2023 Oscar Predictions – The Rules of the Game

The Oscars are still months away. This is the moment where the pundits each offer up a picture of how they think they should go. To know their predictions is to know them. How do they go about forming their projections?

Here’s the dirty little secret that no one wants to say out loud: a lot of it is wishful thinking disguised as punditry. Some of it is advocacy disguised as punditry and some of it is advocacy to satisfy advertisers.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that much what motivates punditry. The end result is the same. If you are worried about whether the game is rigged or not you have to go back to the movie Quiz Show. Was it rigged? Yes. Did that matter? Not really. It was considered small potatoes.

The idea here is that Hollywood has always been a dream factory. They give people what they don’t know that they want. Paddy Chayefsky distorts this somewhat in Network. Our worst instincts can be captured and harnessed for profit. Television news no longer serves either purpose for the country at large. Whatever purpose it once served has now been transferred to the internet with user-generated content.

That means if our prurient interests are going to be exploited, some content creator will service that need. We need our dreams to play out so we can live vicariously by watching Herb Stempel win lots of money that is played out when something goes viral – on YouTube or TikTok. We also have our little dream factories on our social media platforms. Influencers sell much of what television used to sell.

So what are we all doing here with our very early Oscar predictions? Are we trying to predict the race to come, or are we trying to shape the race to come? I guess it depends on whom you ask, where you look, and what those motives might be. For many of us, at least in the beginning, we just wanted to get it right. We wanted bragging rights. To me, that’s still the most fun the Oscar game has to offer.

But a lot of the game now is the SHOULDS. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, whether it’s kicking it old school and thinking Martin Scorsese should win in 2006, or now, wanting Viola Davis to win Best Actress finally. The SHOULDS are either because people have an idea that something is genuinely “the best,” or the narrative has produced an underdog people are rooting for, OR it’s some kind of desire to see fairness in a system that is based on the subjective impressions of human beings.

The only hard and fast rule I follow is “first, do no harm.” Don’t wreck a contender’s shot at a win. I’ve broken this rule a few times, though I regret those times. I was way too angry when Ben Affleck and Argo were about to win because I wanted Steven Spielberg and Lincoln to win. I was not exactly thrilled with Meryl Streep beating Viola Davis in 2011. For much of the time I’ve been doing this I have been, on occasion, too emotionally invested in something that isn’t, at the end of the day, that important.

Even though we had a Best Picture surprise last year, that was only because most of us dug our heels in both ways. In one direction, many were saying The Power of the Dog SHOULD win. In the other direction, people were saying CODA shouldn’t win. I didn’t think a movie with only three Oscar nominations could or should win Best Picture. With a ranked-choice ballot, however, the winner isn’t a representation of the passionate choice. It still might have won if there were only five Best Picture contenders. But most likely, in that case, its director would have also been nominated and possibly won.

But does it matter that much that CODA won as a streaming film that made no box-office money and had just three Oscar nominations? I mean, not really. We’re in the midst of growing pains that are difficult for people who remember the past. Many of us want the Oscars to return to their former glory. The Oscars don’t seem to care about that as much as their own pursuit of deeper meaning and purpose with their votes, their history and their legacy.

That makes the Oscars kind of easier to predict than they used to be. We don’t really have a “wide open race,” at least not this year. We have a race that starts to narrow now and only becomes more narrow as we head for the end of the year.

For a fresher take than mine, check out the YouTube predictions by the Oscar experts on Twitter who are really finding an audience and driving up probably more excitement for the Oscars in the YouTube generation than any of the rest of us.

There seems to be a niche audience for the incredibly shrinking Oscars.  I don’t personally agree with their takes at the moment, at least per this video.  And here’s why.

They aren’t factoring in the ranked-choice ballot. Oscar newbies, they remember the most recent wins of Parasite, most specifically, but also CODA last year. They’re going where the juice is, where the energy is. But Parasite is, as experimental and inventive as it was, still a fairly linear story. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a film that should do better with nominations, where passion is a factor, but might prove too divisive for the top prize. The jury is still out on whether voters will be able to sit through it.

That old rule of Oscar watching applies with the ranked-choice ballot and without it: the Best Picture winner has to be a movie you can sit anyone down in front of and they will get it if not love it. Parasite only really had a barrier of subtitles. But if you followed the story you would get it. It’s not that complicated. It’s certainly not as visually experimental as Everything Everywhere All at Once which is a mind-bending movie about the multiverse.

If the Academy was comprised of the demographic of the Oscar Experts it would probably be the frontrunner. But the Academy are still mostly boomers. Someone described them once as your typical Eagles fan.

That means — 60ish, white, liberal, wealthy, a do-gooder. They are nearly the end of their long lives where they reinvented so much of culture all through the ’60s and ’70s, got rich in the ’80s, wandered looking for deeper meaning in the ’90s, found their sense of purpose with Obama’s rise and how he reshaped culture, and now are really still riding that wave of enlightenment. I’m just not sure that person is an Everything, Everywhere All at Once voter. Maybe. First do no harm. I mean, you never know.

