5 Worst Best Picture Oscars Winners of All-Time

Braveheart

On the fact of it, Braveheart is a fairly enjoyable medieval popcorn action movie. It’s about as deep as a puddle, it’s wildly historically inaccurate, and most of the dialogue is terrible. Yet, this is still a movie that I’ll stop and watch, if I happen to pass by it on television.

It’s kind of like a fancier version of a summer blockbuster. (People seem to take Braveheart more seriously than, say, a Michael Bay movie, because it won awards.) And it’s a technically impressive film, to be fair. There are several truly impressive battle sequences. Along with a couple of stirring speeches. But there’s almost nothing in the way of character development and the core of the movie is hollow. This is a lot to say that Braveheart’s quite a fun movie, if you take it for what it is. But trying to pretend that this was film was Best Picture award-worthy? No, thanks.

Of course, nowadays Mel Gibson has turned out to be so problematic that hating on Braveheart almost feels trendy. But back in the mid-nineties, the movie was extremely popular. It still pops up fairly regularly in pop culture today – most notably the FREEDOM yell and that very recognizable blue face paint. None of that makes this a next level good movie, though. And it certainly doesn’t make it a better film than Ang Lee’s literally perfect period drama adaptation of Sense & Sensibility, which it beat. (The Best Picture category also included Apollo 13, Babe and Il Postino that year. How in the world did Braveheart win again?)

Luckily, there are a lot of great movies up for Best Picture this year. So even if prohibitive favorite La La Land doesn’t walk away with the gold, it’s unlikely that there will be an uproar about it. (After all, you could make very compelling arguments that a number of other films deserved the prize.)

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony airs Sunday, February 26 on ABC.