First things first: there are a few reasons why Logan is being brought into the Oscar conversation. The review embargo dropped right towards the tail end of the Oscar season (the awards will be handed out the Sunday before the film is released in theaters). So everyone’s already buzzing about potential awards for next year's ceremony, and this movie fell right into that. Furthermore, when a big blockbuster gets glowing notices, it can be really exciting. It signifies that it could be a blockbuster that actually matters to both the audiences and its filmmakers. Logan promises not to be just another obligatory cash cow like most franchise entries.

Last year, the game-changing action epic Mad Max: Fury Road earned 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film won six awards in the technical categories. Many film fans that night were hoping all the early Mad Max wins that night would lead to a surprise win for director George Miller. That didn’t happen, but I wondered if the floodgates had opened for big blockbusters to enter the Oscar conversation.

But Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t a superhero movie like Logan. It’s high octane, visceral, once-in-a-lifetime experience, with themes of patriarchal oppression and feminist survival. The film was beyond just being a summer money-maker. It was a movie for adults, with resonant themes and brilliant practical effects. Superhero movies have a different battle, with their comic book origins and use of CGI. The Avengers had been critically acclaimed and succeeded in doing something impossible: tying five previous movies together while balancing multiple superheroes and their movie stars. In a more superhero-friendly Oscar climate, The Avengers might have made a bigger splash.

The major superhero blockbuster to get serious Oscar attention was Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed The Dark Knight. The 2008 film was nominated for eight awards at the 2009 Oscars, winning Best Sound Editing and a posthumous Best Supporting Actor award for Heath Ledger. The film missed out on nominations for Christopher Nolan’s direction and Best Picture. This was a surprise, since the film received nominations and wins in key Oscar precursor awards like the Critics Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, and the Producers Guild. The five films nominated for Best Picture that year were Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the winner Slumdog Millionaire. It’s safe to say that, as good or bad as they may be, none of these films were as influential and iconic as The Dark Knight.

In fact, The Dark Knight not getting the Best Picture nomination is the exact reason why the Academy changed the number of nominations from five to ten for the 2010 Oscar season—though some would argue that the equally acclaimed Wall-E not getting a Best Picture nomination also lead to the change. The Academy decided that there needed to be more room for “populist” films, though even that is an unfair label. The Dark Knight was and is an incredible achievement in 2008, and it deserved to be recognized as such.