But that is just a way to eliminate one movie from the top prize. Maybe they’d vote for it to seem hip and cool and smart — and they’d vote for it without actually watching it. It’s a unique and interesting film. Is it an enjoyable film? Well, I guess that depends on whom you ask.

The Best Picture race is in major flux since the Trump election in 2016 and the Green Book implosion of 2018, the Me Too movement, the racial reckoning of 2020, cancel culture, the Black List, etc. That makes it harder to place a frontrunner RIGHT NOW. The frontrunner will be the movie everyone can unite around and for the right reasons. It’s different from the old days which really were about King for a Day. Which director, and they were always men, will be anointed King in Hollywood, or as Jim Cameron once said, King of the World.

It’s not quite the world anymore and there is no more anointing kings. That’s over. It was partly 2016 but readers of this site know that sentiment was cooking a bit longer. I got into trouble recently on Twitter for suggesting men are uniquely adapted to be better directors because they tend to be more visual.

That is the kind of thing I could have, and did say, years ago. Only now, with the thought police out in force I got slammed for it. Look, I don’t care about that. It’s small potatoes compared to other tribunals I’ve experienced BUT the point still stands: in the attempt to course correct, they’ve managed to almost completely eliminate the King for a Day ritual the Oscars used to be.

Good, people will say. It’s time to step aside. These dynamics are going to be at play this year, as they were last year and the year before. That is why the Oscar Experts predicting Everything Everywhere is less crazy than it might have been once. That movie addressed the moment probably better than any other. It is very much a zeitgeist time capsule of Hollywood culture in 2022.

One thing to note that I will cover more in depth in a later piece, but several pundits are flirting with the idea that international features — non-English language films — are going to be a regular feature in the Oscar race, which is what they’re now going to use to fill out the expanded list of ten. I personally think they, like the Left overall, are going to want to move in a more global direction.

They’ve announced as much and seem to be leaning that way. SO it is not out of the realm of possibility, even though they still have a separate category for that very purpose; the Academy Awards used to be about fluffing up the American film industry. I guess they think that industry is dying so why not go more global.

That’s why you see movies like All Quiet on the Western Front and Decision to Leave popping up in predictions here and there. Definitely possible.

The bottom line for Best Picture is this – whatever wins is likely either going to also win a Screenplay award or a Directing award. It is also going to be a movie that people are proud to have represent them and everything they stand for in 2022.

Most likely, the film will at least have a screenplay nomination. Once you narrow down Screenplay, you can have a better idea of what movie CAN win. So let’s look at Erik Anderson’s updated Screenplay predictions:

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. Women Talking (UAR/Orion)
2. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
3. The Whale (A24)
4. She Said (Universal Pictures)
5. White Noise (Netflix)
6. Living (Sony Pictures Classics)
7. The Son (Sony Pictures Classics)
8. The Wonder (Netflix)
9. The Good Nurse (Netflix)
10. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

1. The Fabelmans (Universal Pictures)
2. Everything Everywhere All At Once (A24)
3. The Banshees of Inisherin (Searchlight Pictures))
4. Triangle of Sadness (NEON)
5. Bardo, Or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Netflix)
6. TÁR (Focus Features)
7. Babylon (Paramount Pictures)
8. Nope (Universal Pictures)
9. Empire of Light (Searchlight Pictures)
10. The Woman King (Sony/Tri-Star)

Here is what we know from the past when it comes to Screenplay. Since we have so many writers/directors who are the same person, those awards must split. Four films since the era of the ranked choice ballot have won all of the top prizes:

The Hurt Locker
The King’s Speech
Birdman
Parasite

None of them had a sole writer and director who were the same person winning. How many have won just Picture and Director without Screenplay?

The Shape of Water
Nomadland

How many have won just Screenplay without Director?

Argo
12 Years a Slave
Spotlight
Moonlight
Green Book
CODA

Winning Pic and Screenplay seems to be the more common way for a film to win.

Keeping that in mind, let do our crude predictions just for fun:

Best Picture
The Fablemans
Babylon
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
TÁR
Women Talking
She Said
Glass Onion
Avatar
Elvis

Alts: Till, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, Empire of Light, The Woman King, White Noise, Wakanda Forever

Best Director
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
The Daniels, Everything Everywhere
Todd Field, TAR
Jim Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water

Original Screenplay
The Fabelmans
Banshees of Inershirin
Babylon
Everything Everywhere
TÁR

Adapted Screenplay
She Said
Women Talking
White Noise
Glass Onion
Till

Best Actress
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere
Cate Blanchett, TÁR
Margot Robbie, Babylon
Olivia Colman, Empire of Light
Viola Davis, The Woman King

Best Actor
Austin Butler, Elvis
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Colin Farrell, Banshees
Hugh Jackman, The Son
Diego Calva, Babylon

Supporting Actress
Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
Janelle Monae, Glass Onion
Claire Foy, Women Talking
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere
Jean Smart, Babylon

Supporting Actor
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Michael Ward, Empire of Light
Brad Pitt, Babylon
Brendan Gleeson, Banshees of Inisherin
Jeremy Strong, Armageddon Time

That’s it for now. Too long already. Have a great weekend.