2023 Oscar Predictions: Can Top Gun Maverick Actually Win Best Picture?

In 1999, I started this website, which was called Oscarwatch.com. The Academy tolerated it until I started to make money and then they sued me for copyright infringement, which is why it’s now called AwardsDaily.com. That first year covering the Oscars (2000), there were five Best Picture contenders:

Gladiator
Traffic
Erin Brockovich
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Chocolat

That Chocolat got in there was a harbinger of things to come: the Harvey Weinstein movie was on the rise. It was considered a minor miracle that this movie almost no one saw got in. But it was the Harvey playbook that would ultimately swallow up the Oscar race, helping to take it from “Big” Movies like Gladiator to “small” movies like Chocolat.

I happen to really like Chocolat, but I barely remember it was nominated that year. Why? Because the other movies had more cultural impact back then. They moved the needle. They were part of our collective American experience. This was partly because they were driven by stars like Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, Russell Crowe. Gladiator was considered a throwback to an earlier age of sword-and-sandal movies, but it had captivated the public’s attention to turn it into a box office champ.

Steven Soderbergh had directed two within months of each other, Traffic and Erin Brockovich, which was its own kind of publicity story that helped drive the race. They had to circulate a letter to tell voters if they wanted to vote for him to pick Traffic. He ended up winning, even though Ang Lee had won the DGA for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was an exciting year. I didn’t know back then that 22 years later the Oscars and the movies they award would be on life support.

Today we have the reverse of 2000. We still have one movie that is unlike the others, but now it’s the blockbuster crashing the party of smaller films. Top Gun” Maverick is everything movies used to be. Some would say, “yeah, it’s just all white men all the time.” But really, that isn’t it. Top Gun: Maverick is a good movie in the ways movies used to be good. There is a reason it made $700 million domestic and movies that might be more likely to win Best Picture couldn’t. That reason is that it gives back more than it takes. It gives audiences what they come to the movies for, what they pay for.

Looking back on 2000, it’s easy to guess which films would have made it in Best Picture if the list had been expanded to 10 nominees:

Almost Famous
Billy Elliot
Wonder Boys
Quills
You Can Count on Me

Even with a slate of five, affection for the top films were so divided in 2000, Gladiator won Best Picture without Screenplay or Director. It was nominated for both, of course, but it topped the night because it was a massive hit, because back then the public mattered. Now, not only does the public not matter, but the industry bubble that delivers the Oscar race every year seems to actively disdain the public. They are of the “let them eat Marvel” mind.

Gladiator won just five Oscars, which seems like a lot compared to today. It won because the public mattered, celebrity mattered, Hollywood mattered, the Oscars mattered. It was all socially and culturally relevant and not just something people in the First Class section of an airplane might have heard about but didn’t watch.

It didn’t hurt any of those five movies that didn’t get in for Best Picture. Each is still remembered just as fondly as if they had been nominated. But if there had been ten, Gladiator might not have won on a preferential ballot. Probably Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would have won (it was my favorite, I predicted it). But there is something more organic about a plurality vote rather than a ranked choice vote.

I know I spent many years urging the Academy to expand to ten. I was among those calling for them to change after The Dark Knight failed to earn a nomination. I was one of the loudest voices shaking the tree about “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” I don’t regret any of it. But now the Oscars are on life support. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The question is, can Top Gun: Maverick win on a ranked-choice ballot? Maybe. If Hollywood wants to survive they would throw Oscars at the thing. Just take all the Oscars. All of them. Help save us from ourselves.

The second it becomes a frontrunner to win (Scott Feinberg at Hollywood Reporter followed Variety’s Clayton Davis’ earlier prediction) it will become a target by Film Twitter. They will hit it hard day in and day out. You just watch. They will shame voters, wreck the experience, make them want to do anything to escape their attacks. And that is partly why we are in the mess we’re in. RESIST TWITTER and the media swarm. They do not have your best interests at heart, film industry.

At the moment, Twitter believes the race is down to Everything, Everywhere All at Once and The Fabelmans, according to a poll I ran:

That would bring us to the very beginning of this race. It would be much easier to predict if we were talking about a plurality choice: five Best Picture contenders, the one with the most votes wins. Done and done. Top Gun: Maverick would have a much better chance to win. I just watched it for the fourth time the other night with my Gen-Z daughter and her boyfriend. They loved it. I was surprised that it made me tear up this time. It isn’t just an action movie. It has a heart with the father/son storyline, not to mention the love story.

But that isn’t how Oscar voters vote now. Something changed after the Green Book apocalypse (hat tip Clarence Moye). It seems that some voters no longer feel they can vote for what they like best. They appear to be trying to do something good with their vote. Or maybe that sort of goodness IS who they are now. Maybe if they aren’t “helping” a marginalized group, they can’t vote for something, they can’t LIKE it enough.

I always worried The Fabelmans couldn’t win because it was by and about a white man. Top Gun: Maverick has this same problem. The Academy hasn’t given Best Picture or Best Director to a film directed by a white male since Green Book:

2019 — Parasite (over 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker)
2020 — Nomadland
2021 — CODA / Jane Campion

That is in keeping with the “Great Awokening” of 2020 that caused BAFTA to completely upend its ballot process, bringing in committees to save them from the humiliation of being called “racists” and “misogynists.” And the Oscars, the SAGs — look at what happened to the Globes, for crying out loud. Canceled. Then trying to come back bit by bit. It has hit the industry hard. But even more than that, it has tarnished their “brand” in the eyes of the public. Now they see “wokeness” in everything everywhere all at once, and people are just not showing up anymore.

