They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
Handicapping the Impossible Best Picture Race
By J. Don Birnam
February 22, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Today, we will try to handicap the supposedly impossible Best Picture race. It is, without a doubt, one of the most confounding in years. In The Big Short’s prologue, Ryan Gosling voiceovers that the heroes of the movie succeed because they “did what no one else bothered to do. They looked.” Perhaps when we look closer, it is not as confusing as it seems.
Indeed, a clear front-runner has emerged. The only question is whether we can overcome those lingering doubts and just accept the obvious: Best Picture is The Revenant’s to lose.
Throughout the season we have been handicapping the various races. They are here: technical Oscars, Part I, Technical Oscars, Part II, the Shorts, animated, foreign, and documentary, lead acting and the writing races, and directing and supporting acting.
We will have Oscar coverage all week, with final predictions and power rankings on Thursday. We will also be updating rumors and predictions on Twitter and Instagram.
Nominations: The Road to Getting There.
The big question in this year’s Oscar race was how many they were going to nominate in a year where there were a lot of great movies. None of the finalists is perhaps a timeless masterpiece, but it did seem at times as if over 20 movies had a real shot at a nomination. The fact that for the SAG ensemble alone you saw three casts that did not make Best Picture shows you how broad the year was.
In the end, there were eight. And there was nothing really surprising about them. The nominees were Spotlight, The Big Short, The Revenant, Brooklyn, Bridge of Spies, The Martian, Mad Max, and Room. The first seven of these had received Producers Guild nominations and recognitions from critics and industry groups alike. The last one, Room, had not done well with precursors, but had won the People’s Choice at Toronto. Most of us saw most of these nominees coming, and in hindsight it should have been obvious that Room was going to make it in.
A bit more shocking to some people was what missed. To me, it was disappointing that Carol did not make it in, and somewhat surprising given its six nominations (serious Best Picture contenders like Room and The Big Short only got five). The Academy just does not like Todd Haynes. The omission of Straight Outta Compton after scoring both PGA and SAG wins refueled the infamous #OscarsSoWhite debate that culminated in dramatic changes to Academy voting rules.
So, the field being set, what could win?
Narrowing it Down to Three.
Something that became obvious right after the nominations came out was that The Martian was out of it, because it missed on a Best Director nomination. It could have gone the Argo way and risen on the strength of that snub, but Hollywood does not have the same sympathy for an elderly for-hire director as it does for a young pretty boy superstar, I suppose. The other two that missed Director, Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies, were similarly out of it and made no noise the rest of the season.
Room had a surprisingly strong showing, scoring key writing, directing, and acting nods, but the lack of a single nomination by precursor guilds (other than the surefire win for its star, Brie Larson), has kept all of us far away from predicting that it can make any noise at the Oscars. More on that later.
It was then down to four films — Spotlight, The Big Short, The Revenant, and Mad Max. The first and last of these were critical and pundit darlings. But, as happens often with the Oscar race — indeed as it happened just last year — there is such a thing as your head in your ass. Prognosticators and critics alike, in love with, for example, Mad Max, have been picking it to win Directing and a slew of technical races at the Oscars. Yet its defeat at the Critics’ Choice, the DGA, and BAFTA to other movies, has or should put those theories to rest. Indeed, Mad Max is arguably struggling to maintain its lead in technical races where The Revenant is coming on strong.
So, the PGA went to The Big Short, the SAG gave Spotlight some life, and the DGA, and, later, BAFTA went for The Revenant.
And then there were three.
Why Each Can and Can’t Win
Year in and year out you hear different theories by different prognosticators about why this or that movie can or cannot win Best Picture. Some rely on past statistics, some rely on what they hear from voters, some go by gut. I advocate a combination of the three, but I always fall back on a simple principle: there is an “Academy type” of movie. The movie has to have some sort of snob or prestige factor at the absolute minimum. It has to have some sort of punch to it, whether intellectual or emotional (but most of the time it’s the latter). And it’s better if it makes them feel smart or like they’re good people.
Factor One: The Oscar-Type Movie.
Two years ago, the semi-split among the guilds had some people, fans, mostly, still predicting Gravity for Best Picture. I did not buy it, and was of course correct. Last year, the inability of critics to let go of their darling, Boyhood, kept some of them seeing a win for Birdman despite its sweep of the guilds.
This year, to be sure, is harder. But I have to argue against the notion that either of two darlings is going to win: Mad Max does not have a chance and Spotlight is likely out of it too. A SAG win is worth only a 50/50 Best Picture chance. That’s all that Spotlight has. Spotlight meets two of those three criteria: it has a prestige/snob factor and it makes them feel good about themselves if they reward the courageous reporters. But it’s missing (in the views of the industry, not mine) that strong emotional punch. The movie is great because it’s subtle, subdued, and understated. Its greatness as a movie is its weakness as a Best Picture contender. So be it. Spotlight will not have to live up to that mark of death that the “Best Picture” label smears a movie with. And Mad Max, despite its adoration by critics, is simply too easy to see as a popcorn movie. It lacks both the emotional punch and the “feel smart” factor, even if it arguably has the prestige/snob element because of its amazing craft.
