Entertainment

Nobody bites for Oscar bait

Dozens of Nobel Laureates working for decades in a secure underground bunker couldn’t have cooked up a more awards-friendly trailer than the one released a few weeks ago for “Lincoln.” It’s all there: the somber tone, weighty themes, swelling music from John Williams, slow-motion shots of soldiers falling in battle, snippets of characters delivering stirring monologues, meticulous period costumes.

And when it debuted, bloggers and Twitter users immediately passed judgment, wearily acknowledging that “Lincoln” probably had the Oscar race locked up.

“Trailer for ‘Lincoln’ looks like an ‘SNL’ parody of an Oscar-nominated film,” wrote Rylan Strader on Twitter. “The Official Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ Fulfills All Oscar Bait Requirements,” read a headline on blog Reel Talk.

That term, “Oscar bait,” gets lobbed at a lot of movies this time of year, and the expectations for what constitutes “bait” seem to be pretty well understood. To qualify, a movie should feel Important — yes, with a capital “I.” It should carefully toe the line between saccharine and uplifting. It should be overly long.

Watching it should feel less like entertainment and more like duty. Bonus points for dramatizing true historical events. Extra points if the story takes place in Europe. Triple word score if corsets are involved.

Two other Oscar hopefuls this fall also seem to fit the bill. December’s “Les Misérables” is another sweeping historical epic adapting the musical set in 19th-century France. Although it hasn’t even been screened, awards gurus are already predicting a Best Picture nomination based on its pedigree alone.

Same goes for Friday’s “Cloud Atlas,” the generation-spanning love story from the Wachowski siblings, adapting a heady novel from David Mitchell. It stars Tom Hanks, which in and of itself should tell you it might be gunning for awards.

So that’s it? Awards race locked up, see you in February?

Maybe, maybe not.

Despite the conventional wisdom and annual griping about autumn and its flood of cynical Oscar-bait movies, the good news is there’s one group that rarely takes the bait: academy voters.

The idea that there’s a particular type of movie that will immediately hypnotize voters, cause them to swoon and lead to a slew of trophies is outdated. It hasn’t been true for years.

Just because Daniel Day-Lewis puts on a stovepipe hat and looks craggy doesn’t mean that he and everyone involved with his film will be making speeches on Oscar night.

If you look at the evidence, the concept of Oscar bait is deader than Tara Reid’s career. The award for Best Picture hasn’t gone to a so-called “Oscar bait” film in recent memory.

You gotta give credit to the academy for more often than not picking reasonably surprising and cutting-edge choices — at least for a group whose median age is an ancient 62.

Last year the award went to “The Artist,” a black-and-white silent film featuring French people and a funny dog. Good luck finding anyone who would have thought that movie would get made, much less take home Hollywood’s top prize.

Other winners this decade include “Slumdog Millionaire,” a box-office-friendly thriller with a propulsive techno soundtrack; “The Hurt Locker” a completely noncloying look at Iraq bomb techs; and “No Country for Old Men,” about a villain who kills people with a cattle gun.

Even “The King’s Speech,” probably the closest thing to classic Oscar bait, in that it was period and dealt with British royalty, still had a script that was far more humorous and modern than the subject matter would suggest.

You’d have to go all the way back to 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind” to find a movie that was considered Oscar bait and won Best Picture. In other words, “The English Patient” doesn’t win every year, and more often than not, those kinds of films fail to generate much awards momentum — after they hit theaters, at least.

Remember last year’s “J. Edgar,” which, like “Lincoln,” had everything going for it in the awards column: an Oscar-winning director in Clint Eastwood and a thrice-nominated star in Leonardo DiCaprio. A biopic with moody lighting, great costumes and historical themes that illuminate the World We Live in Today!

It flopped. Same goes for “Machine Gun Preacher,” about a former drug addict who saves African orphans and Spielberg’s last outing, “War Horse,” which divided critics and earned half-hearted Oscar nominations, failing to win a single one.

Same goes for “Hereafter,” “For Colored Girls,” “Amelia,” “Secretariat” and on and on. All were prestige pics that were endlessly touted for their awards potential pre-release only to fizzle down the stretch.

So forget about this talk of Oscar bait and these musty notions about what will or won’t win the big prizes. The academy could shake things up by choosing “Argo,” a heist movie from some dude who appeared in a J.Lo video — or maybe “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino’s latest.

The bottom line is, we just don’t know. Although it’s pretty safe to say it won’t be “The Avengers.” You might have to wait another decade for that kind of progress.

reed.tucker@nypost.com