I randomly watched a clip from the 1992 Oscars on youtube a couple weeks ago and was immediately struck by the nonstop flurry of iconic actors and big movies. IMO the thing that hurts the Oscars most now is that these new stars don't really fucking matter, and nobody sees the films nominated for major awards. In 1992 the Best Picture noms were:
Silence Of The Lambs (winner)
Beauty And The Beast
Bugsy
JFK
The Prince Of Tides
All successful films to varying degrees, and most feature major actors. Warren Beaty, Barbara Streisand, Kevin Costner, Anthony Hopkins, etc. Whereas today...who gives a fuck about anyone in The Shape Of Water?
The films people see today won't even sniff an Oscar nom, ie cape shit and various remakes and blockbuster sequels. There's seemingly not much room or interest in smaller films today, so those films go largely unnoticed. Then awards season comes around and no one has seen anything outside of...whatever Jennifer Lawrence starred in I guess.