Harold's comments about The Dark Knight's Best Picture chances

This week, The Dark Knight has officially become too big to ignore.

To not nominate it for Best Picture at this rate would undermine the process of having a Best Picture race in the first place; if you don’t honor a film this big you really do a dishonor to those who drive the entire business: the ticket buyers. If you look at the top five all-time highest grossing films only one hasn’t been nominated for Best Picture and that was an animated film, Shrek 2.

If The Dark Knight had topped out at $400 million, it probably wouldn’t be in consideration for Best Picture. But for those who remember an Academy that nominated E.T. and Star Wars and Jaws, ushering in the mega blockbuster, it’s impossible to imagine them snubbing this film, whether you adjust for inflation or not. Finally, the industry and the Oscars need films like The Dark Knight - big, beautiful, artful, political - to redefine the blockbuster genre itself, to take it back from the tired, lazy sequels that have been served up as overpriced crap for the last two decades. An Oscar nomination for The Dark Knight would bring much-needed attention to the Academy, and its telecast would ultimately bridge the ever-widening gap between the general public and the kinds of films that enter the Oscar race.

Watching Oscars involves having an open mind just as it requires you know a little bit about Oscar history. When you hear yourself saying “no way” can THIS happen, that is exactly when you should imagine it could or it will. Now, with The Dark Knight showing no signs of slowing down, and if it does, it’s going to be somewhere at number 2 or 3 in the coming weeks, and will sail past Star Wars. It will edge as close to Titanic as any film ever has.