The Dark Knight ushered in Avatar, District 9

By the time this hub gets posted, practically everyone around the world who follows the Academy Awards will know whether it was "The Hurt Locker" or "Avatar" or anyone of the 10 (gasp!) films nominated for this year will walk away with the "Best Picture" award.

While "Avatar" may have gotten the money and acclaim for James Cameron who toiled for 10 years or more to get the film in 3D glory, it was still surprising for the Academy to announce that it would expand the lineup of Best Picture nominees to not just six or seven but 10 slots in order to accomodate this magnum opus from the director who brought us "Titanic", "Terminator" and the "Aliens" films.

And for this I suspect as do others before me that the Academy expanded its list following the ratings failure for their 2009 Oscars which didn't include "The Dark Knight" in its list of Best Picture noms despite it being a critical and commercial success the year before.

It would have been worse if they even failed to nominate the late Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor, despite ungracious comments that the Australian actor was included only because of the tragedy of his early death.

People who would roll their eyes and question whether Cameron has that much influence to effect a change in Best Picture lineup would have to read this little news article involving him and a certain Sacha Baron Cohen.

Despite this, I also believe that even without "Avatar" the Oscars would have included at least one commercial and critical hit in its lineup if only to offset the previous year's ratings bomb which did include "No Country for Old Men" (but really, aside from certified art movie enthusiasts, who did see that movie?).

A movie like "District 9" which, like Avatar, had elements of fantasy and science fiction but did include a morality angle. For "Avatar" it was about preserving the environment and humanity's all consuming greed for material wealth; in "District 9" it was about intolerance and cruelty to others different from us, even if they are aliens who look like prawns.

As to which is the better movie? "Avatar" does deliver the spectacle, the sheer visual and aural wonder of computer generated images (CGI) and 3D technology to the fore, but as a lot of cynics did correctly point out, it was like "Fern Gully meets Dances with Wolves in space."

In contrast, "District 9" looks like a hybrid love child of "The Killing Fields", "Cry Freedom" and "Alien Nation." That alone would have brought in better ratings for the Oscars which saw its viewership drop in recent years following their ratings bonanza the year "Titanic" swept the Oscars back in 1998.

Really, though, "District 9" combines both the grittiness and topicality of "The Hurt Locker" (racism, genocide) with the fantasy element of "Avatar" and thus tells a better story than Cameron's magnum opus, even if it does end badly for the hero.

Interestingly, while "Avatar" and "District 9's" heroes end up becoming aliens, both do so under different circumstances and intentions. "D9's" Wikus Van de Merke was transformed by accident and viewed the alien prawns as refuse, only to change his viewpoint in the end after undergoing the same oppression they went through.

"Avatar"'s Jake Sully, meanwhile, inhabited an alien/human hybrid and so had the easier time adjusting and falling in love with another alien and eventually underwent the transformation willingly--though probably under the promise of another megabuck sequel.  

And like its predecessor, the Academy hopes to lure in a larger audience by including "Avatar" in its Best Picture lineup. Not that the Oscars is selling out at this point. But really, they should have included the "Dark Knight" last year. That would have been awesome and that's not just the fanboy in me speaking.