Except for this one time when they didn’t. To see Top Gun: Maverick, which is an old-fashioned Hollywood movie with an old-fashioned Hollywood movie star, telling an old-fashioned Hero’s Journey — it’s like manna from heaven in many ways. You watch that movie and you think: okay, now I get why movies were invented.

Me, I’m lucky. I get to see movies for free. I luxuriate in them at no cost. But for most people, they aren’t free. They cost ticket-buyers a lot of money and time out of their days, and they rarely get rewarded with great storytelling. They get franchise fast food — which is fine for what it is. But they need more than that.

The Oscars stopped measuring box-office as a factor long ago. Look at the film that won last year. It was barely seen by anyone. Of course, people would love it if they saw it. CODA was a good movie in the same way Top Gun is a good movie. It’s something you can sit anyone down in front of and they will get it if not love it.

But for the Oscars to matter, the public has to matter. If they’re tuned in to that overall mayday call, they will push Top Gun: Maverick to the top of their ballots. But I’m not sure that is what enough of them will do.

Three movies seem like they can win. Each of them has something about it that makes me question whether it can win or not. The winner is always the movie voters push to the top of their ballot even if it isn’t their number one vote. They do this because they want to do something GOOD with their vote. Or they feel like the intentions were good, or the vibe is good or some other reason. The only thing that can’t survive is if people actively HATE a movie.

That’s why Everything Everywhere All at Once is such a major threat. It will get both number one votes and it will get the “good intentions push” to the top of the ballot even if it isn’t a number one. Top Gun: Maverick might get that same kind of good intentions push for a different reason. Will it have enough number one votes is the question.

As for The Fabelmans, what would drive that movie to the top of ballots? It’ll get votes from those who have admired Steven Spielberg’s career for decades, those who love a movie about what it takes to become someone like Spielberg. But there has to be another reason besides that. Is there pure love for the film?

This would be a slightly easier call if they were voting on five Best Picture contenders. But they aren’t. Not this year, anyway.

The race is still wide open. We haven’t even pinned down the nominees yet. Once a film starts winning, we’ll have a slightly better idea of where it is all going.

Usually, in the era of the preferential ballot, the “big” movie wins the tech awards (Mad Max: Fury Road, Dune) and sometimes Best Director (Gravity), and the “small” movie wins Best Picture. It really should be the opposite, but so far it hasn’t been. If Top Gun: Maverick wins, that would change things.

This weeks predictions…

Best Picture:
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Top Gun: Maverick
The Fabelmans
The Banshees of Inisherin
TÁR
Women Talking
Elvis
Avatar: The Way of Water
All Quiet the Western Front
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

My next tier:
Glass Onion
The Woman King
RRR
She Said
Till
Babylon
Empire of Light

Best Director:
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
The Daniels, Everything Everywhere
Todd Field, TÁR
Joseph Kozinski, Top Gun Maverick
Edward Berger, All Quiet on the Western Front

Alt: Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin; Jim Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water; Sarah Polley, Women Talking; Rian Johnson, Glass Onion; Damien Chazelle, Babylon; Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Woman King; S. S. Rajamouli, RRR

Best Actor:
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Austin Butler, Elvis
Bill Nighy, Living
Tom Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick
Alt: Will Smith, Emancipation; Diego Calva, Babylon; Adam Driver, White Noise

Best Actress:
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Cate Blanchett, TÁR
Danielle Deadwyler, Till
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans
Olivia Colman, Empire of Light
Alt: Viola Davis, The Woman King; Margot Robbie, Babylon

Supporting Actress:
Jessie Buckley, Women Talking
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Angela Bassett, Wakanda Forever
Janelle Monáe, Glass Onion
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere
Alt: Claire Foy, Women Talking

Supporting Actor:
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Paul Dano, The Fabelmans
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Alt: Val Kilmer, Top Gun Maverick; Brad Pitt, Babylon; Micheal Ward, Empire of Light; Anthony Hopkins, Armageddon Time

Original Screenplay:
The Banshees of Inisherin
TÁR
The Fabelmans
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Elvis
Alt: Armageddon Time, Babylon, Vengeance, Empire of Light

Adapted Screenplay:
Women Talking
She Said
Top Gun: Maverick
The Whale
The Son

Editing:
Top Gun: Maverick
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Fabelmans
The Banshees of Inisherin
Alt: Elvis, Babylon

Cinematography:
Top Gun: Maverick
Avatar: The Way of Water
All Quiet on the Western Front
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Empire of Light
Alt: The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin, Bardo

Sound:
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once

Production Design:
Avatar: The Way of Water
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Babylon
Pinocchio
Alt: Bardo, The Fabelmans

Costume Design:
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Wakanda Forever
The Woman King
The Fabelmans
Alt: Living

International Feature:
Germany, All Quiet on the Western Front
Argentina, Argentina, 1985
South Korea, Decision to Leave
Belgium, Close
Mexico, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

Makeup and Hairstyling:
The Whale
All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis

Original Score:
The Fabelmans
Women Talking
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin

Visual Effects:
Avatar: The Way of Water
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever