One of the interesting dynamics in this very competitive Oscar year is how two very strong, very tech-heavy films are each nominated in nearly every category. Mad Max: Fury Road is at a slight disadvantage with no acting nominations, to Revenant’s two. But the similarities between the two films are striking in what they say about the film industry overall, the movies going public, and the Oscar race.
If The Revenant is about the survival of man, or more specifically, the ultimate survival of the parasite that was white Europeans invading the Americas, Mad Max: Fury Road is about how those men fucked it all up and now it’s time for a woman to take charge, take the wheel, grab the rifle. and make humanity’s last stand. Tom Hardy stars in both. In The Revenant, he’s the villain, an opportunistic white man. In Fury Road, he’s Mad Max himself, restrained in chains and in need of a female to rescue him. But he’s the good guy, among too few good guys.
Both films cost over $100 million, with The Revenant at around $130 million and Mad Max at around $150 million. Both have earned back their budgets. Both are the kind of films that make Hollywood nervous, and yet both are also the kind of films the artists in Hollywood want to stand behind. They even look different — one is orange and blasted with sunlight, the other is blue and grey and blanketed in snow. Together they represent an imagined past and an imagined future in ways only Hollywood could dream up. In reality, the hero of The Revenant was a fur trapper, making his living from a profession that would eventually wipe out many species of animals. That he was mauled by a grizzly is, frankly, what he deserved. It’s just too bad he and others like him survived. Imagine how great the natural world would be if they hadn’t. Mad Max envisions the post-apocalyptic world after guys like Immortan Joe laid the modern world to waste, killing everything, monopolizing the water supply, enslaving its people. Mad Max, I dare say, is true to who we are at our core. Humans, it has to be concluded, suck.
Mad Max is vigorously feminist. With powerful women of every age and color represented. George Miller took a huge risk in handing his narrative over to women, handing his Mad Max over to one specific woman. It probably cost him a bit at the box office. The theme of oppression certainly cost him international profits because China would not allow the film to screen there. In contrast, The Revenant is vigorously masculine. A Valentine, in fact, to all things men stand for in their best moments, and worst — not just machismo (revenge at all costs, even one’s own survival), but a cavalier “I’ll use what I want and discard the rest” attitude about the natural world, animals and nature. That Leo’s Hugh Glass stands as the exception is the reason it’s doing well with Oscar voters. They need to believe there was one good man, because they need to identify with that one good man. The Oscar race for Best Picture is almost always about that one good guy, especially lately. Women exist in The Revenant but just barely. As ghosts. One gets raped on a tree. In Mad Max, however, there are heroes and villains but there is no getting around that the patriarchy is done. Women rule.
Both movies are achingly beautiful, with some of the best cinematography ever, in any year. Emmanuel Lubeski’s incomparable eye and camera movements give the viewer a chance to stand amid that natural world, immersed in it. A non 3-D film that feels like virtual reality. Truly, there isn’t anything like The Revenant in terms of its visual beauty. It’s a stunner. The only blight upon that world? You guessed it, the bipeds that overtake and ruin it. Mad Max is equally beautiful, with John Seale’s cinematography jaw-dropping in every shot. How did Miller even make that movie? How did Inarritu even make that movie? Both are spectacular spectaculars of the highest order and they will compete for many of the categories at the Oscars.
Let’s take a look at some of those categories, and Oscar history when two films with multiple nominations go head to head.
I’m only going to focus on films that earned 12 nominations (The Revenant) and films that earned 10 nominations (Mad Max). It is simply too laborious to go through the ones that earned 14, 13, 11, etc.
Non-preferential ballot
Won Best Picture:
1959 – Ben-Hur – 12 nominations / 11 wins
1996 – The English Patient – 12 nominations / 9 wins
1954 – On the Waterfront – 12 nominations / 8 wins
1964 – My Fair Lady – 12 nominations / 8 wins
1990 – Dances with Wolves – 12 nominations / 7 wins
1993 – Schindler’s List – 12 nominations / 7 wins
1942 – Mrs. Miniver – 12 nominations / 6 wins
2000 – Gladiator – 12 nominations / 5 wins – no director
1944 – Going My Way – 10 nominations / 7 wins
1960 – The Apartment – 10 nominations / 5 wins
1962 – Lawrence of Arabia – 10 nominations / 7 wins
1963 – Tom Jones – 10 nominations / 4 wins
1965 – The Sound of Music – 10 nominations / 5 wins
1970 – Patton – 10 nomination / 7 win
1972 – The Godfather – 10 nominations / 3 wins – no director
1976 – Rocky – 10 nominations / 3 wins
1995 – Braveheart – 10 nominations / 5 wins
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire – 10 nominations / 8 wins
Didn’t win Best Picture:
1951 – A Streetcar Named Desire – 12 nominations / 4 wins
1981 – Reds – 12 nominations / 3 wins – won Best Director
1948 – Johnny Belinda – 12 nominations / 1 win
1964 – Becket – 12 nominations / 1 win
2944 – Wilson – 10 nominations / 5 wins
1953 – Roman Holiday – 10 nominations / 3 wins
1956 – Giant – 10 nominations / 1 win
1957 – Sayonara – 10 nominations / 4 wins
1967 – Bonnie and Clyde – 10 nominations / 1 win
1967 – Guess who’s Coming to Dinner – 10 nominations / 2 wins
1969 – Anne of The Thousand Days – 10 nominations / 1 win
1970 – Airport – 10 nominations / 1 win
1972 – Cabaret – 10 nominations / 8 wins – won Best Director
