6 People Who Stupidly Thought Their Movies Should Win Oscars

2. Will Smith Boycotts The Oscars (Partially) Because He Wasn't Nominated For Concussion

The #OscarsSoWhite backlash is looking like it'll have a pretty big impact; the Academy has already announced a review of its membership and you can bet there'll be no way we'll get an all-white selection across all acting categories in 2017 (as it stands, Nate Parker's The Birth Of A Nation is a strong contender for next year's ceremony). However, it's important to remember that it's not all the Oscar's fault. Yes, they are a mostly white, male institution with an average membership age of 63 and habitually skew towards honouring safe movies that appeal to old, white males, but the industry really isn't helping them. If there's going to be people other than white, middle-class filmmakers getting honoured, there needs to be films that offer roles to other ethnicities made in the first place and for these films to not get completely ignored upon release by publicity, distributors and the press. This is very important, because there is a worrying possibility that #OscarsSoWhite could lead to sub-par movies getting nominated purely because of the ethnicities of those involved. Case in point: Will Smith's Oscar boycott. The actor has rightly stated him not attending the 2016 ceremony is meant to make a social point, but did admit it is in part motivated by him not getting nominated for Best Actor for Concussion. Wait, what? Smith wasn't nominated not because of his race, but because his performance, and the film itself, wasn't good enough, plain and simple (he's probably better than Eddie Redmayne, but if we're swapping him out there's plenty of other hopefuls - Tom Courtney, Michael B. Jordan Michael Keaton - who should be considered first). If he thought he was going to win by nature of being a household name, clearly he's not learnt enough from After Earth.