2023 Oscar Predictions – A Wide Open Race or Locked Down?

Best Picture is usually driven by one primary force. It’s either the performance of an actor that is so good it drags the whole Oscar race in that direction (like Colin Firth for the King’s Speech or Jean DuJardin for The Artist), or it’s the force of the director, which has traditionally driven a Best Picture winner (like Ben Affleck’s Argo or Martin Scorsese’s The Departed). But in recent years, especially since 2016, Best Picture hasn’t been driven by any of these things. It has been driven, instead, by the thing that has come to define Hollywood overall today: activism.

The reason for this is the ranked-choice, or preferential ballot. The last movie that won Best Picture with five nominees was Slumdog Millionaire, which was such a strong frontrunner, its unstoppability drove my old friend, the dearly departed David Carr, to lose interest entirely in covering the Oscars as the NY Times Carpetbagger (he was always too good for the beat, truth be told). To him, it was boring when one movie won everything.

We haven’t seen a winner like Slumdog Millionaire in a while. The King’s Speech was a movie that caught fire at the PGA and won everything, including the Oscar. It seemed to be a redirect from the season’s frontrunner, The Social Network, which had won an unprecedented amount of critics awards that year. The vote for The King’s Speech felt similar to the vote for CODA: an alternative to the film Oscar voters felt pressured into voting for.

This same dynamic has played out again and again, up to and including last year’s The Power of the Dog vs. CODA. When voters feel cornered or forced into voting for THE FRONTRUNNER (either by critics or by pundits or by the industry itself), they sometimes revolt and vote for the one feels more emotional to them. Parasite vs. 1917, Moonlight vs. La La Land, The Revenant vs. Spotlight, Birdman vs. Boyhood, etc.

Predicting a consensus is difficult if you aren’t mingling among the voters and listening to what they’re saying. This was how David Carr and others correctly predicted Crash to beat Brokeback Mountain. They could hear the chatter. Those days are long gone, however, because so much has changed just in the past few years that has fundamentally and completely transformed the Oscars.

Now, we’re more likely to see a push toward activism than a celebration of any one individual. CODA’s win last year wasn’t about the film’s director or its star. It was about the whole idea of the movie, what its win said about the voters and that particular moment in time. It made them feel good to vote for the first film with a predominently deaf cast. People like to feel good. They almost always opt for that over feeling bad.

Almost every win of late has been some kind of activist cause voters were rallying behind: first film by a woman of color, first international feature, first film about a Black gay man, etc. Politics has merged with Hollywood in unprecedented ways of late. This was something no one could predict, but it is indeed the reality.

The Best Picture race this year appears to be potentially down to four movies for the win:

Everything, Everywhere All At Once
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Fablemans
Top Gun: Maverick

I see Everything Everywhere as THE FRONTRUNNER and the other three as upset possibilities, depending on what the PGA/DGA do. Three of them also have a SAG ensemble nomination. We have to pay attention to which way the wind is blowing.

So far, we’ve seen:

Toronto People’s Choice Award/Golden Globe Best Picture and Director — The Fabelmans
Golden Globe Best Picture and Screenplay — The Banshees of Inisherin
Critics Choice Best Picture — Everything Everywhere All at Once

So you might ask why does Top Gun: Maverick still have a chance? Because it just does. Even without an acting or directing nomination, it is extremely popular with audiences to a ridiculous degree. Even if it gives Film Twitter and some of the commenters here diaper rash, it is still probably the most seen and most loved film of the year for a wide swath of people. The industry used to regularly respond to that level of success before they committed fully to snobbery. They did used to have one foot in the world of film as a business.

THE FRONTRUNNER

Films that reflect activism/making history: Everything Everywhere All at Once. This movie probably is just going to win everything and that’s that. We can overthink it, try to make the race more interesting or dynamic or unpredictable, but most people out there are resigned to the prospect that this movie can’t lose.

It made money — $70 million. It can’t be argued it wasn’t seen or talked about. But that isn’t what drives the popularity of this film, at least online. People on the Left in general need to reflect who they are by what they share. This is also true of every entertainment platform. The more representative they are, the more likely their stories will be shared because most people also want to be seen as representative. What do you think is more likely to go viral — a story about Stephanie Hsu or a story about Kerry Condon?

The only caveat for this movie is THE MOVIE ITSELF. Can voters get through that first part? It’s rough going. It took me four tries. I will admit that once you get over the hump of chaos, it becomes quite moving towards the end. However, it benefits from the preferential ballot because anyone who doesn’t like it is likely to want it to succeed anyway and push it to the top of their ballots, as they did with Nomadland, Parasite, etc.

