Why was Avengers: Endgame Snubbed by the Academy?

Historically, record shattering movies were awarded with multiple Academy Award nominations and wins. Why wasn't Avengers: Endgame?

Since box office records have been kept, there have been eleven films that have held the distinction of the being the highest grossing movie of all time. The first one, The Birth of a Nation, came out in a time before Academy Awards. The second film was Gone with the Wind, received 13 Academy Award nominations, winning eight from these nominations, including Best Picture, and also received two more honorary awards for a total of ten.

Gone with the Wind remained the highest grossing movie of all time until the The Sound of Music came out in 1966. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was nominated for ten awards and won five, including Best Picture. Gone with the Wind briefly regained the top spot on re-release, but was permanently dethroned by The Godfather. That mob film was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won three, including Best Picture.

Jaws was the first film to become the highest grossing film of all time to not win Best Picture, though it was nominated for it. Jaws did win the three other awards it was nominated for, however. Star Wars became the highest grossing film two years later and was nominated for ten awards, winning six and then getting a seventh honorary award.

E.T. became the highest grossing film of all time in 1983 and was rewarded with nine nominations and four wins. It would be dethroned by another Steven Spielberg film, Jurassic Park, in 1993. It was only nominated for three Academy Awards (and won all three) and was the first highest grossing film to not be nominated for Best Picture.

The next highest grossing film was not snubbed for Best Picture. Titanic was the first film to gross two billion dollars, and was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 11, which tied it for the most wins all time with Ben-Hur.

Another James Cameron film would replace Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time. Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won three.

As a special mention, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the highest grossing fantasy film of all time and second overall at the time of its release, was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won all 11.

Avengers: Endgame replaced Avatar as the highest grossing film of all time in 2019. Historically, this has been rewarded by the Academy with multiple award nominations, with all but one of the films listed above being nominated for Best Picture. Instead, it was nominated for only one award in the Best Visual Effects category.

A film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been nominated for Best Visual Effects in six of the seven years prior to Endgame, but none of them have won the award. Were Endgame to continue that trend, that would make it the first film to become the highest grossing film of all time and not win a single Academy Award.

Why was Endgame snubbed by the Academy? The fact that it is a comic book movie is not a good argument, given that a comic book movie was nominated for Best Picture both in 2018 and 2019. In terms of sheer spectacle, it cannot be matched by any of the other movies that received nominations in its place.

Whether Endgame would've won any awards in the categories it could've been nominated in is irrelevant. The fact remains that all of the other movies that have claimed the title of highest grossing movie of all time were well-received by the Academy as well. It seems inexplicable that Endgame was not.