Oscar Predictions 2023: Best Picture – How to Make Movies for Everybody

No film can win Best Picture if it’s difficult to understand. This is one of the hardest thing for hardcore cinephiles to remember when it comes to predicting Best Picture. If you love challenging movies that don’t give you a plot everyone can effortlessly understand, you’ll always have a hard time with what the voters choose.

Probably the most complex multi-layered movie in recent times to win would be Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. But ultimately it isn’t hard to understand. It’s surreal. It’s Korean so it has subtitles. But if you do sit down to watch it and you see how the story plays out, you will be thrilled beyond belief at how good it is, how funny it is, and how brilliant it is.

Hard to understand would be movies that aren’t easy to get the first time through. They require a second watch or you have to do some of the work to figure out the meaning. Most prestige filmmakers like making these movies and are bored making movies just anyone can understand. My favorite movies are almost always complex and hard-to-grasp films that take me five viewings to figure out. Those kinds of movies rarely win Best Picture.

Hollywood, right now, has burned more than a few bridges among the general public. Most people “out there” in the country think Hollywood movies have “gone woke” or have become agonizingly political.

At some point over the past ten years, Hollywood has aligned itself more and more with the Democratic Party. That was a great thing once. It felt really good way back when Obama was in the White House. It all felt so new, so fresh, so wide open. It felt like a new America. I wrote about it here just before the 2016 election. What we didn’t realize — but were soon to learn — was that we had essentially cut ourselves off from much of middle America reality and built our utopian diorama. Many people who read this site and work in the industry, they like it that way. We could forever tinker with it. We could perfect it. We could improve it. We could work on addressing all the problems to help create our ideal new Shangri-La.

2016 was a turning point when an invader threatened the utopia. That’s how most people inside the utopia saw it. Trump and his supporters were the baddies coming to kick down everything we’d worked decades to build. Without going too much into that part of it, I’ll say that the result of all of it, the polarization, the division, the “two Americas,” the alignment of Hollywood and the Democratic Party was simply this: without appealing to the broad diversity of cultures in this country, we risk destroying our sense of ourselves, our harmony, our unity. Everyone in this country needs storytelling. And art. And comedy. We all need it.

So we’re just going to have to get over our differences and remember we are all tied to each other as human beings worldwide and as Americans here in this country.

Thankfully, many of the films I’ve seen this year will hold appeal for everybody. Not everyone has to make movies for everybody. But Oscar voters should be mindful of the ones that reach a majority and have a personal impact that they’ll remember for the next 20 or 30 years.

So what are movies for everybody? They are not movies that leave no marginalized people behind. They aren’t movies that are “fair.” They aren’t perfect movies. They aren’t movies that “send the right message.” They aren’t movies that support a specific issue or try to change your mind about anything. They aren’t activist movies. What they do is simply try to tell a good story. They tell a story that is authentic to the story itself.

We still have movies left to see, like Avatar: The Way of Water, Emancipation, and Babylon. But so far, we’ve seen several significant movies that are for everybody.

Top Gun: Maverick — This movie works. A second watch reminded me of why there must be movies for everybody. It isn’t just that it made $700+ million. It isn’t just that it anchored us to our collective past when the first Top Gun was released back in 1986. And it isn’t just that Top Gun is riding the crest of the pendulum shift from left-leaning America to right-leaning America. It is all of those things. But what makes Top Gun one of the best films of the year and one of the best experiences watching a movie is that it is authentic to itself. It doesn’t try to be something more than what it is.

There are so many ways they could have wrecked Top Gun: Maverick. They could have cast a woman in the lead (no, people, just no) They could have spiraled off in the middle and had Maverick fly to a war-torn country and help migrants flee their homeland to come to America. They could have had Maverick fight a Trump-like figure leading a “white supremacist army” through the Badlands. That might have made them feel like they were doing good, noble work, but it would have been a slog. Top Gun is effortlessly great. It is a purely pleasurable experience. It makes you feel good while watching it. A movie like this could never win Best Picture, but you could do worse than naming it one of the best films of the year. It’s certainly among the top five I’ve seen thus far.

The Fabelmans — Steven Spielberg almost always makes movies for everybody. That’s just who he is. Maybe that comes from being old-school and working in Hollywood for some 40 years. Or maybe it comes from having been an outsider. He naturally defaults to telling universal stories and this one is no exception. Working with screenwriter Tony Kushner, together they tell Spielberg’s personal story authentically. They don’t spiral off to tell a broader “lesson” for viewers (mercifully) — they tell his story, and it provides the answer to many questions about how and why he became the legend he is.

The Fabelmans is a movie anyone can watch and understand because it sticks to the truth about his own life, or at least the truth according to Spielberg. It also has probably one of the best endings ever filmed. It’s funny, sweet, sad, and ultimately (I think) a tribute to his parents in different ways. They weren’t perfect. His mother had the artistic vision to inspire him. His father had discipline and a strong work ethic. The combination created one of the greatest directors of all time.

