I’m not as crazy as most people think. I know that what I write here doesn’t make a difference. I know what the Oscars were when I started and what they are now. I know that I helped turn the race back into what it was when I first started: completely micromanaged by the studios and the media outlets that depend on them. There is no fix for this.
The problem with the Oscars now isn’t what people on Film Twitter say. They say the season is too long, and people are exhausted by the end. They say there are too many awards leading up to the Oscars, making that last gasp seem irrelevant. That is only true when there are years like last year, when the Oscars were merely a period at the end of a sentence that was too long and too predictable.
There is nothing the Academy can do about this. In attempting to change up their demographics and not waiting for the industry to change organically, they invited thousands of members who weren’t white and male, but also weren’t exactly plugged into the American film industry. They went more global, less local, and that has changed everything.
Did it make a difference last year? No, because the Oscar voters did what everyone else did. They fell in line behind the one movie that the entire hive mind believed best represented them, and they were right. It did. One Battle After Another was the Peak Woke masterpiece for this specific hive mind, just as some might say Schindler’s List was perfect for the last gasp of the World War II generation working its way through time. Crash might have been the perfect reflection of the Roger Ebert-Good White People period of Oscar history.
But what happened to Hollywood after 2020 was probably the most destructive event ever. It was the one-two punch of COVID and the Great Awokening. From the BAFTAs pulling their voting privileges, to the cancellation of the Golden Globes (then bought by Penske media), to the Academy’s DEI mandate implemented in 2024 – and all of this AFTER Trump was voted out. All of that happened with a Democrat in power.
The alignment of the Democratic Party and Hollywood has been, I think, catastrophic. It is nothing less than the collapse of a once-mighty empire but the ruling class that controls it hasn’t quite figured it out yet. That’s why you saw Bruce Springsteen bitching on Stephen Colbert’s last show, the legacy media’s fawning over Colbert and lamenting his ouster. The problem? It’s all a manufactured fantasy to be used as fodder for more power by the Democrats. That’s all Colbert was and all Jimmy Kimmel is, John Oliver, SNL.
It is catastrophic because they can’t tell the truth anymore. All they know is how to be the “resistance.” That translates to: hating half the country, shunning them, not making movies or comedy or TV for them. So, they’ve become a kind of Bates Motel as culture sort of grows around them, tries to rebuild in spite of them as they keep tinkering with their utopian diorama in their make-believe world that casts them as the better half in a country that is about to celebrate its 250th birthday.
How the mighty have fallen.
The critics and the bloggers forced One Battle to become the Best Picture winner the minute Kyle Buchanan declared it after spending time on the set and then writing a splashy story for the New York Times. From then on, there was no way out. True, there weren’t many alternatives. Hamnet or Sinners, perhaps. But no movie better captured who they are and how they see themselves than One Battle (“we’re just hapless white guys elevating minorities and trying to make the world a better place as we head toward our own extinction”).
Do I think the bloggers and critics will do the same thing this year? Of course. From the looks of it, nothing has changed. We still get the sanctimonious lectures by people like Javier Bardem and we get Ben Stiller telling us again and again that he is on one side and those bad people over there are on the opposite side. This is their war. They want their utopia back, and they don’t care if it crashes their business. They don’t want audiences. They want the right kind of audiences, at great cost to the business.
You’ll note celebrities and Democratic Party activists alike are mourning the loss of their favorite propaganda delivery device. Gone are the days of Johnny Carson or even Jay Leno. Colbert sneered at half the country, just like Hollywood does. Or most of it. And in so doing, they miss all the great stories, all of the great jokes, and don’t even try to bring this country together. They would be happy if the other half were thrown away in gulags – they should not pretend otherwise.
I’m old enough to remember the old days, which is why it frustrates me. I can’t be like Matt Neglia, the Oscar Expert, and Brother Bro, and happily clap along like everything is going great. It’s not. Culture is not really culture anymore. It has been captured by an ideology that excludes much of this country, especially the working class. They should all be ashamed of themselves for that, considering Hollywood’s long history of making movies for people who have nothing.
So, what can the Oscar bloggers do this year to improve things? They could not try to say no to some movies and yes to others. They could wait with a question mark to see how audiences respond. But we know this is not possible because the Oscars have become disconnected from audiences such that it doesn’t matter anymore what they think.
Having said that, I do think that Project Hail Mary should be everyone’s frontrunner for Best Picture right now. Why? Because we know people saw it. We know it was a hit. We know it was good. That should be the criteria in a healthy ecosystem for awards. But we know this isn’t that so the bloggers make their judgment calls very differently.
Here is how it is looking on Awards Expert right now:
The Adventures of Cliff Booth is way down the list, at just 6%. But that’s a good place for it to be because the higher the expectations, the harder the climb. I think they’re nuts not to include it – it’s David Fincher, for crying out loud.
Mark Johnson has done his preliminary list and outlined why he’s choosing his top ten, which ultimately looks like this:
I would be more interested in all of this if the bloggers and critics didn’t make their own reality, which they do now. There is no organic process anymore. It is highly controlled and the surprise element has more or less been taken out. Part of the problem is that you look at the list of what’s being released and you think there isn’t much there, which is how many of these films show up and just hold their place all through the season. Most people just fall in line and do what is expected of them, especially without genuine buzz to guide them.
But just for the fun of it, based on nothing at all, my own list right now would look something like this:
- Project Hail Mary
- The Adventures of Cliff Booth
- The Odyssey
- Fjord
- Wild Horse Nine
- Dune 3
- Disclosure Day
- Jack of Spades
- Jessie Eisenberg Musical Comedy
- The Social Reckoning
Best Director, I’d go with:
- Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Project Hail Mary
- David Fincher, The Adventures of Cliff Booth
- Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
- Denis Villeneuve, Dune 3
- Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
I am really hoping for surprises – in that we get more movies that create genuine excitement and buzz and aren’t just mouthpieces for one political party against another. A girl can dream.
