2024 Oscars – Why Oppenheimer, Why Now

The weekend’s wins for Oppenheimer are astonishing for the modern era of Best Picture winners. Usually, intimate character dramas go one way, dragging Best Picture along, whereas the Big Tech movies go another, sometimes dragging Best Director along. Just for the hell of it, let’s look again at how the recent trends in wins have come down:

Now let’s look at how it might go this year, per the “general consensus.” If Oppenheimer wins these it will tie the record for Oscars won in the era of the preferential ballot. If Oppie also wins Sound, then it breaks the record.

But already, Oppenheimer has done something no other film in the preferential ballot era has done. And that is to win all of these precursors heading into the Oscars. It has dominated in every area, from the techs to the directing to the acting. The only place it isn’t being awarded, at least not yet, is in Adapted Screenplay. After American Fiction won the USC Scripter this weekend, it felt like that award was not going Oppie’s way. And that’s in keeping with Oscar history; they are loathe to give the prize for writing and directing to the same person when it is a sole writer. When they have co-writers, this is not a problem. One recent exception was Jim Brooks for Terms of Endearment. (If we can call 1983 recent.)

Here are the rest of the charts.

But that is only half of the story. All this tells us is what’s happening, but it doesn’t tell us why it’s happening. I will attempt to explain it the way I see it, though I will warn you, this is not going to be an easy explanation. It might make your eyes glaze over. But I’ll give it a shot.

If you follow any generational theory, as many of you who read this site know I do, you will understand that we are in an era of monumental change. Some have called it the Fourth Turning, Fourth Founding, or Pendulum Theory, but you don’t have to read these books to get the vibe. Not only are things changing, but they have changed. Permanently. There is never any going back, there is only forging onward.

Humans have always been vulnerable to technological advances. Our brains gave us the gift of intelligence to build tools. We often build tools before we have adequate time to learn how to use those tools wisely. The Printing Press changed everything, but in some ways, Late Medieval society needed more time to be ready for it. One of the negative consequences was the Salem Witch Trials. When The Malleus Maleficarum was published, one of the earliest book on witchcraft, it became official policy in religious circles. This made it harder for the people of Salem to say WTF when the adolescent girls of the community began writhing and pointing fingers.

Likewise, the advent of radio broadcasts allowed both Hitler and FDR to build their movements, reaching. 20 years later, television became another a great way to spread American propaganda to beat back Communist infiltration. And now, the internet has sent us cascading ever deeper into madness and polarization. Our brains were not ready for the speed with which the internet has developed. We weren’t ready for the addictive instant gratification of social media. We weren’t ready for the mesmerizing flow of the TikTok scroll. We weren’t ready for the ways we divided up our country into a 1984-like structure with an “inside” and an “outside.”

Everything predicted in the book 1984 has, more or less, happened to our country, though we’re still quite a distance from going all the way. Right now, we are at a crossroads where it could become full 1984, or it might only be a time of radical change, like 1980, where the country starts to spit and grind as the pendulum pulls rival factions in opposite directions. We don’t become a global world order, as in 1984 (with no real borders but rather ideologically aligned to form a giant superstate), but rather, we become more nationalistic, focus on building up our own industries as we seek to “make America great again.” These are the two options on the table for 2024.

We don’t yet know whether another World War will occur (per every “Fourth Turning” of the past). It is looking like there will be. If WWII is any indication, a war will be a “rally around the flag” moment, which would in turn make America more nationalistic as it did in the 1950s as the cycle begins anew. I have no idea where this is all going, as the outcome is still uncertain. Where we are right now is whether the film industry and the Oscars will become even more disconnected from the majority of Americans and take their place in the global community of people around the world who still care about them or whether movies and the Oscars will become more populist.

Oppenheimer takes place before, during and after the last “Fourth Turning,” or WWII. It shows when the pendulum was over to the left, with FDR’s New Deal and when Communism was a little like “wokeism” is now. It was a desire for a more equal and fair world. After the war, which brought the world to its knees — mankind was traumatized. I mean, can you imagine? Start with Hitler, the Nazis, and Crystal Meth. Then, there was Stalin. And then, there were the bombs.

