On Friday, we asked you to name the one movie, based on a comic book, graphic novel or manga, that should’ve won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Winning the vote with 18.5 percent was 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the incredible animated film debut of Miles Morales. A stirring origin story, and a dazzling love letter to the medium of comics, the movie did win Best Animated Film, but it was clear you felt it deserved more than what is essentially a glorified consolation prize. At the very least, we can all agree it was a better movie than that year’s actual winner, Driving Miss Daisy II: Green Book.
In second place with 14.8 percent was Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s spellbinding 1988 adaptation of his own manga: the thought of an animated, foreign-language film winning the main prize before Beauty and the Beast‘s groundbreaking nomination really seemed to strike a chord with you, and no wonder, one can only imagine what the filmmaking landscape would look like if it had even been in contention back then. It has probably aged a lot better than any of 1988’s Best Picture nominees, and together with Spider-Verse‘s polling, demonstrates an animated film should’ve won the award by now.
In third place with 13 percent was Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, which was not even nominated for Best Picture or Best Director in 2009, something many cinephiles believe is what led the Academy to double the number of nominees in the main category the year after. Can you name the movies that were nominated over it? Because I can, and with all due respect to Danny Boyle, none of them will ever be as remembered or beloved as the epic Batman sequel. (And while we’re here, Aaron Eckhart should’ve been nominated too!)
Check back on Friday for our next Reader Poll!
