During the Academy Awards ceremony, famed Hollywood costume designer Colleen Atwood got a surprise. It wasn’t that she’d won an Oscar—she’d done that before, three times—it was that she got one for the Boy Who Lived. Throughout eight movies and despite 12 nominations, the Harry Potter films were always the Susan Lucci of the Oscars. Then, last night, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them won, and Atwood was “shocked.”
It was surprising, she noted backstage, because the Potter movies have always had a fairly strong style—how could they not have picked up some technical achievement hardware? It was probably because, Atwood continued, “this movie is set in the 1920s, which kind of keys a different visual sense.”
She’s right. In previous years, a great majority of costume design Oscars have gone to period pieces (think The English Patient). Even two of Atwood’s three previous wins—Memoirs of a Geisha and Chicago—were historical in nature. If you want to win a costume design Oscar, you gotta go old-school and because Beasts is a prequel, it could do things and go places the Potter gang couldn’t. (It could also cast Eddie Redmayne, who pretty much looks like he was built at the turn of the last century.)
For years movies based on J.K. Rowling’s massive book series have gunned for Oscars, and while the films got nominated in categories ranging from Best Achievement in Visual Effets to Best Score, the films never won. They didn’t even win with legendary Star Wars composer John Williams penning the music. The only thing that was able to set up the Potter movies, once considered the “most-snubbed franchise” of all time, was moving the series back a few decades, to a time that needed fancier clothes than Harry’s robes and jackets. (His glasses were always clutch, though.) Fantastic Beasts may have been a movie about magic, but it doubled down when it also became a movie about 1920s New York.
And really, there might be a lesson here for genre movies: Stay fashionable. Sci-fi, fantasy, and other genre flicks often do well in makeup and visual effects categories (that’s why the phrase "Oscar-winning film Suicide Squad" is no longer a joke). But they usually get beat out in costumes by period dramas. Perhaps if genre filmmakers grappled as hard with seams as they do with spaceships—or set everything in the early 20th century—costume design will be the new genre gold mine. Last year, Mad Max: Fury Road won for its outfits, so Academy voters can be swayed away from bonnets and zoot suits. Perhaps in a couple years, films like Aquaman could follow in *Fantastic’*s tracks.
And even if they don’t all end up on the Oscars stage, they’ll look good trying.
