“Mad Max: Fury Road” won six Oscars – for Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design and Makeup & Hairstyling. It also earned nine Critics Choice Awards, including those latter four categories, plus Best Action Movie, Director (George Miller) and Visual Effects. But the one cinematic element that epitomized “Mad Max”, elevating it to greatness in the eyes of many, was ignored by The Academy, the BFCA and most other other awards organizations: Stuntwork. This should be the 25th Oscar category.
The Screen Actors Guild is the one major awards group that recognizes annual achievement in film stunts. It’s no surprise that “Fury Road” won this year’s SAG Stunt Ensemble category, though “Everest”, “Furious 7”, “Jurassic World” and “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” were all very respectable fellow nominees. The SAG Awards Stunt Ensemble film and TV categories have existed since 2008. Past motion picture winners include “The Bourne Ultimatum”, “The Dark Knight”, “Inception” and “Skyfall”, while on the TV side, “Game of Thrones” has been the recipient for five straight years.
As a SAG Awards voter it’s great to be able to recognize the talented men and women who do this tough, physical, very demanding work. However, not even SAG truly recognizes them, as these are they the only two awards that aren’t given-out live on the show. And that’s a mistake. Giving the stunt community this exposure would add a unique element to the broadcast and, more importantly, give these these stuntmen and stuntwomen a piece of the spotlight, which they deserve. Brief videos of the amazing stunts from each of the nominated films would be one of the highlights of the show.
But, an even greater aspiration for the Stunt community, is to have a stuntwork category added to the Academy Awards ballot. And this is long overdue. Stunts is the one, major, technical aspect of the movies that is not acknowledged by the Hollywood elite. I wholeheartedly support this campaign. It was 15 years ago when The Oscars added the Best Animated Feature category (and, at the time, that was overdue). The growth in numbers of quality animated films, and their tremendous popularity with moviegoers, forced the Academy to add a 24th category. Similarly now, with the recent explosion of the action film genre, most of which are based heavily on stunts, it’s the right time for a 25th category to included in the annual competition.
I’d also like to see Best Stuntwork become a Critics Choice Awards category. As a voting member I do have a little something to say about that. I will be putting that idea in our suggestion box later this year and will campaign for the change.