Here we are, in what is a “Fourth Turning,” if you believe that. I can quote for you what it says in the book about the moment we’re living through:

Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction and in humanity’s willingness to use it. During the Civil War, the two capital cities would surely have incinerated each other had the two sides possessed the means to do so. During World War II, America enlisted its best and brightest young minds to invent such a technology—which the nation swiftly put to use. During the Millennial Crisis, America will possess the ability to inflict unimaginable horrors—and confront adversaries who possess the same.

Yet Americans will also gain, by the end of the Fourth Turning, a unique opportunity to achieve a new greatness as a people. They will be able to solve long-term national problems and lead the way in solving global problems as well. This too is part of the Fourth Turning historical track record.”

After the war, and everyone settles down, we will have an entirely new country or new direction for our country. Everything has to die for this new society to be born. It’s a great book, and you should read it.

I feel right now that the entertainment industry, especially the Oscars, are in the middle of a massive transition. The superiority of Oppenheimer is obvious. It isn’t just that it reaches back in time to help us understand the implications of where we are right now, but it also represents the future of Hollywood.

It might be that humans do nothing but build tribes and fight wars and that the only way a fractured country like ours can come together is world war. But Hollywood and the Oscars can still bring in audiences, provided they pay attention to why anyone would spend their hard-earned money to go to the movies. Movies are universal when they make an effort to be universal, and sometimes they do.

Movies like Top Gun Maverick, Barbie, Oppenheimer and now, Dune 2 are Hollywood’s future. I’m sorry to say that this might mean most of the character dramas that used to win Best Picture will likely be destined for streaming, while the movie theaters will be exist for event movies — we knew this was coming. COVID made it happen faster. But now, it is undeniable.

These films also offer a future for the Oscars, should they choose to accept it. They must now release their own preferences to hold onto the past and award the films that resemble those they used to honor. This can be achieved by thinking bigger, broader and more globally. It’s a proven way to revive the industry in the way the Oscar were designed to do. That can also embrace ways that theatrical and streaming can live in harmony as long as the Oscars realize that their survival depends on not existing inside a niche bubble but being bigger and more important.

Hollywood can’t keep making crappy, redundant superhero movies, try to “woke” them up, and think no one will notice. No. These movies might not be original (all save Oppie) but are as original as they can be within the confines of the genre. Hollywood must be big again — as big as they can be to reclaim their place in the cultural pantheon.

The Oscars can matter again if they can help guide Hollywood toward more of these kind of movies — breathtaking epics — that bring people into the movie theaters to see something they have never seen, but also something that doesn’t rot their brain. The Oscars can once again be the standard for excellence.

Throwing Oscars at Oppenheimer will help revive the corpse. Dune 2 shines a light for the future of movies. Big art, big ambition, big technology. Massive budgets, massive balls, but massive box office returns. It’s a whole new world, my friends. And there is no going back.

So why Oppenheimer, why now? Because its success on every level was unequivocal. It was excellence to a degree that all big-budget genre films should aspire. Nolan has built a career on being both original and able to deliver blockbusters beloved worldwide. By dazzling us with their experimentation and daring. The better question would be, why not Oppenheimer? How stupid would these people have to be to walk away from it?

Plenty of great movies have slipped through the cracks of this rigged Oscar game we play every year. I was happy to see that, for once, the frontrunner could win without the hive mind demanding more drama. But movies like David Fincher’s The Killer was sacrificed, as was Ava DuVernay’s Origin. Those movies made their marks too but weren’t slotted into the right grooves at the right time.

To save the Oscars, people like me will also have to be led by the movies, by audiences, rather than our own ideas of how the race should go. That’s a tall order, I know. but you have to start somewhere.

It’s not over yet. There’s one big show left, but so far, the runway looks clear for takeoff. How many Oscars Oppenheimer will win is not yet known. But it doesn’t really matter. It was the movie of the year and everyone knows it. The Oscars can only save themselves by putting a period at the end of that sentence.