The Manufactured Consensus: Why Your ‘Best Of’ List Is a Lie
Every year, it’s the same predictable song and dance. The calendar flips, the leaves fall, and suddenly the ‘awards gods’ descend from their ivory towers, clutching scrolls inscribed with the supposedly most noteworthy films of the year. We are expected to believe that a cabal of critics associations, guild members, and industry insiders—who essentially spend their days watching other people’s work to determine if it meets some arbitrary standard of high-brow entertainment—have objectively selected a group of films that truly represent the best of human creativity in the previous twelve months. It’s utter nonsense. The process is less about identifying genius and more about participating in a carefully choreographed industry-wide marketing campaign disguised as critical insight, a vicious cycle that perpetuates the illusion of meritocracy where none exists. This isn’t journalism; it’s brand management for Hollywood’s prestige pictures.
The Illusion of Meritocracy and the Awards Gods
Let’s take a look at the data provided, specifically the titles: ‘The Best Films of 2025,’ ‘Dancing! Fighting! Impregnating! The best movie moments of 2025,’ and ‘The Best Overlooked Films of 2025.’ Notice how these titles create a perfect microcosm of the industry’s internal contradictions. On one hand, you have the definitive ‘Best Films’ list, a pronouncement from on high. On the other hand, you have the ‘Overlooked Films’ list, which is the industry’s way of saying, ‘Oops, we messed up, here are the films we should have cared about but didn’t because we were too busy fawning over a handful of Oscar bait.’ The very existence of an ‘overlooked’ category proves the main list is flawed, yet both lists are generated by the exact same people. It’s a self-serving loop where critics generate hype for certain films (typically those with large marketing budgets and distribution muscle), and then those same films are nominated for awards, reinforcing the initial hype. What exactly are they celebrating? Mediocrity dressed up in high-falutin’ artistic claims, that’s what.
The awards season isn’t about artistic integrity; it’s a social event for an exclusive club. The guilds—the Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, Writers Guild, Directors Guild—are primarily concerned with their own interests. Their nominations are less about artistic quality and more about protecting industry jobs and ensuring high-profile projects succeed. When a film like ‘Mickey 17’ gets buzz, it’s because it has a high-profile director (Bong Joon-ho) and a massive budget. It’s automatically in the conversation because the industry *needs* it to succeed to justify its own existence. The critics are just the cheerleaders in this stadium, and they follow the same script every single year, ensuring that the same handful of titles appear on every list, from the New York Film Critics to the Golden Globes. Is it really a coincidence that all the ‘best’ lists look exactly the same?
The F1 Disclosure: A Metaphor for Hollywood’s Rigged Race
The F1 reference in the input data is particularly telling. The analyst notes, ‘I definitely went into F1: The Movie knowing what I was in for; an answer to the hypothetical.’ This perfectly encapsulates the pre-packaged nature of modern prestige cinema. You know what you’re getting. You know the narrative arc. It’s a formula, and formulaic storytelling, even when technically polished, is inherently unchallenging. Formula One racing itself is a spectacle of massive budgets, corporate sponsors, and a predetermined outcome where only a select few teams have a realistic shot at winning. The real ‘race’ is between a handful of studios and distributors with deep pockets. The smaller, independent films—the true outliers, the risk-takers—are left to race in a different league entirely, and they are almost always relegated to the ‘overlooked’ category. The industry isn’t seeking out new voices; it’s protecting established territories. This year, F1 movies and similar high-octane spectacles are the industry’s way of creating content that sells well on streaming services and generates global buzz without challenging the audience with anything genuinely profound. It’s entertainment, sure, but calling it ‘best’ is a stretch.
Let’s talk about the specific genres mentioned: ‘Dancing! Fighting! Impregnating!’ These three elements—often found in big-budget action, dramatic epics, and social dramas—are reliable triggers for awards-season attention. The fighting and dancing provide the spectacle; the impregnating provides the ‘human drama’ that critics so desperately crave. It’s a predictable formula that caters to a very specific set of cultural biases. The industry prioritizes high-concept, high-stakes narratives that confirm a certain set of values and avoid genuine intellectual disruption. They favor films that are impeccably crafted but utterly hollow, rather than those that are perhaps technically imperfect but possess a genuine creative spark. What’s more important: flawless execution of a mediocre idea, or a rough execution of a brilliant idea? The industry has unequivocally chosen the former, prioritizing safe bets over groundbreaking art. They want their ‘best of’ lists to be safe, easy to digest, and politically correct.
The Cynic’s Manifesto: Deconstructing the ‘Best Of’ Circle Jerk
The entire awards complex is a giant, self-congratulatory circle jerk where insiders pat each other on the back for work that often appeals to the lowest common denominator, precisely because it is designed to be universally palatable to a wide range of voting bodies. The awards gods decree that a certain group of films are most noteworthy, and like obedient sheep, we consume these lists as gospel truth, allowing them to dictate our viewing habits and shape the cultural narrative. The ‘best of’ lists are not a guide to quality; they are a guide to industry power structures. The films that make it to the top are almost universally produced by companies that have the resources to campaign heavily, host expensive screening events, and court voters with lavish gifts and constant reminders of their existence. When you see a movie on every single ‘best of’ list, ask yourself: Is this film genuinely better than everything else, or did its distributor just spend more money on PR than every other competitor combined?
The current state of ‘best of’ lists represents a fundamental failure of critical duty. Instead of challenging the audience and championing truly subversive art, critics have become stenographers for the major studios, simply documenting which films receive the most press coverage. The high-burstiness nature of modern media consumption, where short, digestible lists replace meaningful analysis, only exacerbates the problem. We want quick answers, not complex thought. We want a list of five films, not an exploration of the hundred films that actually defined the year. The entire process reduces art to a competition, where winning a prize for ‘best film’ somehow validates its existence more than audience enjoyment or artistic merit. It’s a piss-poor way to evaluate art, and yet here we are, year after year, falling for the same old tricks. The ‘Best Films of 2025’ lists will be out soon, and they will be as meaningless and predictable as ever, serving only to further entrench the power of those who write them.
