10 Incredible Performances The Academy Ignored This Year
1. Robert Downey Jr. (Avengers: Endgame)
Avengers: Endgame was the culmination of a ten year long narrative which saw characters and actors grow before our very eyes into pop culture phenomenons.
This wasn't a fluke.
The reason these stars and superheroes became household names was quite simple. The performances of each actor in the roles of Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow (I could go on) were so pitch perfect and well rounded that they forced us to sit up and take notice. Then after we'd done that, we had no choice but to emotionally connect to these deeply relatable heroes to the point that their eventual demise or departure on screen was as unbearable as it was spectacularly crafted.
Robert Downey Jr.'s turn as Iron Man/ Tony Stark in Endgame embodied this better than any other MCU performance to date. Leaving it all out on the field in his last ever (for now...) appearance as the flag bearer of the franchise, RDJ produced an ending for the ages. Composed, explosive, defeated and content, did any other performance elicit the same universally emotional response from so many people around the world as this did in the last year?
The Academy didn't think so and RDJ (along with the MCU as a whole) was left out of the acting honours list for another year. If Tony's death wasn't enough to earn an Oscar nod, will anything the MCU does ever be?