Once a year, three miles underground inside a massive concrete labyrinth, officials from the Academy of Motion Pictures gather to decide the fate of the universe — and the Academy Awards.

What do the Academy Awards truly mean? Answer: Absolutely nothing.

It sounds obvious enough, but this must be restated each year until people stop using Oscar wins to back their opinions.

Does an Oscar prove one film is greater than another? No. Does it show one cinematographer created more visually pleasing and cohesive scenes compared to others? Not a chance.

At most, the awards merely recognize artists for exceptional work. The problem is a small group of “experts” are gauging films based on their personal tastes and feed the masses their opinions.

This becomes troublesome when trite media, dedicated to hounding celebrities’ personal lives, begin respecting the opinions of an Academy that gave awards to movies like “Gladiator” and “Titanic.” Meanwhile, groundbreaking films like “Citizen Kane” and “Goodfellas” missed out.

Keep in mind, it’s just my personal opinion that those movies were misjudged. Let’s use an analogy to further explain my point that the Oscars are, in fact, worthless and merely a chance for Hollywood’s elite to celebrate being rich and famous.

Let’s say you were at a packed local pub. You proclaim as loud as possible, “ ‘Gladiator’ is the greatest movie ever!” Instead of the crowd letting out a unanimous cheer of agreement, you hear an eruption of opinions being spewed out every individual’s mouth.

A scraggly guy in the corner screams out, “What about ‘Cast Away!’ One the main characters was a volleyball!” A man stabs the scraggly “Cast Away” fan in the kidney with a shiv and yells, “That was the most predictable and lethargic narrative to hit the screen in the history of history!”

The bar rapidly descends into an all-out brawl as heated disagreements boil over.

Thank your religious-specific-god that there’s the Academy to keep us in the know, and out of disagreements ending in stabbings.

If someone likes a movie, what more is there to say? That movie happened to appeal to their specific tastes and perhaps mirrored issues they faced in their life. Much like the artists desiring recognition for their work, movie watchers seek recognition for their opinions.

Today, the media has generated an aura of holiness to the golden statue. Its mystical powers can resurrect dead Hollywood careers and make viewers believe the acceptance speeches are as real as the plastic, Botox-juiced faces narrating them.

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