3. Snub: The Dark Knight Rises For Several Technical Categories
Though it seemed clear not long after the release of The Dark Knight Rises back in July that it probably wouldn't be nominated for Best Picture, given how most seemed to think it the lesser of the last two Batman films, one still expected that it would clean up in the technical categories, specifically Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. However, The Dark Knight Rises didn't garner a single, solitary nomination this year, outrageous when one considers Wally Pfister's stunning IMAX cinematography, the exemplary Hans Zimmer score, and so on. It's likely that the whole Bane kerfuffle with his voice being inaudible ruined the film's chances of sound nominations before the film was even released. As for the score, none of the Batman scores have been nominated to date, though one hoped that with Zimmer's nomination for Inception, maybe Oscar voters had finally come aboard the Nolan-Zimmer bandwagon. Also factor in that the year's other stunning blockbuster, Skyfall, turned out to be a lot more technically and narratively sophisticated than most expected, and having been out for only 3 months, is lodged far deeper in the collective consciousness than Nolan's film.