Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce in The Hurt Locker (top); Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front (bottom)
The Hurt Locker, an Iraq War drama that follows a US military bomb disposal unit, has been harshly criticized by some Iraq War veterans. Some have called the movie inaccurate and its depiction of soldiers in a war zone laughable. Others have gone as far as to accuse filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal of "disrespect" towards the military because The Hurt Locker shows soldiers disobeying orders and acting on their own.
Now, could those accusations and complaints — whether or not they have merit — affect The Hurt Locker's Oscar chances? Even if they'd surfaced at an earlier date, that's unlikely if Oscar history is any indication. A number of Oscar-nominated war movies have faced controversies in the past, but that didn't prevent them from coming out on top on Oscar night.
Back in 1930, the right-wing, pro-"traditional values" American Legion threatened to picket Universal's All Quiet on the Western Front because it treated German soldiers sympathetically. Based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel about the experiences of young Germans fighting in World War I, the Lewis Milestone-directed anti-war drama went on to win the Best Picture Oscar.
According to Mason Wiley and Damien Bona's excellent Oscar history book Inside Oscar, Richard Nixon "screened [Franklin J. Schaffner's] Patton [1970] twice before ordering the invasion of Cambodia, leading Life to suggest that the President view Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs before making any other foreign-policy decisions." Compounding matters, Patton's star, George C. Scott, had announced that if he were nominated for an Academy Award, he would turn it down. Both Patton and Scott won Oscars; true to his word, Scott refused his.