‘Diana’: when Oscar-bait goes catastrophically wrong
With the amount of Oscar-bait movies, it really makes you think about the state of Hollywood. Why are films being churned out in the hopes of winning accolades and earning big bucks instead of aiming to touch people like art is supposed to?
You only have to look at the number of biopics that the industry spits out at an alarming rate, inviting audiences into a world where the personal lives of beloved celebrities are laid out for all to see, often rather unceremoniously. In many instances, biopics reek of nothing more than capitalising on a fanbase –who cares if a celebrity’s private struggles are thrust into the spotlight? This was one of the biggest talking points when the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black was released in 2024, and the Marilyn Monroe film Blonde the year before. Hollywood just can’t let certain figures rest.
There certainly are some great biopics, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t deny that the genre isn’t prime Oscar-bait fodder. I hate to say it, but Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown was some of the clearest Oscar-baiting Hollywood has seen in a long time. From the singing to the physical resemblance (even down to the nails!) Chalamet was practically begging the Academy to award him ‘Best Actor’.
Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27 is another great example, which saw him actually develop gout from the amount of unhealthy weight gain he put on to play John Lennon’s killer. All that and he didn’t even get a look-in from the Academy.
However, one of the worst examples of Oscar-bait going terribly wrong came in 2013 when Naomi Watts tried her hand at playing Princess Diana. Now, Watts is a great actor – you only have to watch her in Mulholland Drive to know that – but the demand of playing one of the most famous people in the world certainly took its toll. With a bad, clunky script, Watts wasn’t well-equipped to play the People’s Princess, and critics were quick to tear the film and her performance to shreds.
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, the film has no redeeming qualities, with its goddamn overly sentimental approach to portraying the tragedy that moved the world back in 1997. Is a biopic about Diana’s death even necessary? When Kristen Stewart took on the role for the biopic Spencer in 2021, the movie handled the royal figure’s story much more eloquently, focusing on her isolation and struggles in a way that felt intimate and introspective, not invasive and fucking sensationalised.
Meanwhile, Diana was received so negatively that it makes you wonder how it was even greenlit. The film looks awful – seriously, Hallmark Christmas movies look better than this. Nothing about the movie worked, and it’s clear that an Oscar nomination was wanted for Watts, who does her best to embody the late princess, but unfortunately fails terrifically.
Instead of landing a ‘Best Actress’ nomination, however, Watts was nominated for ‘Worst Actress’ at the Golden Raspberry Awards. Now, that’s a blow that’s got to hurt. It just goes to show that while many biopics are successful at the Oscars, they’re a gamble of a genre, because when they don’t work, they really don’t work. Diana is one of the worst movies in Watts’ filmography and a stain on Spencer’s legacy. It’s much better forgotten.
