. The way media is released and consumed already changed radically. I don't think movie theaters will ever die, but they are now part of a larger picture and...
In the long run this is a lost battle. The way media is released and consumed already changed radically. I don't think movie theaters will ever die, but they are now part of a larger picture and failing to acknowledge that might make the Oscars irrelevant in the next 10 years or so.
I think I'm going a little bit against the grain here, but while I don't agree with him, I don't think his comments are entirely meritless and don't like how his statements are immediately being regarded as "old man yells at cloud". The thing that stands out to me about this whole thing is how, the moment he said the Netflix movies should qualify for Emmys instead of Oscars, so many people just immediately jumped on that comment and said he wasn't giving the Netflix movies enough credit, when he never said that qualifying for an Emmy was any less praise worthy than qualifying for an Oscar. In his interview with ITV News almost a year ago, which is the earliest I know of his comments about Netflix and the Oscars, he in fact praises modern television and talks about the benefits of streaming services in the age of risk-averse major studios.
The argument here is simply that Netflix's business model is closer to that of television than one of a film studio, and their films are made with home viewing in mind, and Spielberg believes that makes their films closer to TV movies. This isn't entirely unreasonable in my opinion, since HBO for example qualifies for Emmys. He would of course have no leg to stand on if TV movies had always qualified for Oscars, or if there was no well known award show for TV movies, but neither of those things are the case.
Now, with all that said, the rules the Academy has for qualifications have always been and will always be arbitrary. Mandy, for example, was a film I loved last year that should've been nominated for Best Score and had a limited theatrical release, but didn't qualify because it didn't follow all of their rules. Netflix does follow those arbitrary rules, so even if they are making something more akin to TV movies than studio theatrical films due to their business model, they should be eligible for nominations. I don't think it should be the Oscars' place to preserve the theatrical experience, especially considering I'm willing to bet that the majority of Academy voters, almost definitely including Spielberg, saw at least one of the nominees for the first time via screener sent to their home, not in the theater, making all the calls for Oscars to aid the preservation of cinema ring a little hollow.
In the long run this is a lost battle. The way media is released and consumed already changed radically. I don't think movie theaters will ever die, but they are now part of a larger picture and failing to acknowledge that might make the Oscars irrelevant in the next 10 years or so.