Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now

Let's pretend you're in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. You're looking at potential nominees, and one movie is:

• the biggest blockbuster of the decade and the second biggest of all time
  
• the second most critically acclaimed movie of the year
• One of the American Film Institute's Top 10 films of the year
• One of the National Board of Review's Top 10 films of the year
  
• Nominated by the Producers Guild of America, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America

You would nominate it as one of the five best pictures of the year, right? Of course not. Of course you would give a Best Picture nomination to a World War II Holocaust/Nazi Drama that got mediocre reviews, worse reviews than such classics as Cloverfield, The Incredible Hulk, and Be Kind Rewind.

The sports equivalent of The Reader getting nominated over The Dark Knight would be LeBron James losing the MVP award to Erick Dampier, if Erick Dampier was a former Nazi represented by Harvey Weinstein.

What a disaster.