Lets take a look at the movies which won the Academy Award for best feature in the last few years
- Million Dollar Baby
- Crash
- The Departed
- No country for old men
- Slumdog millionaire
- The hurt locker
- King's speech
- The Artist
- Argo
- 12 years a slave
- Boyhood (oh we may have to wait sometime for this)
See something common in this?
Let me add some movies that didn't win:
1. Fight Club (1999) : The award was won by American Beauty, fight club was not nominated.
2. The Dark Knight (2008): The award was won by Slumdog Millionaire, TDK was not even nominated.
3. Inception (2010) : Won by King's Speech.
4. Memento : Not nominated.
5. The Shawshank Redemption
By now probably you know why Interstellar isn't on the list. There are more
6. Heat
7. The Terminator
8. American History X: not nominated, won by Shakespeare in love
The pattern shows how the Oscar committee favours "simple", "neat" and feel-good movies.
Dark Knight, Fight Club, Memento and Inception were too complex, they were not neat. See the thing about Interstellar?
There is so much predictability in Oscars, that it has given rise to some sort of a recipe to win it. Some movies just make you believe that its Oscar material. Strong emotions being portrayed by the characters. It has to be very good and have that inspiring simple plot behind it.
"It turns out that audiences dislike movies that are *trying* to get Oscar nominations but really like movies that actually *get* Oscar nominations. By inference, if there were no Oscars to drive box office towards them, there would be far fewer movies about historical protagonists overcoming oppression. Indeed, it looks like Hollywood basically nails it since they make exactly the right number of Oscar-targeted movies that the two effects balance out on average." - Rossman.
"The biggest category might overtly seem to be the most American. The Academy Award Best Picture is, generally speaking, a liberation story"
Many might suggest Oscars are hence useless. But I do think they are alright. Yeah I'd always be angry for Inception and The Dark Knight but I believe, that the simple stories are also the ones with which we can relate to the most, leaves an impression and are plausible.
EDIT:
While many people have blamed Interstellar for plot holes, is it always such that we have to aim to make a movie error-free? I mean the effort put in it is commendable. It is one thing to make a movie with a simple plot and great details but correct in all aspects, and another to boldly try something very complex and almost succeed. And I cannot decide which is tougher or praiseworthy, but on a rainy day, I'd go with the latter.
The thing I didn't like with Interstellar was the lack of character development. Even with such strong scenes as the parting, the docking, etc. we didn't cry with the actor although we got excited with the event. We just didn't have a Cobb, Borden or the stellar Bruce Wayne from Nolan's Dark Knight franchisee.
