When Vin Diesel said that Furious 7 would win Best Picture at the Oscars, you could hear the collectively stifled laugh from people without imaginations. He framed it in terms of the Oscars needing to be relevant, but as it turns out, Furious 7 is also winning in the prestige department.
It’s currently holding at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means that when it comes to being critically acclaimed, Diesel’s physics-defying film is ahead of several movies that actually were nominated for Best Picture. They include:
American Sniper, The Theory of Everything, The Wolf of Wall Street, Les Miserables, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, The Tree of Life and War Horse.
It’s also tied with Beasts of the Southern Wild and Inception, and only one percentage point behind Life of Pi and Black Swan.
And that’s only since 2010.
So next time you want to laugh about the possibility of Furious 7 slipping into formal wear next February, consider all the movies that earned Oscar nominations that the critical community didn’t like as much. Granted, there’s no chance that it’ll get nominated, but as Diesel pointed out, there’s the whole “relevancy” element going on there.
Read our Furious 7 review
Related Topics: Awards
