And why it makes perfect sense

On Thursday, and with awards season around the corner, the House of Mouse rolled out it’s For Your Consideration list – effectively a list of movies that Disney will pitch as potential Oscar winners and in which categories they believe they are deserving of a seat at the table.

Avengers: Endgame was always going to have a weighty campaign. There are $2.8 billion reasons why that is justifiable but beyond that, the movie was well constructed, visually stunning and emotionally charged.

As such, Disney will campaign for awards in a total of 12 categories;

• Best Picture
• Best Director: Anthony and Joe Russo
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley
• Best Cinematography: Trent Opaloch
• Best Original Score: Alan Silvestri (give this man all of the Oscars!)
• Best Film Editing
• Best Production Design
• Best Costume Design
• Best Makeup and Hairstyling
• Best Sound Mixing
• Best Sound Editing
• Best Visual Effects

But there is a glaring omission from what is an otherwise comprehensive and confident list, as Disney has not made a play to pitch Robert Downey Jr in the best actor or supporting actor categories. And contrary to the condemnation by Iron Man fans – still probably crying into the sink – I think it makes perfect sense.

That’s not to say that Downey’s performance in Endgame was not of a high calibre. He brought his A-Game to Iron Man’s grand finale and delivered an emotional send-off that was enough to spark Oscar conversation at the very least.

But the weight of the performance was aided by a sizeable tailwind coming off the back of a decade of Downey as the lovable narcissist Tony Stark. It’s like when Manchester United midfielder Ryan Giggs won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award in 2009 – voters confused what should have been a lifetime achievement honour with a prize for a solid but unspectacular year on the pitch.

Sure, he made his 700th start for the club and scored his 150th goal, but that was work carried out over two decades, not the achievements of one year – the achievements that should have been the influencing factor.

The barrage of awards season movies are on the way, with entries from Christian Bale and Matt Damon in Ford vs Ferrari, Adam Driver in Marriage Story and Robert de Niro in The Irishman all set to make strong best actor cases – not to mention the fact that Leonardo di Caprio has already eclipsed Downey’s performance as the flame-throwing Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Then there is the complicated question of which category you throw Downey’s Endgame performance into – best actor of best supporting actor?

The best actor category is a hard sell as it’s nearly impossible to isolate one actor in an ensemble cast as expansive as Endgame‘s, but the best supporting category is hugely overcrowded in comparison.

Not to mention that Chris Hemsworth and Chris Evans would be similarly good value for a best supporting actor nod for their individual performances in Endgame – particularly Hemsworth, who was able to brilliantly juggle comedic beats with the weighty – pun very much intended – emotional moments. His journey back to 2013’s Asgard and council with Frigga was one of my favourite threads of the movie.

Disney would be shooting for the moon if it was to pitch Downey for a best actor prize, and it might even risk backing the wrong horse in the best supporting actor race. Avoiding the likely defeat and difficult decision by throwing weight into the rest of the categories makes perfect sense.

Endgame has a realistic chance of scooping a number of awards, with nominations likely in the technical categories. And it will take John Williams’ best work in The Rise of Skywalker to stop Alan Silvestri taking home a statue for his incredible Endgame score, (which I’m listening to for the 3000th time as I’m typing this very sentence).

Give Downey an honorary award for his contribution to the superhero movie genre. We all owe Iron Man a great debt, not for his contribution to film in 2019 but for being one of the founding fathers of the MCU and the catalyst for the boom of the comic book movie era.