Oscars: 10 Films That Should Have Won Best Picture (But Didn't)

The Oscars are upon us this weekend, with a great lineup of the year’s very best. With the Best Picture award host to the most diverse selection in years, it’s hard to speculate which of the nominees deserve to win, compared with those that will actually take home the coveted award.

Yet regardless of the outcome, there will always be those that feel snubbed. The could-have-beens and should-have-beens that permeate their way through award season each year; leaving the internal Oscar politics to be debated, as to why one lost and the other won conjured up with each new year.

So, as we approach the 92nd Academy Awards with films like 1917, Joker and Parasite battling it out for the top spot, it had us reminiscing on the very best nominees and snubs over the years that fell undeservedly short of their Oscar glory, accompanied with the wonderful gift of hindsight.

King Kong has become a hallmark of cinema, spanning near-ninety-years and eleven adaptations – with his twelfth appearance in a punch-up styled collab with Godzilla coming this year. Yet back in 1933, the revolutionary original production and the beating of the mighty ape’s chest wasn’t enough to astound even a nomination out of the Academy, due to its lesser regarded sub-genre of “monster movie”.

However, King Kong swung into theatres with incomparable visuals, an adaptation of the now classic tale, and the biggest box office opening ever at the time. With the unusual love story between beauty and the beast, the Mighty Kong lost to Best Picture to a movie most modern audiences likely haven’t even hear of, Cavalcade.

Nonetheless, Oscar or not, King King stands as an excellent blend of horror and adventure that explored a prehistoric corner of the world and was as much a wonder of cinema as Kong was a wonder of the world. Its lack of recognition is as upsetting as the infamous climatic fall from the Empire State Building.