The 96th Academy Awards are over and have left us with the Oscar winners for this year’s award season. Undoubtedly, all eyes were on Oppenheimer as the film was expected to win big at the ceremony, which it did. However, what would have happened if Oppenheimer ended up losing to some other film in the Best Picture category? Well, it goes without saying that if this happened, it would’ve caused a major upset among fans of the film industry since Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece was a fan favorite nominee.
Things like this have happened before. Viewers have been enraged by the fact that other films ended up taking the Best Picture award home rather than the film they believed was more deserving. For example, in 1999 Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan was defeated by Shakespeare in Love. Thanks to this, the audience’s disappointment was off the charts. Something similar happened a few years back when The English Patient defeated Fargo and Jerry Maguire at the 69th Academy Awards.
Harvey Weinstein Swept Away the Oscar Awards
Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan were both released in 1998, making them eligible for the 1999 Academy Awards. When the night of the Oscars came, everyone in the audience was fully expecting Steven Spielberg’s film to take the Best Picture award home. However, in a surprising twist of events, it was Shakespeare in Love that ended up taking the W. Needless to say, fans were shocked.
Shakespeare in Love was produced by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein and distributed by his company, Miramax. Michael Schulman, the author of Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears, told BBC,
“When it came out, it was immediately the frontrunner. Everyone at DreamWorks kind of assumed that they were gliding toward Oscars victory and then, at the end of the year, along comes Shakespeare in Love… There were a lot of legitimate reasons why people in the Academy loved Shakespeare in Love. It was light and romantic and funny and frothy and clever. It was about love, whereas Saving Private Ryan was about war. It was like a breath of fresh air.”
This moment was a bit of a déjà vu for fans who witnessed something similar a few years ago, at the 1997 Oscars. Miramax’s The English Patient ended up winning Best Picture that night and fans weren’t too happy. Why? Well, they simply believed that the other contenders in the category were more deserving, especially Fargo and Jerry Maguire.
Tom Cruise was absolutely phenomenal in the lead role and Cameron Crowe’s direction received a ton of praise as well. Jerry Maguire was among the top contenders for the Best Picture win according to the audience but alas, fate had different plans and Weinstein stepped in and swooped the award away.
Fans Have Still Not Gotten Over the Oscar Robbery
It has been twenty-seven years since The English Patient took home Best Picture at the Oscars. Despite this, fans of cinema have not been able to get over the fact that the film managed to win over Fargo and Jerry Maguire. Jerry Maguire was a fan favorite nominee and Cruise’s performance was absolutely adored as the titular character. Thus, it was quite disheartening when the film didn’t win big at the Oscars.
One look at what fans have to say about the loss proves that the wound is still quite fresh.
1997 Oscars is so funny because you think it's gonna be a tight race between Fargo and Jerry Maguire, but then The English Patient sweeps out of nowhere
— Best picturE Nominee (@BenDidntDr0wn) February 27, 2024
The English Patient winning Best Picture over Jerry Maguire and Fargo remains a stain on the Academy. https://t.co/TONeZU6Ncb
— Josh Eberley 🇨🇦 (@JoshEberley) February 23, 2024
Even if Jerry Maguire had won that would've better. No one has watched The English Patient a second time.
— Aging Dad NB (@bigtotoro) January 20, 2024
The English Patient in 1997.
Should have been Fargo or even Jerry Maguire.— The Creative Control Podcast (@CCMoviePod) November 20, 2023
The English Patient beat out Fargo and Jerry Maguire in 97 for best picture. And that movie is terrible Elaine was right pic.twitter.com/Ii6QPmIpaS
— Randi Hilsercop (@Randi_heatlifer) November 7, 2023
Cruise has been nominated for an Oscar four times in his career and unfortunately, the actor has zero golden trophies at his home. In fact, Top Gun: Maverick was nominated for Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards and ended up losing despite being the second-highest-grossing film in 2022. Here’s hoping Cruise is able to break the Oscar curse soon!
You can stream Jerry Maguire on AMC+ via Prime Video.
