The 96th Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees' Chances: A Few Thoughts

Last summer, in the wake of the rapturous critical reception of Barbie, I thought it was certain to get Best Picture--but then Oppenheimer surprised me by winning over some very tough critics, and in the months since, dominating one awards ceremony after another. The result is that my intuitive guess has for some time been that it will win the Big Prize on Sunday night.

Still, that is far from a full consideration of the chances of the nominees (there are eight other movies to be thought about, after all), and so I found myself thinking about how they all stack up when considered in terms of factors more or less indicative of their chances (while, once again, setting aside any pretense that this is about "quality," so keep in mind I am not saying that any one movie here is better than another).

A Measure of Popular Success Goes a Long Way These Days
While box office performance has little-to-nothing to do with the actual quality of a film, the Academy (and other comparable institutions, one of which has gone so far as to produce the equivalent of a Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence) are concerned with popularity for the sake of keeping up public interest in the goings-on. As it happens of the ten films only two broke the now relatively modest $100 million barrier the extraordinarily weak box office year of 2023 (Barbie and Oppenheimer), only three the $50 million barrier (Killers of the Flower Moon also squeezed over the line to take in $67 million), and six have made $20 million or less (all of the rest except for Poor Things, which managed to take in half of what Killers of the Flower Moon did, with The Zone of Interest taking in $7 million, The Anatomy of a Fall taking in under $5 million to date and Maestro apparently enjoying only whatever minimum necessary to qualify).

Putting it another way, the issue is not just how much money Oppenheimer, and Barbie, made, but also how very little the rest made, that leaves Barbie and Oppenheimer with a considerable edge here over the rest.

A Best Director Nod isn't Essential--But it is a Favorable Sign
As I remarked in a prior post regarding Greta Gerwig's not getting a nomination for Best Director did not necessarily doom the chances of Barbie for winning Best Picture, other films having had that honor in spite of a lack of such recognition for the helmer (especially these days, one suspects, given the political pressure to spread the accolades around). Still, it is relatively rare. Of the ten films nominated for Best Picture only five have Best Director nods--namely Oppenheimer's Christopher Nolan, Killers of the Flower Moon's Martin Scorsese, Poor Things Yorgos Lanthimos, The Zone of Interest's Jonathan Glazer, and Anatomy's Justine Triet. This counts in those films' favor.

The "Lifetime Achievement" or "Making it Up to You" Element
Of the five directors who have been nominated, three have had prior nominations--namely Nolan, Scorsese and Lanthimos. Scorsese, of course, has ten nominations--but already has one win for his remake of the Hong Kong cinema classic Infernal Affairs (the wildly overblown yet inferior The Departed), and even if that was almost two decades no there is that much less reason for any rush to recognize him (especially because Killers of the Flower Moon has no "This is the one he will be remembered for" buzz). This means that this is more likely to work in favor of Nolan and Lanthimos--while the pressure would seem stronger in Nolan's case given that so many think him to have been so under-recognized in the past (because of his making Batman films and science fiction like Inception and Interstellar), while it might be added that he has a considerable popular cheering section in his corner such as, I think, Lanthimos does not (and so far as I know, Glazer and Triet do not, else we would have seen more people show up to their movies) . . ..

I am sure one can think of other factors than these, but you have probably noticed a pattern by now, namely that Oppenheimer again and again displays the advantage in the stakes, with its popular success, and the recognition accorded to a director whom some will see as entitled to "his turn," all as the competition is disadvantaged by the same factors (because "no one saw them," because of a lack of recognition of directorial achievement or pressure to reward them "this time")--all while Oppenheimer, as a lengthy period biopic with capital I Important themes and an ostentatious visual style is a natural for the prize in a way that much of the competition is not (because it is a brightly colored movie "about a toy," for example, or too light in tone in that "safe," familiar, Alexander Payne way, or disadvantaged simply by being "foreign" like Triet's Anatomy and Celine Song's Past Lives, etc., etc.).

The result of this little exercise is that Oppenheimer looks to me like even more of a lock for Best Picture than it was before--though of course the last act of Naked Gun 33 1/3rd--though of course, that particular ceremony had help from Lieutenant Frank Drebin of Police Squad and his colleagues.