Transformers: Age of Extinction for Best Picture?

In either an act of desperation, an early April's Fool joke or some contractual obligations, Paramount Pictures has created a "For Your Consideration" poster for Academy Award nominations in any category it can remotely qualify for with the most hilarious being "Best Picture", "Best Director", and "Best Adapted Screenplay". I am surprised they just didn't go ahead and suggest Nicola Peltz and Mark Wahlberg for the actor categories.

While I am being snarky, it actually has nothing to do with the quality of the film itself. Age of Extinction could be considered the best action film of all time and this would still be silly. Historically the Academy Awards hates action films. What do they hate even more? Science fiction films. In a near tie that would be followed by any expensive summer tent pole movie. Age of Extinction hits all three of Oscar's most reviled genres. So in the "top" categories of Oscar (Best Pic, Actor, Director, etc.) those type of movies are shut out automatically.

However, those same movies do get a little credit, usually in the more technical categories like Best Visual Effects or Sound areas (and bunch of others that get shuttled to a night before the main televised event). Even then the award night tech awards (like Best Visual Effects, Sound, etc.) require a film to overcome being a member of one or more of those three hated categories since the majority of Oscar voters are 50+ actors who do not even understand the technical details and so tend to just vote for the film that was most familiar to them from the list of nominees (which are chosen by those knowledgeable of those areas).

While I suspect Age of Extinction might get nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing, it will probably goose egg on Oscar night in favor of competition that doesn't hit all three categories at the same time. For example I suspect Interstellar will get nominations in visual and sound effects even though they are a fart in the breeze compared to Age of Extinction's. Interstellar only hits one of those hated categories (Sci-Fi), so it automatically has the advantage. All this is a long way of saying that Paramount already knows this is a waste of time and money, yet for some odd reason this exists anyway. Which makes me wonder why. Maybe someone likes playing the lottery as there have been exceptions but they are far and few between.