What has seemed like a never-ending awards season finally screeches to a halt this Sunday with the Academy Awards. It’s an intriguing year for the Oscars, with renewed attention on the ceremony in the wake of last year’s slap-fest, some well-poised categories to be decided and the possibility of history being made.
Ahead of Sunday’s ceremony, here are five big questions we’re looking forward to seeing answered on Sunday night …
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1. Will Everything Everywhere All At Once win it all?
I can’t remember the last time consensus coalesced so comprehensively around an Oscar nominee than in the case of this much-admired sci-fi family comedy hybrid. EEAAO (which, coincidentally, is also the sound I make when I step on an upturned plug) has won every one of the guild awards (Producers, Screen Actors, Writers and Directors), and no film has ever completed that sweep and not gone on to win Oscar best picture.
Indeed at this stage, rather than winning that bauble, the team behind EEAAO may well be looking towards something bigger, namely the highest number of Oscar wins ever, jointly held by Ben-Hur, Titanic and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. To do that, EEAAO will need to win in all of the 11 categories it is nominated for. That looks a tall order – the film’s considered an outsider in original score and costume design for a start – but not an impossible one.
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2. Who will win the acting gongs?
Quite a few of this year’s categories already seem sewn up, largely thanks to the dominance of EEAAO, but the best actress and actor categories look intriguingly poised. In the former, EEAAO’s Michelle Yeoh takes on Cate Blanchett, who is nominated for Tár. Blanchett was considered a dead-cert winner as recently as a few weeks ago, but then Yeoh won the Screen Actors Guild best actress award, typically a pretty solid harbinger for the Oscars equivalent.
In best actor it’s widely perceived to be between Brendan Fraser (for his performance in The Whale, above), and Austin Butler (for Elvis). That’s an interesting clash of generations: will voters want to celebrate an older, overlooked actor or coronate a new star?
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3. Could pro-Ukraine sentiment help some nominees?
According to reports, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s request to appear at this year’s ceremony via video link, after doing so last year, was turned down by the Academy. (Now there’s a group of people who have already seen enough underwhelming sequels in their time, etc etc.) Despite the Zelenskiy snub, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has a presence of sorts among the nominated films: the documentary feature category includes the deeply affecting A House Made of Splinters (following an orphanage’s struggles in the occupied Donbass region) and the excellent Navalny (about the plight of the jailed Russian opposition leader), with the latter odds-on favourite to win.
And, though it is unrelated, both in subject matter and inspiration, to the invasion, All Quiet on the Western Front’s (above) anti-war sentiment has propelled it to the front of the best international film nominees, and even into the best picture race.
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4. Will anyone actually watch?
Just as public attention on the Oscars seemed to be hitting historic lows, Will Smith (above) appeared with an outstretched palm. Smith’s slap didn’t help ratings for last year’s ceremony that much – it was the second least watched Academy Awards broadcast in history, behind only 2021’s pandemic-affected instalment – but it did suddenly revive flagging interest in the Oscars as a going concern, and may well help bump up the ratings for this year’s ceremony.
The problem of course, is that the Academy as an organisation was mortified by the slap, rightly recognising that it harmed the Oscars’ credibility, and so have done everything they can in the intervening months to make sure something like it never happens again. So this is likely to be a particularly risk-averse ceremony in that regard, which might once again turn off casual viewers. So, in the long term, general interest in the Oscars is, sadly, likely to continue on its downward trajectory, you suspect. But there’s better news for people who actually like the sprawling, hours long ceremony. After dumping a load of categories for last year’s telecast, this year they’re broadcasting the lot again. Justice for best costume design!
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5. Is our idea of an ‘Oscars movie’ a thing of the past?
Ten years ago, Argo – Ben Affleck’s drama about a scheme to smuggle US diplomats out of hostage-crisis era Iran under the guise of filming a shonky sci-fi film – won best picture at the Oscars. It was seen as a bit of a surprise winner at the time, but in retrospect its victory seems entirely predictable. Argo was a perfect “Oscars movie”: straightforwardly well-made, avoiding saying anything messy or ambiguous, instead tying a tidy Hollywood bow on a complex subject. And it was a film about film-making (of a sort too), something which Oscar voters go wild for.
In the decade since Argo’s win though, the idea of a best-picture-winning movie has changed pretty dramatically, with wins for daring fare like Moonlight, Parasite and Nomadland. I wrote about this in an instalment of the Guide before last year’s Oscars and … then Coda, a fairly traditional (though, like Argo, well-made) “Oscars movie” went and won (above), completely undermining my argument.
But, should EEAAO – a dizzying, often daft genre film that in previous years wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the best picture nomination list, let alone win the thing – triumph this year, it will suggest that Coda is the outlier, and that more daring, stranger fare winning may now be the norm. Now let’s hope the Academy don’t make a fool of me again, with the Fabelmans winning the thing.
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