Twitter

Where to Stream:

Deadpool

Big awards-season news came down today, as the Producers Guild of America announced their top 10 motion pictures of 2016. The usual suspects of this year’s awards season were there: La La Land, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Arrival, Hidden Figures, Fences, Lion, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water. And one more. The PGA is generally a mostly-great predictor of the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Usually, about 7 or 8 films from the PGA’s list of ten get in. They also generally like to throw in a curveball, a movie that’s pretty far out of the Oscar race but which ends up standing out for being such a surprise. This year, that movie was Deadpool, the Ryan Reynolds-starring film about the X-Men-adjacent, smart-aleck, foul-mouthed superhero whose film was a defiant middle finger to the era of the superhero movie.

So does this mean — as many have wondered/feared — that Deadpool is now poised to crash the Oscars’ Best Picture list? After all, it’s now a PGA nominee and a Golden Globe Best Picture nominee. Well … not quite. The PGA’s curveball choice very rarely (if ever) makes the Oscar short list. Even when the Oscars pull out a kooky Best Picture nominee (The Blind Side in 2009; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in 2011), the PGA didn’t. American Sniper in 2014 was probably the only time in recent years that the PGA outlier nominee make the final cut for Oscar. Otherwise, they tend to go for big box-office winners above all else (Skyfall in 2012; Star Trek in 2009; The Incredibles in 2004; My Big Fat Greek Wedding in 2002; Shrek in 2001). Deadpool surely counts as that, sitting on $363 million domestic (#6 for the year).

Here’s the problem: Deadpool is a terrible movie. TERRIBLE. It loudly and obnoxiously declared its intentions to upend all the conventions of the superhero movie, but it doesn’t replace those conventions with anything compelling. There’s a lot of aggressive violence, a lot of Ryan Reynolds quippiness, and a sex montage that is working so hard to shock you, you’ll want to splash a cup of water on it like you would a marathon runner. Deadpool might not end up being the worst Best Picture nominee of all time, but it’d be bottom five for sure.

And it’s doubly frustrating because there are SO many viable alternatives for the PGA to have gone for. If they were really looking for a 10th-slot nominee that would a) be surprising enough to get everybody talking about the PGA awards (uh, guilty) and b) honor a movie that made a whole lot of money for a whole lot of people in Los Angeles, here are five MUCH better choices.

'Zootopia'

Domestic Box Office: $341 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

This one feels like the biggest no-brainer. Zootopia made essentially the same amount of money as Deadpool, but as a bonus, it’s actually very good. For as much sound and fury Deadpool makes about breaking the boundaries of superhero convention, Zootopia is a lot quieter about its story that manages to work as an allegory about — of all unlikely subjects — racial profiling. Zootopia will almost certainly end up as an Oscar nominee in the Animated Feature category. The PGA could have given it some extra shine in Best Picture.

Where to stream 'Zootopia'

'The Jungle Book'

Domestic Box Office: $364 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

The Jungle Book was far and away Disney’s best execution of their new live-action-remakes-of-animated-classics, and while it’s not the caliber of a Best Picture Oscar nominee, it’s so much better than Deadpool. It’s also a more impressive production, and it’s the only movie on this list to have made more money than Deadpool did.

Where to stream 'The Jungle Book'

'Pete's Dragon'

Domestic Box Office: $76 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Perhaps this could have stood to be a bigger hit, but Pete’s Dragon was such a big surprise in terms of how much better it was than it had any right to be. Which shouldn’t have come as that much of a surprise, since director David Lowery is so talented. But Pete’s Dragon was a hidden gem of the summer, and a PGA boost could have really done it some good.

'Deepwater Horizon'

Domestic Box Office: $61 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Peter Berg’s movie about the BP oil disaster was his more successful film this year, and this kind of macho filmmaking was clearly something that voters responded to in Deadpool as well.

'The Shallows'

Domestic Box Office: $55 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

Okay, HEAR ME OUT. If the PGA really wanted to shock people with their 10th-slot nomination, they picked the wrong half of the Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively household. Blake Lively unlikely critical fave was summer’s most exciting movie about a blonde woman fighting a shark from a rock in high tide.

Where to stream 'The Shallows'