Many recent winners have lacked mainstream appeal—but this year, that changes.
For years, the panicked question around the Academy Awards has been the same as the one bedeviling every other pop-cultural awards show: Does anyone even care anymore? With the broadcasts recording some of their worst-ever ratings in recent years, film viewership growing more diffuse in the streaming era, and the monoculture supposedly slipping away, the ramp-up to the Oscars is typically preceded by months of industry agita over how to appeal to a broader audience. After all, we’re only a few years removed from the absurd suggestion of an “Outstanding Popular Film” category, multiple controversies over cutting technical awards from the broadcast, and something called the “Oscars Cheer Moment,” all anxiety-ridden nonsense in search of network TV’s mythic average Joes.
Much of this fretting has revolved around the fact that many recent Oscar winners have not had mainstream appeal—that, no matter how well liked, Best Picture honorees such as Nomadland and CODA did not really reflect the zeitgeist. That’s why this year’s Oscars should be a godsend to the Nielsen-obsessed honchos at ABC. Two of the biggest films of 2023, Barbie and Oppenheimer, have become awards juggernauts, snarfing up nominations at precursors like the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards. This year’s Oscars will be just like this past summer at the box office: all about Barbenheimer, as a way for Hollywood to pat itself on the back about keeping business afloat in a year defined by the streaming bubble bursting, labor strikes, and theaters’ slow rebound from COVID closures.
The only issue is that the leading contenders for many of the big awards already feel pretty settled, even though the Oscar nominations themselves won’t be announced until Tuesday. That’s become more and more common as the Oscar race has elongated: The modern Academy Awards always fall in February or March, but the number of televised awards ceremonies preceding them has only grown. In the early part of the year, stars are feted at, among other events, the Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, providing months of churn that often leave the big show feeling a little same-y.
Last year, A24’s winning indie action epic, Everything Everywhere All At Once, was the Oscar front-runner for months, and delivered on its promise by cleaning up in the big categories: Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Original Screenplay. This year, it looks Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will play the likely steamroller, as it checks practically every box for Oscar success: It’s a weighty drama based on real events (centered on World War II, catnip for older voters); it’s been dominating at all the precursor awards shows; and, most important, it’s a film that audiences responded to, overperforming every metric to gross nearly $1 billion worldwide.
Read: ‘This is the American dream’
Currently, I’d peg Oppenheimer as the favorite to win Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr. as the simmering businessman Lewis Strauss), essentially becoming a crowning moment for two popular entertainers the Oscars have never awarded. Downey, a two-time nominee, is being warmly received for once again putting in a “serious” performance following the decade-plus he spent as Iron Man (though he’s nobly stuck up for his Marvel work on the press tour). Nolan has been nominated many times for films including Inception and Dunkirk but never won; if he gets the big trophies this year, it’ll be much like Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited wins for 1993’s Schindler’s List, a moment where the industry anointed him as more than a popular entertainer.
That’s all very well and good. But what of the actual most successful film of the year, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which arguably took on a tougher challenge (building an enjoyable fictional narrative around a famous toy) and spun it into staggering commercial and critical success? Barbie is not being ignored by awards bodies, and it will certainly collect a slew of Oscar nods, but its chances of winning a big trophy seem slim. It was largely passed over at the Golden Globes, picking up only the newly created “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” award—the ceremony’s version of an “Outstanding Popular Film” bauble. Because the Oscars won’t have the same, Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling might end up seated and politely clapping for the whole show.
Of course, their mere attendance is probably enough to excite the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is hoping that ratings continue their upward trajectory after 2021’s COVID-era broadcast hit record lows. But it does underline the specific sort of snobbery that often plagues the Academy Awards, where success is rewarded, but some sort of sheen of prestige is usually required alongside it. Barbie is a movie about a brand, and some voters will turn up their nose at that; it recalls when Nolan’s The Dark Knight was surprisingly snubbed in major categories back in 2008, despite critical acclaim and record-breaking box-office success, an outcome that led to the immediate expansion of the Best Picture field.
Read: Oppenheimer nightmares? You’re not alone
Of the other major categories, only Supporting Actress feels near-locked, with The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph dominating at both the big precursors and the critics’ awards. Lily Gladstone, the stunning lead of Killers of the Flower Moon, would make history if she won Best Actress as the first Indigenous awardee in that category, and her Golden Globes speech previewed how powerful that moment could be. But Poor Things’ Emma Stone has collected trophies too, and both films are likely to receive a slew of nominations. Best Actor seems split between the powerful but deeply internal work of Cillian Murphy, as the title character of Oppenheimer, and Paul Giamatti’s grumpy teacher with a heart of gold in The Holdovers. In that case, it may come down to just how big the Oppenheimer steamroller ends up being, given Giamatti’s long-standing popularity with his fellow actors.
Other early favorites have faded somewhat in the stretch. Bradley Cooper’s polarizing Leonard Bernstein film, Maestro, seems guaranteed many major nods, but has failed to win anything big in the run-up. The Color Purple, released with prestige fanfare at Christmas, failed to net the kind of reviews it probably needed to crack the top races. Other Best Picture contenders are Cord Jefferson’s excellent debut, American Fiction, which has steadily built buzz since its launch at the Toronto International Film Festival; Celine Song’s rapturously received drama, Past Lives, and two European productions, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, both of which have been critical favorites since their premiere at Cannes. Their inclusion will reflect a voting body that is more diverse and international than ever, but all seem unlikely to interrupt Oppenheimer’s marathon to victory, a coronation that feels about as drama-free as anything the Oscars have offered up in years.
Can Anything Stop Oppenheimer at the Oscars?
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18.01.2024
Many recent winners have lacked mainstream appeal—but this year, that changes.
For years, the panicked question around the Academy Awards has been the same as the one bedeviling every other pop-cultural awards show: Does anyone even care anymore? With the broadcasts recording some of their worst-ever ratings in recent years, film viewership growing more diffuse in the streaming era, and the monoculture supposedly slipping away, the ramp-up to the Oscars is typically preceded by months of industry agita over how to appeal to a broader audience. After all, we’re only a few years removed from the absurd suggestion of an “Outstanding Popular Film” category, multiple controversies over cutting technical awards from the broadcast, and something called the “Oscars Cheer Moment,” all anxiety-ridden nonsense in search of network TV’s mythic average Joes.
Much of this fretting has revolved around the fact that many recent Oscar winners have not had mainstream appeal—that, no matter how well liked, Best Picture honorees such as Nomadland and CODA did not really reflect the zeitgeist. That’s why this year’s Oscars should be a godsend to the Nielsen-obsessed honchos at ABC. Two of the biggest films of 2023, Barbie and Oppenheimer, have become awards juggernauts, snarfing up nominations at precursors like the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards. This year’s Oscars will be just like this past summer at the box office: all about Barbenheimer, as a way for Hollywood to pat itself on the back about keeping business afloat in a year defined by the streaming bubble bursting, labor strikes, and theaters’ slow rebound from COVID closures.
The only issue is that the leading contenders for many of the big awards already feel pretty settled, even though........
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