On February 27, 2011, The King’s Speech won Best Picture at the 83rd Academy Awards. The film was critically acclaimed and holds 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and was also a box office hit grossing $135 million domestically and $423 million worldwide. It seemed like a Best Picture winner that overlapped with what critics and audiences enjoyed. However, almost immediately after it won, the coveted award backlash to the movie grew with many regarding it as a standard Oscar-bait film beating out more daring, innovative, and worthwhile movies.
In the years since winning, the opinion on The King’s Speech has only worsened with time. Now it is regarded as one of the most disappointing Best Picture wins in the Academy Awards. This is a sentiment not only shared by critics and cultural commentators but also by general audience members, even those that saw The King’s Speech in theaters and probably enjoyed it. This is why many do not think The King’s Speech did not deserve its Best Picture Oscar at the time, and why the sentiment has only grown.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
It Beat Out More Beloved and Critically Acclaimed Movies
Sony Pictures Releasing
One of the biggest obstacles the Best Picture winner faces is how it stacks up to its fellow nominees. Many Best Picture winners forever carry the distinction of being the “unpopular” winner, from Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan, to the controversial win of Crash over Brokeback Mountain. Time is the ultimate judge of a Best Picture winner’s place in history and if it outlasts its fellow nominees, and The King’s Speech is notable for winning Best Picture over many other better movies.
The King’s Speech’s biggest opponent at the Academy Awards was The Social Network, the David Fincher film written by Aaron Sorkin about the founding of Facebook. Not only did the film receive rave reviews at the time of its release, it was also a box office hit grossing $224 million worldwide. While esteem for The King’s Speech has dropped over time, praise for The Social Network has only grown, with the film often being regarded as one of if not David Fincher’s best movies and being more topical as Facebook has grown and struggled in recent years. Most people would likely put The Social Network as one of the best movies of the past decade.
The King’s Speech also beat out other critically acclaimed and fan-favorite movies like Toy Story 3, Inception, and True Grit, all of which are still regarded as great films to this day that many audiences and critics likely remember more fondly than The King’s Speech. The King’s Speech now feels like an unworthy winner at best, and a mediocre movie at worst beating out beloved and timeless films.
Tom Hopper’s Recent Films Have Put His Skill Into Question
Universal Pictures
Tom Hopper’s Best Director Oscar for The King’s Speech alongside the movie’s Best Picture win certainly seems baffling now following the filmmaker’s recent movies. He followed up his Academy Award win with the highly anticipated big-budget adaptation of Les Misérables. The fact that it was based on a popular musical with an all-star cast and an Academy Award-winning director certainly gave the movie buzz, and while it went on to become a box office hit and earn seven Academy Award nominations, many critics savaged the movie. Much attention was put on specific directorial choices of Hopper’s, from his claustrophobic shot composition motivated by his decision to film all the music live, favoring star power like Russell Crowe over performers who could actually sing.
His next film, 2015’s The Danish Girl, felt like a cynical attempt to earn Academy Awards and in recent years has been shown as a troubling and disrespectful depiction of transgender women, particularly by casting a cisgender actor to play the role; intentionally or not, it had the effect of perpetuation harmful transgender stereotypes. Yet the final nail in the coffin was the disastrous release of 2019’s Cats. The film’s trailer was widely criticized, and the finished film was a critical and box office bomb. After starting out the decade winning the Best Director Oscar and helming the Best Picture winner, Tom Hopper spent the next decade making everybody question that decision and ended it with what many regarded as one of the worst of the decade.
How The King’s Speech Won Best Picture
Paramount Pictures
Arguably the biggest factor against The King’s Speech is that it won the Best Picture Oscar, yet it might have done so without anyone thinking it was actually the best picture of 2010. When the Academy expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five films to 10, they also implemented a new voting system known as the preferential ballot, or more commonly known as ranked-choice voting. This system means that voters rank their choices, rather than choosing only one to be the winner, which is the case for every other nominated category.
In 2010 there were 10 nominees, meaning Oscar voters ranked each of the nominees from one to 10. To win Best Picture, a film must receive 50% of the votes plus one to win. If no film has received that when all the votes are tallied up, the film with the least amount of number one picks is taken out of the running, and the number one slot on any ballot which had that film then goes to their second place pick. This process goes on with the smaller number of films being eliminated until a winner is determined. This means films that are divisive can lose out to safe middle-of-the-road picks that are not anyone’s favorite but also nobody’s least favorite.
While it is unknown if this is how The King’s Speech won Best Picture, or if it immediately received the number of winning votes in the first round, the fact that this voting system was introduced just one year prior to The King’s Speech win does suggest it. That’s especially so when one considers the number of popular but also divisive picks like The Social Network, Toy Story 3, and Inception that could have split ballots The King’s Speech may have won by being a pretty good film that many voters liked and neither loved nor hated, hence giving it the win. It was a safe Best Picture nominee that ended up winning the top prize from better movies, and even though it won Best Picture, it will always have a shadow hanging over it.
