The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the academy for the Oscars, announced a new category for the 2019 Oscars. It is the Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film award. There are a lot of problems with this award.

First off, I do wanna say that I don't think the idea of the award is bad. I understand the point of it. Most of the Best Picture nominees for 2018 were not well known in the public eye.

I think "Lady Bird," "Three Billboards" and "Shape of Water" are fantastic, beautiful films. I knew about all of the Best Picture nominees - I thought they were all great and I loved them.

However, I study cinema. Most people do not study cinema. My parents and a lot of my friends never even heard of these films.

The goal of the "popular film" category is to get more people, especially young people, interested in the Academy Awards. For years, most of the nominees in all the categories a lot of people didn't know about. Nowadays the movie theaters are selling as much as they used to, but they are full of Disney films like "Star Wars" and "Justice League" and "The Avengers." These films are also now available on Netflix, which is killing the movie theater industry.

The award is meant to congratulate the hard work behind these films, and let's face it, the acceptance speeches from these actors and directors would be hilarious.

Let's not forget though that this award is also to congratulate the billions and billions of dollars these films have made.

That is the problem.

Other Oscar nominees have been some of the highest grossing films too, but not like Marvel/DC and Star Wars are today. The controversy of the award is really in the title. Of course, the fact that it is basically just for these superhero movies is incredibly irritating to most filmmakers, including myself.

I think Marvel gets enough recognition as it is: I think the Oscars are about the true art form that is cinema. The stories, the shot composition, the lighting, the sound design, the direction and more is what the Oscars are about. In my opinion, superhero movies lack that art form, I really think that they are money makers and nothing more.

They're entertaining, yes, they're good and they fill up the movie theaters. Even though I believe that that should be enough recognition, awards are nice too.

The Academy can have the award, the backlash is in the word "popular." What is a popular film? It's a "most grossing" film, it's an "audience favorite" film. It's a Disney film, a superhero film, it's "Star Wars."

Let the popular films get their Oscar, but let's be real and just call it an Outstanding Achievement in a Money Making Film.