It’s movie award season! And this is also the time when the world’s most famous audience award is presented, the People’s Choice Awards. A Marvel blockbuster won this year, although many had expected “Top Gun 2” to be successful.
While most awards in the award season are presented by film critics or the filmmakers themselves (most notably the Oscars), there are also some awards where the public has the choice. First and foremost is the People’s Choice Awards, the largest and best-known US audience award. It has been awarded annually since 1975, and after a long time when an opinion polling company determined the winners in a large-scale public survey, this now takes place via online voting supported by a few additional survey tools. The result is that the films and stars that are particularly popular with the mass of the audience win.
The fact that one of the immensely successful Marvel blockbusters wins at the awards is therefore no surprise per se; after all, this was already the case in 2021 (“Black Widow”), 2019 (“Avengers: Endgame”) and 2018 (“Avengers: Infinity War”) – in other words, pretty regularly in the recent past. This year, however, it’s a…
“DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS” IS THE BEST FILM OF 2022 FOR AUDIENCES
For all the world probably expected the blockbuster high-flyer “Top Gun 2: Maverick” to clear. But the flying spectacle with Tom Cruise had to settle for a consolation prize. In the public vote for the best film of 2022, the Marvel blockbuster “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness” won, beating “Elvis”, “Nope”, “Thor: Love And Thunder” and “The Batman”, which many considered the best comic book adaptation of the year.
“Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness” is currently still the second most successful film of the year in US cinemas after “Top Gun 2”, so of course it is still an obvious choice – especially as the switch to online voting a few years ago may also have ensured a stronger influence of the votes of younger audiences. The Marvel success also won two more awards for lead actress Elizabeth Olsen. Not only did she win Female Movie Star 2022, but she also beat Tom Cruise (and Dwayne Johnson, Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth, among others) in the vote for Action Star 2022.
CERTAIN AWARD FOR “TOP GUN 2”, “NOPE” GOES AWAY EMPTY-HANDED
As already mentioned, there was only one consolation prize for “Top Gun: Maverick”, the best action film of 2022, where it also beat the “Doctor Strange” sequel. Another surprise came at first glance in the drama category: “Don’t Worry Darling” won here, although it fell short of expectations at the box office and other nominated films in the category such as “Elvis” or “Nope” and “Scream”, which were also nominated here due to the lack of a separate horror category. The popularity of lead actor Harry Styles may have helped a little.
By the way, “Nope” went completely empty-handed – although Jordan Peele’s spectacle had the most nominations of all films in the run-up with a total of six.
In general, one should always keep in mind how much of a popularity contest the People’s Choice Awards are. Even though the organisers have changed the name of the categories in recent years from “Favorite Comedic Movie Actor” to “The Comedy Movie Star Of 2022”, Adam Sandler still wins in the end if he has a film – even if it’s not a typical comedy but the (strong) Netflix drama “Hustle.
