It never fails. Every year, there's a lot of buildup around the announcement of the Oscar nominations and fanboys across the Internet get into a tizzy. Will this be the year that X genre finally makes it to the big time? And every year, the Academy shoots down the hopes of fanboys with a very conservative list of nominations. This year is no different.

Even before the first trailer hit the Interwebs, Nolanverse fanboys were proclaiming The Dark Knight would not only be the best comic book movie ever made, but it would be one of the best movies Hollywood ever put out. Unlike most people, I actually kept my expectations tempered and walked out of the theater undisappointed, but not as excited as a lot of people were.

Before the first weekened's box office numbers were released, Nolanverse fanboys were shouting "Oscars!" from the highest places they could find. I almost spit out my coffee one morning as an Internet poster said Christopher Nolan deserved the Best Director Oscar and Christian Bale and Heath Ledger deserved Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars respectively. Excuse me while I pause to stop laughing so hard.

There's one thing that needs to be said first: The Dark Knight wasn't a bad movie. It was a great movie and I wholeheartedly enjoyed it. I'll get called an idiot, among other things, but I honestly preferred Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If your blind hatred of that movie gives you pause, go ahead and stop reading right here. I'll go as far to say that Iron Man was a better comic book film. Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man was better than any perforance in The Dark Knight, save for Ledger's performance as The Joker.

With that being said, if Ledger had not killed himself, there's no way he would be nominated for an Oscar. I'm sorry, but you can go ahead and put your Joker underwear back in the drawer. His performance was great, I will admit. I will say it was one of the best villain performances ever on film. But (prepare yourself) Jack Nicholson's Joker was better. Yes, I said it. There's all this talk about how Ledger disappears into the character and I just don't see it. Sure, he disappears due to a lot of makeup work, but that's just about it.

It's like saying Ron Pearlman disappears as Hellboy. The makeup covers the actor, but you can still see him. To be fair, I really don't think there was a great standout performance by an actor or actress this entire year. I would go ahead and say that this year is probably one of the worst years in recent memory for acting performances. The only performance I saw where an actor "disappeared" into his character was Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder. He literally disappeared into the character through makeup and then the character itself. And guess what, he's also nominated for an Oscar. If I had to decide right now, Downey Jr. would win over Ledger.

I'll admit I have a bias against the Nolanverse movies. Aside from Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, I didn't think there was anything really astounding about the movie. I think after Batman and Robin, we would take almost anything as a replacement. Batman Begins was a solid movie, but nothing more. The Dark Knight was better than Batman Begins in just about every way, but it still wasn't the best movie of the year.

There's something about the Nolanverse movies that just never clicked with me. Perhaps it's the way they try to take themselves so seriously, but I don't particularly care for Nolan's vision. I think 300 was a better graphic novel movie. I enjoyed Superman Returns more than Batman Begins and it pains me to think Warner Bros. wants to turn the Superman franchise into a Nolanverse-redux.

But even with bias, I laugh at the Nolanverse fanboys yelling that The Dark Knight wasn't nominated for an Oscar. I remember before the movie came out how some said it was as good as The Godfather or Goodfellas. Well, I'll give them the latter considering Goodfellas was a horrible movie as well. But there's no way I can say with a straight face that The Dark Knight is as good as The Godfather.

Look at the nominated movies for Best Picture: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which features a great, almost career-defining, performance by Brad Pitt with a wonderful story and direction to boot; Frost/Nixon, good and solid directing by Ron Howard that doesn't rewrite the book, but also featuring a career-defining performance by Michael Sheen who was best known for Underworld; Milk, you have me with this one, Sean Penn has been playing Sean Penn in numerous roles for years now and don't make me bring up the quote from Tropic Thunder, though Josh Brolin was great; The Reader, I haven't seen yet and Slumdog Millionaire, which is this year's Crash, a decent film that's nominated as a race card.

Two out of the five nominated films are worthy of the Oscar. The Academy forgets Changeling, Gran Torino and The Wrestler. All had strong performances by their leads, all featured excellent directing chops and were mesmerrising. They also have one thing in common: they were all better than The Dark Knight.

I'm sure people will shout for the next month about how the Academy has a bias against popular films. But that argument really doesn't hold any water considering Return of the King was not only nominated for the second highest amount of Oscars in history, but was the first movie to win every award it was nominated for. The Departed won in 2007 and was Scorsese's most succesful picture to-date. Gladiator, Titanic, Braveheart, etc. The list goes on of popuar, box office-leading films that were nominated and won.

The only argument I could say fanboys would have is the Academy has something against comic book films. I would agree to one extent, and that's that no comic book film has ever really been a Best Picture contender outside of Richard Donner's Superman, which is still what all comic book films should aspire to.

In the end, it won't matter. Fanboys will still clutch to The Dark Knight like they did Spider-Man before it. In another five years, a new comic book movie will come out and set the temp for fanboys. I would love to say it will be this year's Watchmen release. But I'm sure fanboys will attack it for messing up the most minute detail in the graphic novel. It's jut depressing how some people get so overhyped and upset by the opinions of the Academy. I know I've had my disputes with what they say and I'm sure this year will be no different, but the reactions of some rabid fanboys on the Internet is downright insulting.