What Suicide Squad winning an Oscar really means

The 2017 Academy Awards was full of surprises all night, with the biggest one coming at the end of the show when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner of Best Picture when it was actually Moonlight, which was corrected on stage in one of the most incredible mess-ups in live television history. The Internet is still abuzz about it. 

Before that happened though, it was abuzz about this: 

There was a lot of joy from the DC Extended Universe fans including myself about this, followed by a litany of immature, salty and frankly for lack of a better term, butthurt reactions from people who hated Suicide Squad:

Wow. I mean, I'm not surprised at the amount of crying done over this movie winning an Oscar but it's still pathetic. Incredibly, astoundingly pathetic. 

For one night, can't people just turn off the hate machine and congratulate Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini and Christopher Nelson on being recognized by their peers as the best in their field for the 2016 year in movies? Does it really always have to be some inane pissing contest where you've got to bring up all the negatives you can to combat when something good actually happens for someone? It's ridiculous. 

Whether you liked Suicide Squad or not, these guys worked hard at what they do to make it look as awesome as they could on screen and just because some people didn't like it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people who did like it. These are the guys that helped bring Harley Quinn and The Joker together on the big screen for the first time, along with Killer Croc and Enchantress to name a few others and in this given year, they were considered top dogs by the Academy. You don't have to agree with it, but can you at least respect it?

No, apparently not. That seems to be the way of things with these comic book movies or society in general. 

And that's really what makes this whole thing unfortunate, because at the end of the day this Oscar victory for Suicide Squad really means the most to those guys, who dedicated the award to immigrants since one of them is an Italian immigrant himself. For one night they got to go up on stage and be recognized as awesome in their field, hair and makeup, and the Internet was too busy being petty for that to matter. Not a surprise at all from the Internet, but still just pretty pathetic. 

Outside of those hair and makeup artists, this Oscar does represent recognition at the highest level for a DCEU movie, arguably the most maligned yet most profitable one. There is something to be said for the fact that the DCEU earned an Academy Award with its third movie, while the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still looking for one after fourteen movies. Now that's not totally a slight on Marvel because they've been nominated several times, but what it DOES represent is that comic book movies are constantly fighting an uphill battle to really be taken seriously with other movies in a prestigious sense, and even though Hair and Makeup is not seen as an "important" award, it's still a big deal when a comic book film from ANY franchise wins one, no matter what category. 

So whether bitter MCU fanboys like it or not, Suicide Squad winning an Oscar is good for EVERYONE. It's just one more step toward the "bigger" awards and a higher level of respect that we all hope will come for these movies. Plenty of people out there think that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice should have been nominated for Best Picture, the same as plenty of people think that Captain America: Civil War should have been nominated for it as well. We're a ways away from that potential reality, but wins like this can give a comic book movie fan hope for the future, no matter what side of the fan fence they sit on. 

The only people that might have a reason to be upset about Suicide Squad's win are the hair and makeup artists for Star Trek Beyond and A Man Called Ove, the other two nominees in the category, along with their fanbases as well. I'm a die-hard Trekkie myself and I certainly wouldn't have minded if Beyond had won the award because the Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies have had phenomenal hair and makeup from the beginning and Beyond was no exception. Such is the great thing about opinions, though. They vary with everyone and no one is right or wrong with them. Just because Suicide Squad won the Oscar doesn't mean that Star Trek or A Man Called Ove were bad movies or had bad hair and makeup. The Academy just picked one winner in their eyes for their own reasons.

Does this win for Suicide Squad mean that next year a comic book movie might win multiple Oscars? No, but at least it's something for DCEU fans to rejoice and revel in, even as the haters try to come back at them with how many Razzies BvS won, which has nothing to do with the conversation at all. No matter what your opinion is of the DCEU, Suicide Squad now has an Oscar and that is an inescapable fact, whether you think it deserved it or not. Put the hate down for just a moment and be happy for those winners......if you can.