The Golden Raspberry Award, more known as The Razzies, is a comedy event to honor the worst productions of the cinematic industry of the year. This Oscar look alike, a parody of the premiation, was created by the North American publicist John J.B. Wilson during a drive back home: he was thinking about how the movies Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu are so bad that they deserved an award for their low quality.
Wilson’s also a movie trailer producer and started remembering all the bad productions that he watched in 1980, and in the next year, during his usual annual potluck party after the night of the Academy Awards, he decided to make a presentation with his friends with a fake microphone to announce the first Golden Raspberry Award Winner: Can’t Stop the Music – for Worst Picture. This first event caused repercussions and in the next week, the press published a release and it had a highlight in the Los Angeles Daily News.
The 2025 razzies nomination
For this year’s nomination, we have the categories for Worst Picture nominated: Borderlands; Joker: Folie à Deux; Madame Web; Megalopolis and Reagan. The Joker movie had a lot of expectations since the first one was a big hit, but the sequence was a failure. Another polemic nomination is Madame Web because it is a big Marvel production with the well-known actress Dakota Jhonson, but it had a lot of criticism for its confusing dynamic. And starting with the Rotten Tomatoes List, Borderlands comes in third place with 49% rating according to critics; in second comes Megalopolis with 35% and the last but not the least comes Reagan with 18% of critic-approval.
As you can imagine, there are a few directors that were nominated with their productions.The nominated Worst Directors are: S.J. Clarkson for Madame Web; Francis Ford Coppola for Megalopolis; Todd Phillips for Joker: Folie à Deux; Eli Roth for Borderlands. Jerry Seinfeld was nominated for Unfrosted, but the film is not nominated for Worst Picture and the reverse happens as well: Reagan is nominated for Worst Picture but the director Sean McNamara was not nominated for this category.
Joaquin Phoenix was claimed to be one of the best actors for his role in Joker 1, with an exceptional performance, and then in Joker 2, he’s now criticised for the same acting. Jack Black is a well-known actor for comedy movies and good acting skills, but this last year happened to be not so great because of the film Dear Santa. Him and the few actors that are nominated for Worst Actor are: Jack Black in Dear Santa; Zachary Levi in Harold and the Purple Crayon; Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie a Deux; Dennis Quaid in Reagan and Jerry Seinfeld in Unfrosted.
The nominated actresses for Worst Actress are: Cate Blanchett in Borderlands; Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie a Deux; Bryce Dallas Howard in Argylle; Dakota Johnson in Madame Web and Jennifer Lopez in Atlas. Dakota and Jennifer are acclaimed by the public for their long careers with a lot of movies that made a lot of success, such as the sequence of Fifty Shades of Grey and Hunger Games, and although Gaga doesn’t have a lot of acting roles, she has an expressive career and worldwide known songs, which is why they weren’t expected to be nominated.
Another category for Jack Black is Supporting Actor and he got an nomination with “Voice Only” in the movie Borderlands. Kevin Hart, a charismatic actor known for being funny, was nominated in this category as well with the same movie as Jack. The nominated actors are: Jack Black (Voice Only) in Borderlands; Kevin Hart in Borderlands; Shia LaBeouf (in drag) in Megalopolis; Tahar Rahim in Madame Web; Jon Voight in Megalopolis, Reagan, Shadow Land & Strangers.
In the women’s list is Ariana DeBose in Argylle & Kraven the Hunter; Leslie Anne Down (as Margaret Thatcher) in Reagan; Emma Roberts in Madame Web; Amy Schumer in Unfrosted and FKA twigs in The Crow. It’s interesting that two big figures such as Amy and Emma are nominated; these two blondes are already famous, though their public images differ, so their nomination is controversial.
For the Worst Screen Combo category were nominated duos that had some of the worst moments, but the list is not precise because,as you will see, the entire cast of Megalopolis was considered to have bad appearances and the Razzies elected them all. The nominated for Screen Combo are: Any Two Obnoxious Characters (But Especially Jack Black) in Borderlands; Any Two Unfunny “Comedic Actors” in Unfrosted; The Entire Cast of Megalopolis; Joaquin Phoenix & Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie a Deux; Dennis Quaid & Penelope Ann Miller (as “Ronnie and Nancy”) in Reagan.
Some of these movies had a great first addition to their universe and were decided to have a ‘part 2’, but they were not so great. Actually, they are nominated as the worst movies for Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel. The Joker: Folie a deux is a big success on the Razzies and could not be far from this category, so check out the nominated ones: The Crow; Joker: Folie a Deux; Kraven the Hunter; Mufasa: The Lion King; Rebel Moon 2: The Scargiver.
In order to know better about the event, get to know the winners (or the losers) of the last edition of the Razzies:
Starting off with the 44th Golden Raspberry Award, the winner of the category’s Worst Picture is Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield who won the Worst Director. For the actress category, Megan Fox shined brighter: she won Worst Actress as Alana Hart in Johnny & Clyde, and Worst Supporting Actress in Expend4bles as Gina.
For the male counterpart, Jon Voight won as the Worst Actor as Patrick Quinn in Mercy, and the Supporting Actor was Sylvester Stallone in Expend4bles as Barney Ross. It’s interesting that, for the Worst Screen Combo, the two winners were animated animals, the Pooh & Piglet as Blood-Thirsty Slasher/Killers in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and this same movie won the category Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.
Meet the winners of the Oscars and the Razzies in the same year – and some that wore nominated for both:
Winning the Oscars and the Razzies is a rare event, but it happened three times in history. Composer Alan Menken in 1993, screenwriter Brian Helgeland in 1997 and the most famous case: actress Sandra Bullock in 2010.
On the other hand, there were also some nominations that happened with three actors who have received Oscar and Razzie have been nominated for the same role: James Coco in Only When I Laugh, Amy Irving in Yentl, and Glenn Close in Hillbilly Elegy.
At this point in the Golden Raspberry Award history, 77 films have been nominated for both an Oscar and a Razzie.
Now, get to know about some of controversies in the Razzies:
One of the most repercuted Razzie incident is nominating a child actor in 2023. The Razzies nominated Ryan Kiera Armstrong at the age of 12 for Worst Actress in Firestarter. Because of the widespread criticism, the premiation reversed the nomination, apologized and implemented a new guideline that requires nominees to be at least 18 years old.
Another controversy is the creation of a new category for Bruce Willis in 2022, called Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Movie. The category received criticism, and the Razzies rescinded it after it was revealed that Willis’s condition progressed to a form of dementia called FTD.
The Razzies will keep fomenting the conversation in the film industry with humor and highlighting the worst cinematic performances and productions of the year. While often controversial, as they are the opposite of the famous Oscars, Razzies attracted attention to both critical failures and unexpected nominations (and some funny moments). Despite the criticisms and the awards for the bad media, the Razzies are still an entertaining part of film culture, balancing glory and ridicule moments.
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The article above was edited by Marina di Bernardo Babichak.
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