Disclaimer: The following paper contains spoilers for Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction, do not read if you are planning on seeing the movie’s but haven’t yet.

In July of 1994, Paramount Pictures released Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks. The film follows Forrest Gump, a man with a low iq going through various important times in history including The Vietnam War, Watergate and the JFK assassination. Throughout his life, he has one constant in his life with his friend and romantic interest, Jenny, who struggles with sexual abuse, domestic abuse and drug addiction.

Two months later, Miramax released Pulp Fiction starring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta.  The movie portrays a crime boss and his workers throughout various times during a span of a couple of days. These stories include his workers accidentally killing a man and needing to clean it up, a couple robbing a diner that the crime workers are eating at and a boxer needs to avoid the crime boss after failing to throw a boxing match when his opponent has a heart attack.

In 1995, Pulp Fiction was nominated for seven oscars, Forrest Gump received thirteen-nominations. Forrest Gump won six awards- Pulp Fiction won one. In addition, Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction for four awards while Pulp Fiction beat Forrest Gump for none of the awards. This has led to there being several debates regarding which one of the two movies deserved to win that oscar. These two movies are really similar with their tones, mostly comedic but Forrest Gump is a little less mature than Pulp Fiction in my opinion. While Forrest Gump never had to do any favors for a crime boss, While several Oscar Topics are subjective, I will compare the two films to see the benefits of each film in each category.

The first category that Forrest Gump won was best actor (Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump, John Travolta for Pulp Fiction). Since both films included both comedic and serious scenes, these two actors needed to be able to pull off both of these kinds of scenes. In one scene from Forrest Gump,  Forrest is a shrimp boat captain  who sees his friend from the war, Lieutenant Dan, when this happens.

I genuinely believe that this is one of the funniest and most overlooked scenes from the movie. The way Forrest jumps out of the boat and swims over letting his boat crash out of excitement is by itself funny enough. Then you include the dialogue of Forrest saying “But Lieutenant Dan, you’ve got no legs,” in response to him mentioning his sea legs. That being said, a lot of Forrest’s humor for the film is pretty much entirely, “Forrest is dumb, does something inappropriate and offensive,” and while the way the film does this one joke is great, it limits the acting range needed for Tom Hanks. All he needs to do is act dumb for two and a half hours and the audience laughs. I think a lot more of Tom Hanks’s abilities are shown with Forrest’s serious scenes. In the following clip, his wife, Jenny, has just passed away and he goes to talk to her grave.

Throughout this scene, Forrest Gump tries to stay strong for Jenny, but can’t help but break down crying. It is easy to appear sad, it is a lot harder to portray sadness with restraint but just a little bit of breaking when he can’t help it.  What is most impressive to me is that he manages to maintain this seriousness while still remaining the goofy character that we have grown to love for the entire movie.

Pulp Fiction’s humor is a lot less goofy in my opinion than in Forrest Gump. The humor is based on the situations and not the characters like the previous joke was. Take for instance the following clip.

During this scene, the two people working for the crime boss are driving this man they’ve taken hostage and they accidentally shoot him in the head because Vincent (Travolta) had his gun pointed at his head casually and accidentally pulled the trigger.  This results in Vincent saying, “Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.” The scene’s context isn’t that funny, it’s more so the delivery of his lines that make the scene so funny, not taking it that seriously that he just murdered someone. It’s subtle and less obvious than Forrest Gump’s lines that feel a bit like something out of a sitcom waiting for a laugh track to finish to deliver the next line.  There are also these scenes that are meant to be more serious though such as the following:

Travolta in this scene is trying to remain calm even though he has to watch this woman that he’s started to fall in love with go back inside to her husband.  He should look more sad and instead he simply looks disappointed and not heartbroken and this moment isn’t talked about for the rest of the film resulting in no emotional impact. While that isn’t Travolta’s fault, he could have conveyed more emotion and while I think he did a good job looking content, he should look more upset than content.

The other award Forrest Gump beat out Pulp Fiction for that made people upset was best screenplay.  The problem with having a best screenplay category is that it can be hard to judge two films when they are as different as these two. Obviously Pulp Fiction and  Forrest Gump are different and will appeal to different people so Forrest Gump winning doesn’t indicate that it was a better film. Malu Rocha of the website medium explains this, stating, “You’ll find that dubious Academy choices and collective outrage over Best Picture winners are surprisingly not that uncommon, and you don’t even have to look very far back. ” It is sadly too often that the best movie of the year doesn’t win best picture.

I think the largest reason it can’t be determined which of the two movies is better is because both movies excell in different areas. Forrest Gump excels with it’s outstanding new technology it made to allow the characters to “go to the past.” Back when the movie came out, people said that, “Using carefully selected TV clips and dubbed voices, Zemeckis is able to create some hilarious moments, as when LBJ examines the wound in what Forrest describes as “my butt-ox.” And the biggest laugh in the movie comes after Nixon inquires where Forrest is staying in Washington, and then recommends the Watergate. ” Pulp Fiction also appeals to several people with it’s unique story telling device with having one story broken up into seven pieces seemingly shuffled up and taking place over two days being loosely related. This review from 1994 when it came out explains it well, stating, “The method of the movie is to involve its characters in sticky situations, and then let them escape into stickier ones, which is how the boxer and the mob boss end up together as the captives of weird leather freaks in the basement of a gun shop.”

What’s interesting is Forrest Gump aged well but Pulp Fiction didn’t. In this 25-year-later review of the film, they state, “Here’s a character born in the Deep South, the grandson of a Ku Klux Klansman, raised surrounded by segregation and bigotry. Though Forrest’s disinterest in these crude values suggests an innate colorblindness, he’s less conscious progressive than disinterested everyman.” In one for pulp fiction, they point out how well the movie was done, stating, “What no summary can do justice to is the elegance of the way these stories – each of which has several other smaller sidelines – are interwoven.”

By including these unique features, the film made several advancements by being unconventional allowing them to change the film and while it can’t be determined which film deserves the best picture award, they both have very positive traits.