5 Films Ineligible for Awards for the Dumbest Reasons

5 The Dark Knight

The Best Original Score category at the Academy Awards trips people up because of that word “original.” Every so often, some seemingly worthy movie score is revealed not to be original after all. Dune: Part Two was recently deemed ineligible for an Oscar because it shared too much with Dune: Part One, and The Godfather was removed from consideration because composer Nino Rota had previously used some of that score in an Italian movie.  

So, since you know we’re about to talk about The Dark Knight, you might be thinking that it was disqualified for using themes from Batman Begins. No, that wasn’t it. The Academy said The Dark Knight was ineligible because too many people worked on it.

In fact, they’d previously disqualified Batman Begins for the same reason. Along with Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, the score credited three other composers, and rather than nominate them all as a team, the Academy decided it couldn’t nominate any of them. 

This decision had gone under the radar with Batman Begins but attracted more attention ahead of the 2009 ceremony. So, the Academy said they’d now remove the rule and declare The Dark Knight to be eligible.

Then they went and didn’t nominate it anyway. 

4 Roma

Sometimes, a movie that campaigns for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars turns out to be ineligible because it contains too much English. That happened to the Nigerian film Lionheart from a few years back, and this can be a bit confusing because the category is called Best International Feature Film, not Best Foreign Language Film. It used to be called Best Foreign Language Film right up until 2020, which was the year Lionheart was in contention. The name change might make it seem like they’d dropped the foreign language requirement, but they had not.

Weirder is the Golden Globes. Until 2021, they had a rule saying that nominees in the top categories had to be in English. That meant that Roma was ineligible for Best Motion Picture — Drama. That also meant it was ineligible for Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy, but it probably wasn’t going to get that anyway.

No one has offered up a good reason for this rule. With Best International Film, the foreign language requirement aims to honor films that the top category otherwise might overlook, but everyone should be allowed to try for best of the best. 

The Golden Globes finally got rid of the rule a year later when it cost Minari a nomination. They’ll presumably still keep giving the awards to the wrong movies, but not for this reason.

3 A Place in the World

Best International Feature Film really is a weird category. It’s not like the other awards. Each country is allowed to submit just one movie for the year, and the award is given to the country, rather than to the people who made the movie. 

In 1992, the Oscars nominated A Part in the World, from Uruguay. But afterward, they discovered that it wasn’t a Uruguayan film at all. It had been made in Argentina. So, the Academy now stripped it of its nomination. They didn’t nominate it as an Argentinian film. They unnominated it altogether. 

Argentina had already submitted a film that year, The Dark Side of the Heart. Since The Dark Side of the Heart didn’t get a nomination, you might think the Academy could now nominate A Part in the World in its place, but they did not. As for Uruguay, they had never submitted a movie before, and they wouldn’t try again for another decade.

2 1776

William Daniels, whom you surely know best as Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World, starred as John Adams in 1776. Before it was a movie, it was a play on Broadway, again with William Daniels in the lead role. The Tonys told him that he was ineligible for their Best Actor award for the play, but he could submit for Best Supporting Actor. 

That’s confusing because John Adams is the main character, and Daniels was the lead actor. But on the playbill, the production had put his name (and every other cast name) below the name of the play, and according to Tony rules, which have since changed, the lead’s name had to always be on top. Otherwise, they’re not the lead.

The next time you see some movie poster that puts the name Dwayne Johnson right above the image of Dakota Johnson and the name Dakota Johnson right above the image of Dwayne Johnson (this being the acclaimed biopic Johnson & Johnson, chronicling the rise of Johnson & Johnson), that’s no slipup. Complex rules dictate where names go, and you don’t get to ignore those just for the sake of aesthetics or logic. 

1 Young Americans

Young Americans was declared ineligible for Best Documentary for 1968. This was a bit awkward for everyone because by this point, it had actually already won that award. 

It won the award in 1969 for the year 1968, and only then did the Academy look back and discover that the movie had premiered in 1967. 

Not many theaters screened it in 1967. It had premiered at one theater as part of a benefit to raise money for a hospital, and the producers hadn’t been aware that this knocked them out of contention for awards. Perhaps they were thinking the Oscars were as loose about dates as the Grammys, who will often declare Best New Artist to be someone who’s been releasing albums for eight years.

To learn a little bit about just what Young Americans was about, you could go read the Wikipedia page. Just to rub salt in the wound, the page is titled, “Young Americans (1967 Film).”

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