Star Trek Beyond Robbed By Suicide Squad At Academy Awards

Despite all the early buzz and predictions, Star Trek Beyond didn’t end up with the win at tonight’s Academy Awards.

Star Trek Beyond Doesn’t Win 2nd Oscar For Franchise

Tonight at the 89th Annual Academy Awards  in Hollywood Star Trek Beyond had one nomination, Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Alas, nominees Joel Harlow and Richard Alonzo were beat out for the gold by the team from Suicide Squad. Even before the show Harlow was expressing humility for just being nominated.

Beyond’s impressive menagerie of aliens included Krall’s reptilian enemies, that alien who hid the Macguffin in the back of her head, and of course Jaylah, who – alas – did not turn out to be a Xindi skunk. Going into tonight’s event, there was a lot of Oscar buzz for Beyond. Both the Hollywood Reporter and Variety predicted Star Trek would pick up the Oscar. The movie also came up a winner for Best Special Makeup Effects at the Hair Stylists Guild Awards last week, usually a leading indicator of Oscar gold. And there was no particularly high-profile competition – neither Oscar bait (La La Land would have won this award easily) nor a blockbuster (Terminator 2 and The Nutty Professor vanquished Undiscovered Country and First Contact respectively).

Joel Harlow working on Star Trek Beyond (Paramount Pictures)

Joel Harlow working on Star Trek Beyond (Paramount Pictures)

Makeup design has long been a field where Star Trek excels. Four of the 13 Star Trek movies have been nominated for makeup – the others were Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and the 2009’s Star Trek (which won). Makeup accounts for a quarter of the 16 Academy nominations for the franchise as a whole. On the small screen, Trek always dominated makeup. Guru Michael Westmore was nominated for an Emmy every year of the modern Trek franchise, from 1988 to 2005, sometimes more than once the same year.

Mindy Hall, Barney Burman, and Joel Harlow winning with Makeup Oscars for “Star Trek”in 2010

Mindy Hall, Barney Burman, and Joel Harlow winning with Makeup Oscars for “Star Trek”in 2010 – Still the sole Oscar win for the franchise

Star Trek wasn’t up for a visual effects award this year, but a Trek alum did take home the gold. Robert Legato who won two Emmys while working on Star Trek: The Next Generation picked up the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for his work on The Jungle Book. This got the notice of TNG Star Marina Sirtis who sent out a congratulatory tweet.

Trek Stars At The Oscars

Star Trek was represented on stage at the Academy awards. John Cho and his Beyond co-star Sofia Boutella each had the opportunity to present awards. Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg (Next Generatation) was featured in a supporting actress montage and Michelle Yeoh (Discovery) was shown presenting the Governor’s Award to Jackie Chan.

John Cho with his wife Kerri Higuchi at View Sofia Boutella Pictures » Sofia Boutella 89th Annual Academy Awards

John Cho with his wife Kerri Higuchi at
View Sofia Boutella Pictures »
Sofia Boutella
89th Annual Academy Awards

John Cho with his wife Kerri Higuchi at View Sofia Boutella Pictures » Sofia Boutella at the 89th Annual Academy Awards

John Cho with his wife Kerri Higuchi at
View Sofia Boutella Pictures »
Sofia Boutella at the
89th Annual Academy Awards

Sofia Boutella with actor Chris Evans presenting the award for Best Sound Editing

Sofia Boutella with actor Chris Evans presenting the award for Best Sound Editing

John Cho on stage with actress Leslie Mann onstage during the 89th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 26, 2017 in Hollywood, California

John Cho with actress Leslie Mann onstage during the 89th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 26, 2017 in Hollywood, California

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Remembering Anton

Finally, Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin – who passed away in a tragic accident last year – was featured in the “In Memoriam” segment.

The Academy remembers Anton Yelchin

The Academy remembers Anton Yelchin

 

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“The Oscar-winning Suicide Squad” — yaaayyy… >.> Beyond so deserved it. No love for Trek :(((

Also explain this line in the article please: “This is the second Oscar awarded to the Star Trek franchise out of 16 total nominations from the Academy.” Guess someone forgot to update the article? This is a Dewey wins blunder!

It was hard to see Anton in the in memorium. :(

It was, but at least they didn’t forget him. Neither will we.

It would’ve fit in nicely in between all those other bad movies!

Robbed indeed I saw Suicide Squad and it was nothing compared to Beyond!

I honestly do not see who Beyond could have been considered a “favorite” unless the people involved were well known and loved among their peers. As an outsider looking in, and as someone who really enjoys his Trek… I had no problem with the win by Suicide Squad in that category.

