The Avengers: Endgame Ensemble Cast of the Year Award
Previous Winners: Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), In the Heights (2021), Mass (2021), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
This year had a few solid ensemble casts. I generally consider an ensemble cast here as a cast without a main lead, although some of the previous winners did have lead performances too.
Runners-Up: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. A great finale for this franchise within the MCU. Everybody got their awesome final moments. Dungeons & Dragons was a surprise hit of the year, at least critically. Their group of actors worked so well together. Air was another film that did great earlier in the year. The third Poirot film with Kenneth Branagh was the best of the three, A Haunting in Venice. Saltburn had a leading performance, but the ensemble around him was part of the weird film’s strength.
Winner: Oppenheimer
Sure, you could make an argument that Cillian Murphy is the lead of the film. I mean, it is named after his character. However, there are so many rich and complex characters populating this film that you could argue that this might be one of the best ensemble casts of all time. Oppenheimer was a huge hit and should be heard from again come Oscar time.
Previous winners: Rey (Star Wars), Mockingbird (Marvel Comics), Wonder Woman (DCEU), The Shirewolves, Captain Marvel, Kamala Harris, Wanda Maximoff, Pearl
I loved Anna Devane when I was younger and watched General Hospital. I loved how she could kick the butt of anyone placed in front of her. That is where this award came from.
You can call it a woke award if you wish. It doesn’t matter to me. I love a great female asskicker. Here are some of the best of 2023.
Runners-up: M3GAN kicked off the year in a great movie, although she is a robot technically and not necessarily a female.Spider-Gwen is a major star from the Across the Spider-Verse film and she has had a couple of series at Marvel Comics this year.I don’t care what anyone says, I loved The Marvels (Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau).They re definitely in this category.Barbie dominated the box office and found her way into the real world.Another one I will debate till the end is Hope, aka the Wasp, from Quantumania.Yes, she did not have as much to do, but she came up big a couple of times.Another comic character is Daredevil, aka Elektra Natchios.She was a major figure in Matt Murdock’s life and now is still in the DD costume during the Gang War story.Julia Page is a reporter from the No/One comic and she probably wouldn’t have made this list had it not been for the podcast that I listened to tied to this series.The podcast was inspiring to me and Julia was a great character.The biggest tour of the year kicked a lot of ass as Taylor Swift made ALL the money.The Last of Us debuted on HBO and gave us a perfect version of Ellie. Her confrontation with the cannibals was absolutely mind-blowing. Donna Noble returned with The Doctor for three specials on Disney + and showed why she was one of the best companions the Doctor ever had. Juliette Nichols battled through the first season of Silo on Apple TV + trying to solve a death inside the dystopian silo. Lucy Gray Baird dominated the screen in the new Hunger Games film. She was the winner of the Games and of our hearts. One of the top characters in the new D& D YouTube series Bonus Action was Bar’B Mourdusa, a barbarian, as played by Amanda Nicholas.
And our winner among this massive list of powerful and dominant females is…
Winner: Dorothy “Dot” Lyon.
Aka Nadine Tillman, played by Juno Temple on FX’s Fargo.
Dorothy has been the main protagonist in Fargo season five and she has been just so awesome. Being pursued by her ex-husband, Sheriff Roy Tillman, Dorothy had to fight off his flunkies while still trying to maintain her new life from crashing around her. She has been absolutely brutal all year and her wits and intelligence shone through everything. I am excited for her final showdown with Roy, which is clearly coming soon.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 