25 Astonishingly Dumb 21st Century Film Oscar Wins

3. 2019: Green Book Wins Best Picture And Best Original Screenplay

Catherine Zeta-Jones Chicago 2002
Universal

Beat: Black Panther, Black Klansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Roma, A Star is Born and Vice.

Beat (Screenplay): The Favourite, First Reformed, Roma and Vice.

Should've Won: Roma and First Reformed respectively.

Green Book has already gone down as one of the least-deserving Best Picture winners of all time and how could it not?

After all, Green Book is a rock-solid 7/10 movie that is beautifully-acted, heart-warming and overall good, but certainly not nearly good enough for the Oscars. Its safe vibe and terrible handling of racial themes meant it wasn't even the thirtieth best movie of the year. Similarly, the screenplay was decent but flawed and it was the actors who really made the movie work.

It's no new thing for merely decent movies to undeservedly win the Oscar, what makes Green Book's win so infuriating is that it had seemed like we were past this kind of win.

For the most part, the Best Picture winners of the 2010s were interesting and worthy winners and just the year before this, we'd seen a love story between a woman and a fish-man win Best Picture, so to see such a tired, safe piece of Oscar-Bait walk away with the big prize was pretty depressing.

The original Best Picture front-runner, the fantastic Roma, should've won the top prize and the magnificent First Reformed should've taken Best Original Screenplay. Those films are true masterworks, unlike Green Book.

Contributor

Film Studies graduate, aspiring screenwriter and all-around nerd who, despite being a pretentious cinephile who loves art-house movies, also loves modern blockbusters and would rather watch superhero movies than classic Hollywood films. Once met Tommy Wiseau.