"Avengers: Endgame" Sets Unfortunate Oscars Record

February 15, 2020

Avengers: Endgame‘s loss at the Oscars last weekend set a new record, as the MCU film became the only one of the ten highest-grossing films that has been nominated for an Oscar not to win any awards at all. Despite the fact that it beat Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame lost the award for Best Visual Effects, the only award it was nominated for at the Oscars this year, to 1917.

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Not only did the MCU ensemble film walk home empty-handed, it also set a less-than-brag-worthy new record for the Oscars. Over time, the “highest-grossing film” title has, of course, belonged to various films, as a new film ultimately comes around to out-gross the former. In the Oscars’ 92-year history, ten of the highest-grossing films at one point have been nominated for an Academy Award, Avengers: Endgame being the most recent to do so. However, of those ten films, Endgame is the only film that has failed to win an Oscar at all.

Since Gone with the Wind won 10 Oscars in 1939 (8 competitive, 2 honorary), nine of the then-highest grossing films of all time have managed to not only be nominated for an Oscar, but to nab themselves at least one win. More than 30 years later, in 1965, The Sound of Music won 5 Oscars. The 70s brought prosperity for The Godfather (1972) with 3 awards, Jaws (1975) with 3, and Star Wars (1977) with 7 (6 competitive, 1 honorary). E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial banked 4 Oscars in 1985, followed by Jurassic Park with 3 in 1993, and Titanic with 11 in 1997. Avatar, the film that Avengers: Endgame managed to beat as the highest-grossing film, walked home with 3 Oscars in 2009. While Endgame may have defeated its predecessor at the box office, it failed to join the ranks of the previous highest-grossing films by losing the Oscar.