The Oscars is a show fighting for its life, but should we even care?

If you want to understand the war the Academy Awards are fighting, picture this.

You've made an incredibly successful movie during possibly the most difficult times for movies in history, by re-adapting a story that's already been tried twice before. Multiple news articles argue that you've helped save the industry by getting audiences back into theatres, while simultaneously launching your wirey, brown haired boyish lead into the stratosphere of superstardom. 

And come Oscars night on Sunday, the biggest night to celebrate the year's best films, you're going to spend the majority of your time in the wings. 

Congratulations! You're Spider-Man. And also, somehow, Dune.

The Oscars' fading relevancy, and seeming inability to honour movies that perform best with audiences, is nothing new. Every year for the past seven years the ceremony has contended with a new record-low viewership, along with a slew of criticism over which movies — and which faces — get recognized. 

So that Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to capture a box-office return twice as large as the second-place finisher, but still only gets a single nomination, tells you the Oscars' past. 

Dune tells you the Oscars' future. The star-studded, big budget, space opera epic bridged the gap between crowd pleaser and high brow the academy looks for, the type of movie that makes both audiences and critics happy. And they awarded it, too, burying it under 10 nominations — the second-most of any film there. That hints at what kind of movies the Oscars will feature moving forward.

But Dune, like Spider-Man, is still being sidelined. Because, while it's up for 10 awards, half have been cut from the live telecast in an effort to tighten up the show, bring audiences back and make the Oscars relevant once again.

Whether that has any chance of working is one question. But another that members of the industry are asking is whether — at this point, and with this sacrifice — the Oscars are even worth saving.  

"On the one side, you have commerce and ratings and those revenues that the academy gets," said J. Miles Dale, director of 2021's Nightmare Alley. 

"And on the other side, you have what this is supposed to be, which is recognition for the artists that create the best films of the year."

Dale said the decision to sideline eight categories leaves a large segment of movie makers, largely on the technical side, feeling like "second-class citizens." 

In February, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would be cutting eight of the 23 trophies given out live on-air: best documentary short, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, production design, animated short, live-action short and sound.

It's really no surprise that half of Dune's awards are among these categories — more mainstream films often find success at the Oscars in technical categories, while more traditional films dominate the rest of the show. Mad Max: Fury Road received a similar 10 nominations in 2016, for an almost identical list of awards. In 1998, Titanic dominated with 14 nominations — eight of which were technical.