Andy Samberg answered this one for us back in 2020.
Here’s the short version (because we’ve gone over this). Every best picture winner in the Academy’s 98-year history — from the silent-era film “Wings” in 1929 through the most recent political action epic “One Battle After Another” this past March — clears the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards. That also includes “Oppenheimer,” the film directed by Christopher Nolan, with whom Elon Musk had no problem until this past week. And Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” whenever the Academy gets a look at it, would also clear the inclusion standards, and it’s not because Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy.
Musk spent the back half of the week yelling at a movie that doesn’t come out until July. The world’s richest man went on X to announce that Nolan “desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award,” then sharpened it again on Friday: “Who specifically is the asshole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?”
He doesn’t actually want an answer. But I’ll give one, and it’s going to be boring, a huge problem for everyone amplifying him. The standards don’t do what he thinks they do, and the entire history of the category proves it.
