The Slap anniversary

By the way, I have seen a few Andrew Garfield fans claiming he deserved the award instead of Smith. Some are very generous and say that BC was the second option behind Garfield. Well that’s very subjective and we will never known who was second to Smith but I just will say that even if he won a very few very local not very relevant critics associations awards and won a Golden Globe (not the same voters nor critics and, it was a comedy award, he didn’t competed with any of the other Oscar nominees! They all were in the drama shortlist) and The Wrap was championing him saying he was the surprisingly favorite of the voters (they don’t necessarily have a refined taste so it maybe would be credible but some of their other predictions were equally bonkers and wrong), a) his movie barely had an impact in the Oscar race or even with audiences. The movie was barely watched!; b) he wasn’t even nominated to the BAFTA (a good number of the same voters! You can say that he maybe was affected in the nomination process by their intricate diversity policy but that didn’t affected the also white BC so, BC seemed to be stronger than him); and c) Will Smith, who didn’t won any critics awards, actually seemed stronger than him when a more general number of critics were polled. You know, not just a closeted group with probably some internal interests or politics,

I mean,



www.indiewire.com/features/general/best-movies-2021-critics-survey-poll-performances-1234684568/

BC and Smith were the only ones of the nominees there!

A much smaller number of critics but very influential and a better thermometer of what’s culturally “in” than Film Twitter: he wasn’t included in the Best Performance issue of the NYT. I just checked and from the nominees there was only BC, Denzel Washington and, yes, Will Smith! And OT but BC’s Eric co-star Gaby Hoffman was included alongside him that year.

So Smith was in the conversation. IMHO much more than Garfield. Maybe not on Film Twitter/Award pundits but with the people who matters and had some influence. Still, I guess he could had won the Oscar, worse things had happened in Oscar history and critics/NYT aren’t there to predict Oscars, but that would had been a huge surprise and maybe equally questionable than Smith. Actually, I am sure Smith win would had been slightly less questionable if he hadn’t done what he did.

EDiTED I just remember an interview with Garfield himself saying he knew he won’t win because that’s something that “you can feel around you”. And because the others around him, he knew he wasn’t really a favorite. Who knows? Maybe I’m confused and it was another award he was talking about but I remember I thought at the time that he was very humble and lovely and understandable why he has a lot of fans! He said he was enjoying everything because he knew he won’t win. But his fans were/are still so sure it was him! lol The award was for Smith since the beginning. We just wanted our fans to win but yeah, their fave was slightly worse positioned to for it! Sorry! lol