No Justice at the Oscars, Just Justice League Memes

Because, like all Twitter popularity contests, online fandom did exactly what it always does: rally their followers to game an easily-gameable poll system. In this case, Zack Snyder’s most loyal fans—who know a thing or six about getting hashtags trending—immediately rallied and pushed Snyder’s version of Justice League to the top. It’s a moment you could see coming, because the Snyder fandom has already won this contest several times over. The release of the 2021 version of the film says, without question, that Snyder fans have the Twitter/Reddit/forum muscle to coordinate and vote for their man.

Snyder’s Army of the Dead won the Fan Favorite poll too—again, devoid of any metrics other than the online poll that the Oscars decided was its sword to fall on, and again, because the director’s fans are perpetually online enough to know how to make this system work in their favor. In defense of Army of the Dead, it did, at the very least, release in 2021, unlike half of the cheer-worthy moments. I won’t begrudge Snyder this win, or any of the other nominees. If people want to upvote Snyder until their pointer finger goes numb, be my guest. But what does it really say about these films and their place at the Oscars?

Popular movies are popular for a reason. They’re an event; they’re fun to watch, they’re a fantastic Friday night. But the Cheer-Worthy Moment and Fan Favorite awards aren’t honors, they’re overhyped Twitter polls made by an account desperate for engagement, and ripe for online fandom to swarm. If a Marvel or a DC really wants a superhero film to win an Oscar outside of rare moments like Spider-Verse, they’re going to have to try harder to make a film that’s worthy of it. At the end of the night, the Oscars are a bloated, overhyped trade show turned infomercial, and if Hollywood just accepted that this is an awards ceremony rather than a internet popularity contest and treated the broadcast with any kind of gravitas whatsoever, it would be infinitely more coherent and likely more entertaining. Perhaps cheerworthy, even.

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