1973 – The Exorcist – 10 nominations / 2 wins
1973 – The Sting – 10 nominations / 7 wins
1976 – Network – 10 nominations / 4 wins
1977 – StarWars – 10 nominations / 5 wins
1981 – On Golden Pond – 10 nominations / 3 wins
1982-Tootsie – 10 nominations / 1 win
1991-Bugsy – 10 nominations / 2 wins
2000 – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – 10 nominations / 4 wins – won DGA
2002 – Gang of New York – 10 nominations / 0 wins
2003 – Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World – 10 nominations / 2 wins
During the preferential ballot
Won Best Picture
2010 – The King’s Speech – 12 nominations / 4 wins
1937 – The Life of Emile Zola – 10 nominations / 3 wins (no Best Director)
1941 – How Green Was My Valley – 10 nominations / 5 wins
2011 – The Artist – 10 nominations / 5 wins
Didn’t Win Best Picture:
1043 – The Song of Bernadette 12 nominations / 4 wins
2012 – Lincoln – 12 nominations / 2 wins
2010 – True Grit – 10 nominations / 0 wins
2013 – Gravity – 10 nominations / 7 wins
2014 – American Hustle – 10 nominations / 0 wins
Hasn’t been decided yet:
The Revenant – 12 nominations
Mad Max: Fury Road – 10 nominations
The preferential ballot has only been in play in the modern era since 2009. That gives us only six years of recent history so far. In the early days, you can only really count from 1935 through 1943 because that was when they had ten Best Picture nominees and five nomination slots for other categories. Before that, they only had three, sometimes four nominations per category. That’s nine years, plus six years, for a total of only fifteen years of Oscar history that correspond to the current preferential ballot.
During that time, there have only been four Best Picture winners to capture 12 nominations (Gone with the Wind would be the one that earned 13), and seven Best Picture winners to capture 10 nominations.
It’s easy to see how difficult it would be in such a strong year for The Revenant to really sweep and also take Best Picture. The most any film has ever won under the system is Gone with the Wind. Even The King’s Speech, which many had predicted to sweep, went up against Inception and The Social Network. The most it could win was four.
If you think The Revenant is as strong a contender as Gone with the Wind, then you should predict a sweep. Gone with the Wind did not have anywhere near the kind of competition in the tech categories as The Revenant has with Mad Max, however.
More likely, if the film were to win Best Picture, you’re looking more at maybe 5 or 6 at the most, which could leave Mad Max open to take more of the techs. If you take out Best Picture, you see that Gravity won 7 Oscars. Gravity was up against American Hustle, with 10 nominations. It went home empty handed, though, because most all the awards were split between Gravity and 12 Years a Slave.
The other comparison I can think of is when Hugo went up against The Artist. Hugo had a whopping 11 nominations. It ended up splitting the awards with The Artist and they both went 5 or 5. This is a possibly way for these two films to split up during the awards.
Hugo took:
Cinematography
Sound
Sound Effects Editing
Visual Effects
Art Direction
The Artist took:
Picture
Director
Actor
Costumes
Score
Best Picture winners that take tech awards with them is a thing of the non-preferential voting ballot past. This might be the year that revives it. If we look at 2012, for example, when Life of Pi, Lincoln and Argo all barreled towards best Picture. Argo had PGA/DGA/SAG/WGA – it could not lose. That left the tech awards to the films that were tech heavy favorites like Lincoln and Life of Pi. Both directors, Steven Spielberg and Ang Lee were the only ones who got every nomination across the board. Like The Revenant, and Gravity, Life of Pi was missing a SAG Ensemble award nomination.
In the end, it went down like this.
Life of Pi came into the race with a whopping 11 nominations. Lincoln came in with even more, 12, that’s because Lincoln had acting nominations and Life of Pi didn’t. Both contenders shared these categories:
Picture (Argo)
Director – Life of Pi
Screenplay (Argo/Django)
Editing (Argo)
Cinematography – Life of Pi
Sound (Les Mis)
Score – Life of Pi
Production Design – Lincoln
In addition, Life of Pi won Visual Effects, with 4 and Lincoln won just a single Oscar. There were other film in the mix for techs, including Les Miserables.
What categories do Mad Max and The Revenant share?
Picture
Directing
Editing
Cinematography
Costume
Visual Effects
Sound
Sound Editing
Makeup
Production Design
Funnily enough, the only category where The Revenant goes beyond Mad Max is in Lead Actor and Supporting Actor. Neither film has Screenplay, neither has Score.
Complicating matters for both films, at the Oscars at least, is that most of the time, the Academy likes to share the wealth, especially in really competitive years with a lot of films favorites. The Martian is one that pops up in 7 places. Then there is Star Wars: The Force Awakens in both Sounds, Editing, Visual Effects and Score.
In looking over recent history of the preferential ballot, in an extremely competitive year, I’m not sure I would feel safe in predicting a Revenant sweep, not with Mad Max breathing down its neck in virtually every category.
Though it’s entirely possible, even likely, The Big Short and Spotlight will go home with just a single Oscar for screenplay, I know that all eyes will be on the editing category, which has all of these films going up against each other. Mad Max is expected to win there, but a win for Hank Corwin for The Big Short could be the early signal that it might take three awards, Editing, Picture and Screenplay, which is a quite a common total for many a film winning in the era of the preferential ballot.
If it’s The Revenant beating Mad Max there, it might be an early signal that a sweep is indeed afoot.