Factor Two: The Stats.
So we are down to two, then. If you want to narrow it down to one, one of these two movies has the clear edge: The Big Short has the great force of Oscar statistics behind it.
The Revenant did not get a SAG ensemble nomination, indicating either weakness within the important acting branch or that it was seen too late. Either way, only one movie, Braveheart, has won Best Picture without a SAG ensemble nomination, in 20 years of SAG history. Do note that Tom Hardy got a Best Supporting Actor nomination, which no one expected, so this “weakness within the acting branch” theory is perhaps misguided.
The Revenant did not get a Best Screenplay nomination, and since 1950 only Titanic and The Sound of Music have won Best Picture without one. Again, weakness within the branch, or a sign that the category was too competitive?
The Revenant, to win, would become the first movie of 88 of the history of the Academy Awards to go to the same director two years in a row. The same person has won Best Director two times straight, but it has simply never happened that his movie also wins Picture two years in a row. In other words, a win by this movie goes against the entirety of the history of the Oscars.
Finally, since the Oscars expanded Best Picture and moved to the preferential ballot, every single movie that won at the Producers Guild has gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The Revenant lost that race to The Big Short.
The Big Short has none of these problems. It won the PGA, it has a SAG ensemble and a screenplay nomination. Its win would be entirely consistent with Oscar history. Its only problem, statistically, may be that it’s only up for five Oscars, and movies with five nominations do not tend to win. Crash and The Departed did it in back to back years, but those feel like anomalies. And, even worse, if it wins Picture and Screenplay but nothing else, as many are predicting, it would win only two Oscars, making it the first movie since The Greatest Show on Earth in 1950 to win with only two.
Still, its statistical mountain to climb is nowhere near as tall as The Revenant’s. That’s why, if you don’t think The Revenant is going to win, fine, but do yourself a favor and pick the much more likely upset of The Big Short. The Big Short is a movie about numbers and, sweet irony, the numbers favor it overwhelmingly somehow.
Factor Three: They Like What They Like.
So, it’s over, The Big Short will win, right? Not so fast. Stats are powerful, but they’re not the whole picture. Birdman won last year without that supposedly magical Best Editing nod. Argo won without a Best Director nomination, etc.
They like what they like. They do not vote like robots looking at stats and checked boxes.
I do not speak to Academy members so I cannot speak to what they like, but I do know the type of movies the industry likes. The Revenant is a HOLLYWOOD, capital letters project. It is majestic, beautiful, and technically almost perfect. It is filmmaking at its best. It is moviemakers taking their love of film to amazing extremes, bearing it all on the screens.
You watch past Western-style winners from Unforgiven to Dances with Wolves to No Country for Old Men and you can’t help but feel that The Revenant obliterates all three put together when it comes to its mastery of technique, beauty, and craft. The director refused to have sets. He filmed in natural environments using 360 degree angles. Sure, the story is much flatter - revenge with a touch of illusion - but it’s honestly good enough. The Revenant is an epic of the style that was common to win in the 1990s. It is a grand old movie, a big production that cost over $130 million to make and that is making the money back twice over. Moviegoers are paying money to sit there for three hours and watch a mostly dialogue-less, extremely violent movie about revenge. It is the story of Hollywood success pure and simple.
A year after Birdman was crowned because it was about the anxieties of Hollywood, to come back with a big Hollywood success!!. My god, what a Hollywood kind of ending. You could not have scripted that in your wildest dreams.
Oh, to be sure, The Big Short will not go down without a fight. The Big Short is about the single most important and most devastating political and economic and cultural event of the 21st Century, after maybe 9/11, and how we are still paying for its consequences. It is highly relevant in this highly politicized world of a presidential election, a Supreme Court vacancy, and a corrupt Wall Street. It reminds us that greed is dangerous and that ignoring it is worse. It would most definitely plant the Academy’s flag firmly on the side of social and economic justice.
But, do they care about that as much as they do about the typical Hollywood movie? Do not get me wrong: I believe in the logic of the preferential ballot. Very much so: it means that movies that are divisive and difficult for some struggle. The Revenant has a lot of negative reviews by critics. If it loses, it will be because of the preferential ballot.
But, for the final time, critics are not the Academy. Critics wanted Boyhood, they wanted The Social Network, they mocked The Artist and Argo. None of this mattered to those 6,000 cooky old white men. The fact that critics do not like The Revenant does not mean it’s divisive within the industry. Chicago and Crash had horrible reviews too. And, I suspect, even people who do not pick The Revenant as their favorite movie ever, will not be able to help putting it relatively high on the ballot, again because of that admiration for its production values. The Big Short confuses some people (for better or for worse).
The Revenant is precisely that: the return of a man who just last year was anointed king of Hollywood for making a movie about the great conundrum that the industry faces today between watered down superheroes and the desire to be a serious artist.
That, in one concept, is why The Revenant will win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Will win: The Revenant
Could win: The Big Short
That’s all she wrote.