Summary

• Stanley Kubrick never won the Oscar for Best Picture, even his influential war movie Barry Lyndon.
• War movies like Saving Private Ryan faced tough competition at the Oscars, but it was still shocking when they lost Best Picture.
• Awards like Best Picture are arguably subjective, but in several cases, it was clear that another movie was going to win over movies like Dunkirk or Hacksaw Ridge.

Some pictures that are counted among the best war movies of all time were unsurprisingly nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, but sometimes shockingly, did not win. While these movies might stand out specifically in the war genre, they still have to compete with every other movie at the Oscars in a given year. It is sometimes clear that another motion picture will win, despite the relevant war movie's acclaimed depiction of historical events.

However, several war movie Best Picture losses were still shocking, or even called out as some of the biggest movie snubs at the Oscars. Oppenheimer enjoyed being the decided frontrunner in the lead-up to the 2024 Academy Awards. However, at the time of writing, it remains to be seen if the overwhelming majority is correct in its prediction, or if this will be another surprising year.

10 Barry Lyndon (1975)

Lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next.

Despite being one of the most influential directors in history, Stanley Kubrick never won Best Picture in his lifetime. A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, and his war movie Barry Lyndon were all nominated for Best Picture. However, the only Oscar Kubrick ever won was for the groundbreaking special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Barry Lyndon is a long and slow movie and faced too much competition at its Academy Awards ceremony. This was also the year Jaws made its debut. However, The One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest prevailed.

9 Apocalypse Now (1979)

Lost to Kramer vs. Kramer.

Perhaps Francis Ford Coppola's biggest contribution to cinema aside from The Godfather is the Vietnam War adaptation of Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now. The movie deserves some credit for pushing cinema away from the glorification of war, potentially inspiring movies such as Saving Private Ryan. However, Guy Raz argued (via NPR) that the Academy was more likely to go for a movie that highlighted actors: "Apocalypse Now is a director's picture — it's [Coppola] showing off, and he's fabulous ... but Kramer vs. Kramer is sort of a domestic drama — that shows off actors, and actors get into that a lot."

Kramer vs. Kramer marked Meryl Streep's first Oscar win and 2nd nomination.

8 Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Lost to Shakespeare in Love.

The Best Picture category could have swung one way or the other, and Academy happened to prefer Shakespeare in Love and felt like it spoke to them more.

Saving Private Ryan is also regarded as one of the best war movies ever, and a hallmark of Steven Spielberg’s career. It is among the war movies praised for accuracy and features one of both Tom Hanks and Matt Damon’s celebrated roles. Despite everything, Saving Private Ryan lost to the romantic historical fiction drama of Shakespeare in Love.

The defining movie of Gwyneth Paltrow’s career deserved its win for its wonderful performances, stellar period production design, and ionate take on Shakespeare’s career. However, its win was likely a matter of luck. The Best Picture category could have swung one way or the other, and Academy happened to prefer Shakespeare in Love and felt like it spoke to them more.

7 Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

Lost to The Departed.

Clint Eastewood's Letters from Iwo Jima also had the misfortune of releasing during a very competitive year, with Little Miss Sunshine and The Queen also claiming spots in the Best Picture category. However, The Departed unsurprisingly swept the ceremony this year. The Departed is one of Martin Scorsese's best movies and one of the best gangster movies in general, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon in the lead roles. The Academy may have also felt that Letters from Iwo Jima didn't live up to Eastwood's recent Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby.

6 Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Lost to The Hurt Locker.

Quentin Tarantino’s gratuitously violent alternate history movies tend to be too bold to land with the amount of people needed to win Best Picture. His depiction of Nazi-occupied in Inglourious Basterds was no different. There is inevitably a faction who finds it too strange to vote for. However, given the number of times he has been nominated for Best Picture, it would be fitting if Tarantino’s supposedly last movie was the one for which he finally wins. Inglourious Basterds lost Best Picture to The Hurt Locker. Avatar, also arguably a war movie, was a frontrunner to win this year.

5 War Horse (2011)

Lost of The Artist.

The year that Steven Spielberg brought War Horse to the Oscars was a fascinating one, with a (mostly) silent film wining Best Picture, as well as the baseball biopic Moneyball and the whimsical journey into the past of Midnight in Paris appearing in the mix. Ultimately, War Horse was unremarkable as a war epic and isn’t even close to being best movie about filmmaking in history.

4 Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Lost to Moonlight.

In the infamous year of La La Land’s not-win and Moonlight’s real win, Andrew Garfield won the first of his two Oscar nominations for acting to date. In Hacksaw Ridge, Garfield plays Army Medic Desmond Doss, who went into battle having resolved to kill no one, not even in self-defense. Garfield lost the Oscar this year to Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea. Hacksaw Ridge is doubtlessly an excellent movie, but it was never a contender for the Best Picture win. It did, however, win for Film Editing and Sound Mixing.

Andrew Garfield was also nominated for Best Actor in a Leading in 2022 for Tick, Tick…Boom!, but lost to Will Smith for King Richard.

3 Dunkirk (2017)

Lost to The Shape of Water.

Dunkirk marks the last time Christopher Nolan was a contender for the Oscars, with his 2020 time travel adventure Tenet not meeting the acclaim of his best movies.

Guillermo del Toro’s bizarre romance The Shape of Water managed to beat out not one but two World War II movies: Darkest Hour and Dunkirk. Dunkirk marks the last time Christopher Nolan was a contender for the Oscars, with his 2020 time travel adventure Tenet not meeting the acclaim of his best movies. Dunkirk is a tense, multi-perspective, non-stop depiction of the evacuation of Dunkirk. It is a stunning movie with a level of production design and screenwriting that other directors can only hope to achieve, but other movies outside the war genre offered more complex stories this year.

2 1917 (2019)

Lost to Parasite.

1917 was the frontrunner a few years back until Parasite stole the awards show. People may have been able to recognize Parasite’s superiority in of plot ahead of the Oscars, with 1917’s strength being in its technical aspects. Writers at Vox argued that Parasite deserved to win in January 2020 — but what deserves to win is not always what does win. However, as the Oscars ceremony went on, and Parasite snagged Best Screenplay and Best Director, it became clear who the winner would be.

1 All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

Lost to Everything Everywhere All at Once.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a haunting depiction of the hell of war. The narrative effectively presents the German soldiers of World War I as sympathetic characters pulled into a supposedly patriotic war effort. All Quiet was given the hilariously guaranteed win of Best International Film and might have been in the top three movies most likely to win Best Picture. However, Everything Everywhere All at Once meant there was no competition last year, and All Quiet would be destined to the other war movies that came so close to the top prize.

Source: NPR, Vox