Popularity is always a factor, especially in the technical awards. Sound editing, cinematography.. they usually find a way to pick the more critically acclaimed pictures.

Side note – the fact that Roger Deakins has not won for Cinematography ever is a travesty.

Well then if you excuse my language, but you’re frakking thick if you think Suicide Squad deserved the category. There was literally no creativity in Suicide Squads design department. NONE. It was all taken from the comic.

Speaking of things one would have to be thick not to realize, the award is given as much for the execution of the design as for the design itself.

And while the make up (both prosthetic and otherwise) seemed professional and well done for Beyond, I didn’t find it particularly creative myself.

I thought it was solid, but it didn’t really break any new ground, so far as I could tell. Not that it has to in order to be good; but Krall just … looked like a Star Trek baddie to me. Nothing wrong with that, but was there anything Oscar-worthy in it? I’m unconvinced.

Oh well. But in the future, no one will remember anything about this Oscars presentation except that this was the one where they named the wrong movie as Best Picture.

Nice to see Anton get a nod. Other than that.. the Oscars a s__tshow nowadays.

Harlow and Alonzo definitely deserved this award; the “50 aliens for 50 years” thing was amazing!

Both Beyond and Suicide Squad were poor films 👎🏼

No kidding. With a few items around the house anyone could re-create the look of Joker, Harley Quinn, and Diablo with little effort and time. Complete joke.

And I’m sure it was just as easy to come up with yet another reptile based alien head and face design tattoo.

So…a pair of pig-tails and some green hairspray is now considered Oscar-worthy? Sorry, but, no, just no. Suicide Squad is one of the ugliest movies ever made. I’m not talking about the “plot”, just the designs are cringe-worthy.

One more reason to hate the DCEU with all my heart. I love DC, I love comic book flicks: X-verse, MCU, Arrowverse, older stuff, gimme anything, but not the DCEU… The DCEU is the ugliest franchise in existence…inwards and outwards. A tasteless abomination of a good idea. Seeing Superman and Batman in one movie, I wanted this for years. But just not like that… Lex Luthor playing the Joker, The Joker being a joke… and Martha! Martha! Amanda Waller shooting her own team of operatives… just vomit-inducing…

And good stuff like Beyond or Rogue One doesn’t get anything…

Agree. Well said.

Beyond was a way better movie. No question. That said, I still have no problem with the make up award going that route. To be honest, I found the alien designs in Beyond to be uninspiring. But I suspect the award was more for the execution as the designs of these things must all be approved by the director anyway.

I thought Jaylah’s character design was inspired. And the woman with the finger-jointed head. And Chekov’s date ….

I know prosthetics get a little tired in the space franchises, but their design and execution deserve a little more respect.

Here’s a question… How much of finger head’s head was make up and how much was it a CG effect? That design was more a requirement as a plot device, too. Not saying it was bad. It was pretty good. Just saying I think the Oscar’s more often than not go to known commodities than to new ideas. Kinda like how MLB awards Gold Gloves.

I’m disappointed in the lack of class exhibited by this headline. Trekkies should be better than that.

As for the award, from the clips I saw, it’s “A Man Called Ove” that got robbed.

Not sure if “A Man Called Ove” was robbed for hair and makeup, but thanks for mentioning it. Checked into it, and now I’d like to see it.

I totally agree about the title of this article.
Nobody was robbed.
Somebody else won, there is a difference.

Bryant Burnette & Gary 8.5,

I agree. No one was robbed.

I might have entertained a sly aside pleading for the academy to audit all the envelopes read, but “Robbed”?

I thought sure Beyond would have one this year. Trek gets no love.

While I loved Suicide Squad, I’m sorry, but Joker, Harley, and Croc’s makeup/prosthetics are not as impressive as the many aliens that Star Trek Beyond had. But this doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as Star Trek ’09 losing to Avatar for visual effects…

Nah. The visual effects are the only reason to watch Avatar. Everything else about it stinks, but those effects were in a league of their own.

Forced to agree. Avatar was a technically brilliant film. But when it comes to plot, acting, story and overall interest it failed on every single level.

Did they double check the envelope?

I think that the problem with Trek in the technical awards (and Star Wars for that matter), is that we’ve seen it all before. We’ve seen bizarre aliens, we’ve seen futuristic costumes, we’ve seen space-based combat and explosions hundreds of times. It gets harder for these movies to garner attention — even for technical achievement — every time a new one comes out. Of course Suicide Squad really was not very different, technically, but thematically it was something relatively new.

I may be a hardcore Trek Fan, and even though Suicide Squad was garbage…they deserved the win.