Awards voters have always had a problem with comic book movies. No matter how great the film is, if it’s classified as a superhero action movie, it’s considered not worthy of serious awards contention. When Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture in 2019, it was due to an aggressive campaign from Disney and Marvel Studios, as well as public outcry about how the game-changing film needed to be recognized. The studios tried a somewhat similar tactic for Avengers: Endgame, but apparently they had received their allotted Oscar nomination. I mention this because the awards season snub of Spider-Man: No Way Home seems so calculated and obvious.

Since we all have to sit through the credits now, it’s very clear that it takes a literal army to get comic book movies made. When award shows like The Oscars or Critics Choice treat them as if they’re not “real” movies, and directors keep lining up to bash them as the downfall of cinema, it’s insulting to all of those people who worked hard to create that art, as well as the millions of fans who spent money enjoying them.

All these critics, producers and artists are more than happy to celebrate how Spider-Man’s $1.8 billion worldwide box office single-handedly helped save the business after COVID-19 derailed the entire entertainment industry, but they can’t possibly bring themselves to recognize that it was a really good movie with an emotional story and compelling lead performance from Tom Holland that audiences connected with. This isn’t to knock the other movies that have been nominated for Best Picture throughout awards season, but you cannot convince me that No Way Home wasn’t one of the 10 best films of the year.

Not only did it deliver a satisfying ending to the previous two Spider-Man movie franchises, it also gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Peter a reset before his possible finale in the current films. Comic book origins and big franchise connections aside, it was an extremely successful project that offered audiences a chance to once again bond over the movie-going experience. You’d think all this would be worth at least one compensatory Best Picture nod, even if it was just for the box office numbers? Unfortunately, there’s this stuck up, classist idea that comic book movies aren’t “real cinema.” Instead, they’re considered merely entertainment for the masses—not actual art.

If famous directors don’t want to make comic book movies because they think they’re just big, dumb loud trash for stupid people, then fine. Don’t make them. But you can’t keep pretending these films don’t exist, and more importantly, that they don’t mean something to the people who see them. This obvious snub shines a spotlight on Hollywood’s hypocrisy when it comes to these projects. The industry is happy to cash the checks, but they will never be given the same status as films like Belfast, The Power of the Dog or Don’t Look Up, which actually wasn’t that good, but had all the right names attached to it.

For context, Dune is nominated for Best Picture, but the fact that it’s directed by Denis Villeneuve somehow negates that it’s a sci-fi epic based on a popular book and is the first in a huge franchise. So I guess if Guillermo Del Toro, Steven Spielberg or Villeneuve had directed Spider-Man it would be considered an acceptable film that overcomes its superhero setting?

Spider-Man: No Way Home is nominated for Best Visual Effects alongside Dune, Free Guy, No Time to Die and Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This is the only category where big budget action films are considered acceptable. It’s also worth noting that the billions Disney makes on Marvel films allows the company to invest in more awards worthy fare like Nightmare Alley and Summer of Soul.

For those of us who have devoted our lives to these stories and characters, they mean something special in the same way Belfast or Licorice Pizza does to someone else, so it’s long past time for that emotional connection to be recognized for the beautiful art that it is.

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently available to rent or own digitally.