I remember that feeling, watching the 76th Academy Awards in 2004 when The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King swept the night and won a record-tying 11 trophies. As a lifelong fan of movies wherein heroes do battle with evil for the fate of the world/realm/universe, it felt vindicating and validating. All the snobbery lobbed at movies I loved, movies that seemingly everyone but Academy voters loved, was chipped away every time Return of the King won. I thought things had finally changed, and the movies I loved were finally gonna be major awards season players.

Nope!

Since then, the sci-fi and fantasy world has boomed on the big screen as the superhero genre has come into its own. But no matter how critically acclaimed those films are (like Iron Man or Marvel’s The Avengers), the Academy seems to only recognize their achievements in technical fields and never in the writing, directing, or acting ones. Following that major genre-film sweep in 2004, the Marvel and DC brands have released 54 films. Of those films, 15 have an 86% or higher on Rotten Tomatoes (I chose 86% on a sort of thought out whim because that’s the lowest RT score of this year’s Best Picture nominees). Of those 15 critically acclaimed films, there have been 20 nominations, 18 of them in the technical fields you would expect (8 in Visual Effects alone). The other two include Heath Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor win for The Dark Knight and Logan for Best Adapted Screenplay.

That’s a long introduction to my main point: Logan’s nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay is a big deal, specifically for moviegoers like myself that live for finding nuance and artistry in big screen spectacle. Year after year, these movies are shut out of the high profile awards while being respected for their technical achievement with nominations in the sound, makeup and hairstyling, and visual effects categories. Mind you, they almost never win the Best Visual Effects award, even though that’s the category the Academy feels most comfortable honoring these films in; Spider-Man 2 won in 2004 and Superman in 1978 and that’s it.

The Academy’s reluctance to recognize these popular and oftentimes acclaimed films is even more bizarre when you consider that Avatar, a sci-fi movie we all knew was coasting by on spectacle when it was released, was nominated for Best Picture. Avatar! And one of the only superhero movies to win any Academy Award? The critically reviled Suicide Squad for makeup and hairstyling last year. If Avatar was nominated for being blockbuster spectacle, then why wasn’t Avengers? And if DC’s worst-reviewed movie won an Oscar, why wasn’t Wonder Woman (their best-reviewed movie) nominated for anything this year?

But I digress.

The Logan nomination feels a bit, perhaps an 11th, of the validation I felt watching Return of the King sweep 14 years ago. Having a superhero film honored for the story it told, that feels like a small win after a drought. And Logan absolutely deserves the nod, even if it feels like a complete surprise. James Mangold, Scott Frank, and Michael Green took the X-Men universe in a dark, dramatic direction with the film, using the superhero genre’s heightened setting and heroes to tell a harrowing but somehow heartwarming story about found family. Logan most likely got the nod because it didn’t follow the formulas set up in those Marvel and DC shared universes (even as a proponent of these films, Logan is probably the first one I think deserves a screenplay nod). It’s a nice step forward after a decade-plus of steps back or to the side.

But will it matter? Could Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War score nods next year? Will the Academy reward the eventual Wonder Woman 2 after snubbing the groundbreaking first film? I don’t know. I’ve witnessed too many shutouts; in an ideal world, Robert Downey Jr. would have been nominated by now and Wonder Woman or Patty Jenkins would have been honored this year. I hope this Logan nomination in the screenplay category means that the Academy voters will start recognizing not only the artistry it takes to make these movies look spectacular, but also the care and talent the writers, directors, and actors put into these pictures.

Just imagine it, Black Panther taking over next year’s ceremony 15 years after that Return of the King sweep. Return of the king, indeed.

Where to stream Logan