The Banshees of Inisherin — We don’t see many movies that exist in the realm of pure art anymore. I mean, there isn’t a single second in this movie that is there to pander to audiences, or to tick off any boxes, or to defend Martin McDonagh’s place in the utopia. No — instead he’s written a brilliant screenplay, cast an ensemble of brilliant, perfectly cast actors, and put together a movie that takes us away from our modern world and to an island in Ireland back in the 1920s. Like Top Gun and The Fabelmans, Banshees is reminiscent of the kinds of movies Hollywood used to make before they toppled over the handlebars by striving to right the wrongs of society.

Banshees requires a leap of sorts. It isn’t as easy to understand as Top Gun or The Fabelmans because, in a sense, it is telling a complex story wrapped inside a relatively simple one. But in its way, it is very much about our world today. This movie shows how wars develop and how we can easily fall into hatred of our closest neighbors. It shows how hard it is to get along when we must share our space with someone else or others with whom we might not get along that well. What does it take to make someone hate another? What does it take to bring an otherwise decent person to the point of destroying other people’s lives or maybe even killing them? Finally, it is a lovely lament about loneliness. Brendan Gleeson delivers the best line in the film is during confession, and it’s something about how mankind became hopeless once they decided to hurt animals without caring. I’m paraphrasing it, but that is the gist. Banshees might be slightly more complex, but it is still a film for everybody.

Elvis — Elvis is a film about Elvis Presley, but it’s also about history. Even though the movie centers on the relationship between Tom Parker and Elvis, it is enough about Elvis himself, the rise and fall of an icon, that you can sit anyone down in front of it and they will appreciate this tribute to The King. It might be Baz Luhrmann’s most accessible film, anchored by Austin Butler’s bravura performance.

Till — The story of Emmitt Till is also about history. It isn’t just about the tragedy of Emmitt Till — it’s about how that tragedy inspired so much of the history that followed, both in terms of the Civil Rights legend his mother became and how the story was retold in a song by Bob Dylan, and in many works of art. Anyone can watch this kind of film, even if many might feel like avoiding such a painful story.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — I haven’t yet seen this movie, but any Marvel movie is going to be a movie explicitly designed to entertain everybody, even for those who aren’t all that into superhero movies. They are always made for the widest tent possible, excluding only people who adamantly insist that they hate superhero movies. So far, the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s set to make a huge boatload of cash. We’ll see how far it can go.

Avatar: The Way of Water — Of course, this is another movie no one has yet seen, but Jim Cameron, like Steven Spielberg, makes movies for everybody. While there will no doubt be an eco-message built in (and some might feel like they have to avoid it for that reason), the pure spectacle of it will attract more people than it will alienate. Also, his writing is always universal. He’s never made a movie that’s hard to understand.

Movies made for everybody aren’t necessarily what film critics and industry voters call the “best” films of the year. They do tend to win Best Picture, however. To determine what gets nominated is less about figuring out the movies made for everybody and more about the movies people passionately love.

Passion often drives the nomination process where ten Best Picture nominees are concerned. But when it comes to winning, there has to be general agreement that the movie is top-quality. The mechanism of the preferential ballot mean that passion doesn’t always drive a winner. It also means that divisive or “difficult” movies have a hard time winning. With five Best Picture nominees, passion can override divisiveness.

The films that, I’d say, are less general and more specific would be this year’s “#MeToo trifecta”:

Women Talking
She Said
TÁR

The main reason is that these three films, as good as they are, will have a specific audience to vote for them, and for different reasons. She Said is based on recent history, but it’s also presently unfolding in the courts where Harvey Weinstein is on trial. Women Talking is loosely based on a true story, as is TÁR, but they are spun in such a way that they edge closer to a fictionalized account of what might have happened.

TÁR presents a more critical look at the #MeToo/cancel culture movement and asks us to decide whether we think the art can be appreciated separate from the artist. Women Talking is like She Said. It is told from the point of view of the victims of sexual assault. Again, some people will be more up for seeing these movies than others.

Last but not least, Everything Everywhere All at Once is most definitely not a movie for everybody, but it is a standout because — of all of the movies mentioned here, with the possible exception of Top Gun and Elvis — it is immensely popular with the Zoomers. It is a wild ride for sure, inventive and innovative.

There are lots of movies that might find their way into the Best Picture race on passion alone. Those would include Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, a love letter to movies and among the few about love and, frankly, sex. James Gray’s Armageddon Time might fit into the wheelhouse of many Oscar voters who are of the same age, and perhaps lived though something similar.

There is also Triangle of Sadness, and The Son, not to mention The Whale, which could all find their way into the Best Picture race.

With that said, I offer up a prediction for the ten films I think right now have the best shot:

The Fabelmans (directing + writing + acting + crafts)
The Banshees of Inisherin (directing + writing + acting + crafts)
TÁR (directing + writing + acting + crafts)
Women Talking (directing + writing + acting + crafts)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (maybe directing + writing + acting + crafts)
Babylon (maybe directing + writing + acting + crafts)
Avatar: The Way of Water (maybe directing + crafts)
Till (writing + acting + crafts)
Top Gun: Maverick (maybe acting + crafts)

And then probably one of these three:

She Said (writing + acting)
Elvis (maybe writing + acting + crafts)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (maybe writing + acting + crafts)

Either way, it’s a ridiculously tight race right now. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.

In the end, the Oscars CAN save themselves if they make a show for everyone, and honor movies enjoyed by everyone, and perhaps encourage Hollywood to once again make more movies for everyone.