I’ve always thought it was important to look at the bigger picture of the Oscar race. Less so these days than how it all used to be before everything changed. The Oscar race is not that hard to figure out now. It’s mostly become like Fashion Week wherein all of the designers show their work, the critics write about it, and eventually the award voters anoint what the hive mind already believes.
This year is slightly different given that the Frontrunner is a Big Oscar Movie that will hold its place in American film history. Love it or hate it, there is no denying what The Odyssey is. It’s a monumental work that became a must-see for people worldwide.
So it could just win anyway. But if you were looking back at this moment in history, what would The Odyssey tell you about our culture? For one thing, the casting would be most prominent. It stands out more than anything else about the movie, and I don’t think anyone could argue. It’s an unusual choice to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page. These feel deliberate and are meant to make a point.
In other words, as with Everything Everywhere All at Once and One Battle After Another, there is no getting around Peak Woke. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just is the main influencer in Hollywood now, but especially at award shows.
We’re no longer at the point where we have to worry about ratings for the Oscars or the Emmys. They’ve more or less given up and will move to streaming. The Oscars will land on YouTube and they will find an audience. It will be worldwide and fan-driven, more than it will change the film industry as such.
Hollywood sees itself as an oppressed resistance. It isn’t the reality, but it is how they see themselves. They are trapped in a bunker, and “their” country has been “invaded” by those bad racists over there. So all of the movies reflect this unless they exist outside of the Doomsday Bunker, and some of them do, like Obsession, for instance, or Sense and Sensibility.
Others that might not reflect that ongoing existential panic would include Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, perhaps You Can See Everything, should it actually make the leap to Best Picture. Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky feels like a revelation, and a film that almost doesn’t belong in Hollywood in 2026, but here we are.
Two of the best pundits at Gold Derby have it in their top ten:
They’re not exactly the same, as you can see, but both of them have I Play Rocky, and that’s kind of important at this stage since they tend to play it safe.
For I Play Rocky to land in the Best Picture race, along with Project Hail Mary, Fjord, and Obsession, we do start to see a break in the clouds. We see something that looks a little like getting back to the business of telling stories for everyone. Not all the way there, by any means, but the chokehold the activists have had on Hollywood has been staggering and, in my view, killing its host.
I wish that we were in the business of predicting the Oscars, but it feels like we’re in the business of shaping them. I don’t know what that will mean this year, but I do know one of the best ways to shape the Oscars is to let the public, not the critics, show Hollywood which films excited them most.
People used to watch the Oscars and the Emmys because they felt included, not excluded. Hollywood’s bizarre, ongoing war on Paramount over its upcoming merger with Warner Bros. makes it look more insulated than ever. They’ve punished Paramount unless their shows somehow make the right kind of political statement. South Park could never win an Emmy until they went after Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk, for instance.
The most popular shows on streaming are Taylor Sheridan’s Landman and The Madison, both of which were shut out of the Emmys.
Paramount’s threats to move out of Hollywood and to Texas seem to have rattled the industry, but not enough to make them get over themselves and allow this massive change. I get that they like to keep things the way they are, under their total control. But something has to change. They pretend it’s about the employees who will lose their jobs, but really, it’s still about the people at the top who want to use Hollywood to push their chosen political messaging.
All of this to say that the themes running through the Oscars are probably what we’ve had to endure for the past ten years, as we’ve watched everything shrink and the empire collapse. The message is that they are the ones under siege from the other half of America. You know, their audience? The films that resonate will likely be the ones that broadcast that message best.
The Odyssey has it sewn up. This Academy is not likely to change any time soon. They mirror the Golden Globes in demographics. It has created a hive mind that will be hard, if not impossible, to shake up. There is no going back.
But look, some great movies are coming out this year. There isn’t much doom and gloom right now. As an outsider looking in, I can see how the general public views this mess, but hope springs eternal.
Here are my predictions for this week:
Best Picture
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Wild Horse Nine
La Bola Negra
Fjord
I Play Rocky
The Invite
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Obsession
Dune III
Alt. Elsinore, Digger, Ink, Primetime, Artificial, The Debut
Director
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
Los Javis, La Bola Negra
Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
David Fincher, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Alt. Christian Mungiu, FjordCurry Barker, Obsession, Denis Villeneuve, Dune III, Danny Boyle, Ink
Actor
Andrew Scott, Elsinore
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
Tom Cruise, Digger
Seth Rogen, The Invite
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Alt. Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary, Brad Pitt, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, Guy Pearce, Ink
Actress
Inde Navarette, Obsession
Rosalind Eleazar, Misty Green
Julianne Moore, The Debut
Ruth Madeley, Being Heumann
Olivia Wilde, The Invite
Alt. Renate Reinsve, Fjord
Supporting Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Debut
Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra
Sam Rockwell, Wild Horse Nine
Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning
Edward Norton, The Invite
Supporting Actress
Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
Penelope Cruz, La Bola Negra
Carla Gugino, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sandra Hüller, Digger
Penelope Cruz, The Invite
Original Screenplay
Wild Horse Nine
Misty Green
Fjord
Obsession
Ink
Adapted Screenplay
La Bola Negra
The Invite
Project Hail Mary
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
The Odyssey
Editing
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
La Bola Negra
Wild Horse Nine
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Casting
The Odyssey
The Debut
Digger
La Bola Negra
Primetime
Visual Effects
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Disclosure Day
Cinematography
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Werwulf
La Bolla Negra
Costumes
Werwulf
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Ink
Sense and Sensibility
Makeup and Hair
Digger
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
La Bola Negra
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
Production Design
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth
