Oscars 2018: 8 Most Game-Changing Nominations

2. Logan - Best Adapted Screenplay

Despite the genre's meteoric rise in the last 10 years or so, superhero movies are largely still ignored when it comes to awards season. They might get recognised in the technical areas, thanks to them often having extensive VFX or eye-catching makeup, but it's rare they'll get any serious attention. The last film to do so was The Dark Knight, for which Heath Ledger won a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award, but that film was overlooked in the other major categories.

That itself was supposed to lead to a change in approach, as it was in part the catalyst for the expansion of the Best Picture pool, and yet the Oscars have continued to snub the superhero genre despite it only getting bigger (if never better).

Logan, then, is a major breakthrough for the genre, as its the first writing Oscar nod for a superhero film. You could argue that if you stripped away the comic book trappings and made it a more pure Western, then it'd have Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nods for Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart (who are deserving regardless of genre), but the fact the Academy have recognised it in the Adapted Screenplay category is still a massive step in the right direction. Add in serious Oscar pushes for Deadpool and Wonder Woman in recent years too, and it looks like the genre is finally being taken seriously when it comes to awards season. Now for it to get the win.