The only way a preferential ballot can hurt a movie is if it’s a love it/hate it kind of movie. This is likely what hurt La La Land in 2016. By the end, with the accusations that it was racist (yes, that happened) and the fact that it won a record number of Golden Globes meant people began to resent it and ranked it further down on their ballot. The preferential ballot rewards GOODWILL.

Potential Upsets

One reason why The Fabelmans remains a threat to win is general GOODWILL for Steven Spielberg and his personal story. If Spielberg is going to win Best Director, that means voters will have GOODWILL toward the movie overall and will push it to the tops of their ballots. They just can’t HATE it. Where it needs to overcome THE FRONTRUNNER is with number one votes. If it comes close to Everything, Everywhere in the first round, it MIGHT make up for the difference in second and third place votes.

Whenever I think about what movie will win Best Picture, I generally think about why it would win. What’s the Oscar Story? What would motivate voters to say yes, this one. Sometimes I’m wrong about that. I didn’t know what would win last year. Like much of the country, I think the Academy is going through growing pains. Who are they? What will they be? That makes it harder to define who they are now. With CODA they followed their heart. What would be the motivation to vote FOR The Fablemans? That Judd Hirsch and Michelle Williams both got in is a good sign.

The Banshees of Inisherin — what would propel this movie toward a win? I personally think it’s simply the quality of the story itself. It is so richly told with not a weak link anywhere. But is that enough? Is there any other reason it might win? What would be the selling point? If Colin Farrell took the lead in the Best Actor race that could propel the film to a win. We haven’t seen that in a long while, not since 2011. But it’s not impossible. The biggest problem it has is that it doesn’t represent any activist cause. That’s also what’s great about it. But voting for it isn’t necessarily the kind of thing a famous celebrity would want to broadcast on social media.

Top Gun: Maverick — the only way this movie would win is if people decided that they want the film industry actually to survive. If they did they would send a strong message to the public that they are still connected to the real world and understand that their job isn’t necessarily to make movies for the first class section of an airplane, like the customers and the chef in The Menu. Their job is to reach everyone, hopefully. When they do, they score big. Is it sophisticated? No. Is it the feelgood movie of the year? Somehow, yes it is.

Whatever wins, history tells us it will need Best Screenplay or Best Director or both. Therein lies the problem for me. If I think Banshees is winning Original Screenplay and Spielberg is winning Director, then Everything Everywhere can’t possibly win Best Picture. I have to go with what matches either Director or Screenplay. It’s a conundrum.

Best Picture
Everything Everywhere All at Once — Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert and Jonathan Wang, Producers
The Banshees of Inisherin — Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin and Martin McDonagh, Producers
The Fabelman — Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, Producers
Top Gun: Maverick — Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison and Jerry Bruckheimer, Producers
All Quiet on the Western Front — Malte Grunert, Producer
Tár — Todd Field, Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert, Producers
Elvis — Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick and Schuyler Weiss, Producers
Avatar: The Way of Water — James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
Triangle of Sadness — Erik Hemmendorff and Philippe Bober, Producers
Women Talking — Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Frances McDormand, Producers

Best Director
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Todd Field, Tár
Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness

Best Actor
Austin Butler, Elvis
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, Tár
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Ana de Armas, Blonde
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans

Supporting Actor
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin

Supporting Actress
Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Hong Chau, The Whale
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Adapted Screenplay
Women Talking
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Living

Original Screenplay
The Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Triangle of Sadness

Best Editing
Top Gun: Maverick
Tár
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front, James Friend
Elvis, Mandy Walker
Tár, Florian Hoffmeister
Empire of Light, Roger Deakins
Bardo, Darius Khondji

Best Costumes
Babylon, Mary Zophres
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ruth Carter
Elvis, Catherine Martin
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Shirley Kurata
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Jenny Beavan

Best Production Design
Avatar: The Way of Water
Elvis
All Quiet on the Western Front
Babylon
The Fabelmans

Sound
Top Gun: Maverick
All Quiet on the Western Front
Elvis
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman

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

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

Best Original Score
John Williams, The Fabelmans
Justin Hurwitz, Babylon
Volker Bertelmann, All Quiet on the Western Front
Carter Burwell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Song
“Naatu Naatu” from RRR
“Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick
“Applause” from Tell It like a Woman
“Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
“This Is a Life” from Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best International Feature
All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany
Argentina, 1985, Argentina
Close, Belgium
EO, Poland
The Quiet Girl, Ireland

Best Documentary
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
All That Breathes
Fire of Love
A House Made of Splinters
Navalny

Animated Feature
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red

Animated Short
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
The Flying Sailor
My Year of Dicks
Ice Merchants

Live Action Short
An Irish Goodbye
The Red Suitcase
Ivalu
Le Pupille
Night Ride

Documentary Short
The Elephant Whisperers
How Do You Measure a Year?
Haulout
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Stranger at the Gate