F1 DESERVES a Best Picture Nomination! The Hate Needs to Stop!
A couple weeks back we got the nominations for the 98th Oscars. For the most part the nominations seem to make a lot of people happy. But surprisingly, F1 getting into the best picture is one that a lot of people have taken issue with. I find the hate to be so weird and forced and it’s confusing me. Let’s talk about it!
My Thoughts
If you saw my top 10 favorite movies of 2025 you know that I loved F1. F1 was in my top 5 of 2025. I thought it was a great classic crowdpleasing blockbuster that I enjoyed from beginning to end. When I saw the film I thought to myself, that deserves a best picture. Will it get it? I wasn’t sure it didn’t seem to have the cultural impact of a similar film, Top Gun: Maverick, which had a lot of the same creative team behind it. When the film was a lock for several technical nominations and the films made it into PGA, a lot of people started predicting F1 to get into the best picture. On Oscar nominations morning, I was thrilled that F1 got into the best picture. It is one of the best pictures in my mind of 2025. What surprised me was the amount of backlash F1 has gotten since getting the nomination.
I feel like the backlash against F1 getting in is the enthusiasts to the problem with so many recent best picture nominees. A common compliment that people have had is that the Oscars only nominated serious dramas that were critically acclaimed the year they came out but films that nobody talks about a year later. The Brutalist from 2024 being a great example of this, that’s a movie that’s designed to earn multiple nominations. How many people are talking about the movie in February 2026? I don’t know anybody. It seems like over the last few years with them nominating films like Top Gun: Maverick, Barbie, and Wicked they’re recognizing more mainstream blockbusters that people actually saw and talked about months after release. F1 is the highest grossing best picture nominee, it stars Brad Pitt, and it’s a classic crowd pleasing blockbuster. F1 has almost no shot of winning best picture, it was probably #10, but it shows that the Academy was willing to nominate blockbusters. When the film started getting so much backlash for getting a best picture nomination it surprised me because I feel like it’s fixing the exact issue that a lot of people have with the best picture nominees most years.
I’ve tried to look at different people’s arguments as to why they think it doesn’t deserve the best picture. A common argument I’ve heard is that the film is too generic, it follows a template that Top Gun: Maverick did better just a few years ago. I can understand that part of it. Is F1 the most original film of all time? No, it follows a formula and a template that most sports and underdog movies follow. But that doesn’t make it bad. A movie doesn’t need to be super innovative or creative in order to be nominated for best picture. F1 does the formula you’d expect but it does the formula right and I don’t think a lot of people actually cared. I find it interesting how the film’s reputation has changed since it was released. This pendulum swing of backlash happens with best picture nominees every year. It happened this year with Sinners breaking the nomination record with 16. There’s people that are debating on the internet whether or not Sinners actually deserves the most nominations of all time. That’s a fair criticism and it’s not that people are turning on Sinners and saying that it’s terrible. But with F1 the pendulum swing of reviews is more negative and people are targeting F1 and think that it doesn’t deserve the nomination which I don’t think is true. F1 is a great movie and 100% deserves the nomination.
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