Oscars 2024: Frontrunners and Their Challengers

We are just moments from when the Critics Choice (January 14) and the Golden Globes (January 9) announce their winners. What counts as a “frontrunner” is really just the consensus-building all of us have done from site to site, pundit to pundit, Tweeter to Tweeter. While it might not seem like it should have any impact, considering the thousands of guild members who choose the winners that ultimately decide the Oscar race (and even then, not always), it somehow does matter by the time we get to the Critics Choice and the Golden Globes.

Last year, for instance, Cate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh both won at the Golden Globes. Cate Blanchett won at the Critics Choice and gave a strange speech wherein she said she didn’t think there should be any winners at all. That was subtext for “I want Michelle Yeoh to take this.” By the time the SAG Awards happened, we had reached full RAPTURE for Everything Everywhere All at Once — a massive hive mind of like-minded showbiz types all coming together behind one movie for the right reasons who said “yeah, that one.”

The wins for Everything Everywhere were unprecedented when it came to the top categories. When the RAPTURE comes, you have to just get out of the way, run for cover, and wait for it to pass. It seems as though the RAPTURE has been a thing since 2020 when Parasite defeated 1917, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Joker. That really said something about them, that moment, when they abandoned tradition of picking American films that were in the English language and embraced their global destiny.

It was, of course, payback for the Green Book apocalypse, where Roma was defeated by a movie the hive mind had viciously and unfairly attacked. Although those attacks backfired, the hive mind decided it was time for a revolution. If they could not unseat Donald Trump, they would upend the entire film and Oscar industry. This sentiment would simmer and boil all through the the remainder of the Trump years, exploding in an actual revolution by the summer of 2020. Anyone not talking about how the industry changed after that is either willfully blind or too cowardly. But take it from an old-timer: that’s how it went down.

After the Green Book apocalypse, this is what the Academy did about it:

At some point during the storm, the Golden Globes would implode and be rebuilt, now owned by Jay Penske (who also owns the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline, Gold Derby, etc.), with 300 international, diverse voting members.

The BAFTA also imploded after the Great Awokening and brought in special committees to select the “right” nominees to avoid bad publicity and signal their virtue to the newfound religion that has blanketed the Left, AKA modern culture in the Western world. That resulted in last year’s massive disconnect between what the BAFTA chose (what my friend Kris Tapley calls the “BAFTA revolt”) and what the Academy chose.

Last year showed that the BAFTA voters were just done. They were going to pick what they liked and damn the torpedoes. A few people flipped out on Twitter but it didn’t make much of a difference. The RAPTURE would consume Hollywood and Hollywood only. Here is how the BAFTA and Oscar changed since 2018:

It wasn’t that they always matched with Best Picture. They didn’t, especially once the Academy expanded the Best Picture race from five to ten (in 2009).

Since we’re mostly here to predict the Oscar race, we have to think about the frontrunners that will ultimately land at the Academy. Despite the fact that the Globes and the BAFTA are more “international,” and that the Academy has expanded to become more “international,” there does still seem to be a driving influence in the industry that doesn’t exist elsewhere. We call it “wokeness.” You can call it whatever you want. The question now is does it still drive Oscar voters? Is it on the wane?

One of the biggest problems for Hollywood and the Oscars is its marriage to the Democratic Party thanks the enormous influence of Barack Obama, who remains the party leader and as such, the cultural North Star. That is, perhaps, what explains much of what we’re going through now. There is real love for Obama from Hollywood such that the Obamas are now producing films that land in the Oscar race. He just put out his list of his favorite films of the year — and how do you compete with this?

Obama blends ideology with aspirational stories disguised as art to guide his flock in the right direction. But it’s still propaganda, which can never be art because it always must say the same thing, over and over again. It is a marriage that hasn’t yet gone through a necessary divorce.

The problem is that this relationship removes the element of tension or surprise. If we already know how it’s going to end, why would we be interested in watching it? The question is whether the Oscars will continue down this path or whether this will be the year things change.

I offer these up without considering the RAPTURE much, partly because I do not know which movie they will rally around, at least not yet.

Best Picture (Globes, Critics Choice, BAFTA, Oscar) — Oppenheimer

Challengers:
Barbie remains a challenger, being that it’s not just popular but the highest-grossing film of the year, directed by a woman.
Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic. There’s no question it could pull in a standing ovation at the SAG Awards and, from thence, to the Oscars.
American Fiction remains a stealthy threat

Best Director (Globes, Critics Choice, BAFTA, Oscar) — Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

Challengers:
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things (if it wins big at BAFTA)

Best Actor — Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers will win the Golden Globe and might win SAG – big emotional moment if he does, both because of the character he plays and because he’s been around so long, done such great work and has never been rewarded with a Best Actor nomination.

Challengers:
Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer and Bradley Cooper for Maestro are duking it out for the frontrunner spot, which is partly what allows Giamatti to run away with it. But either of them could pull ahead by winning the Globes and Critics Choice, thus solidifying their frontrunner status.
Colman Domingo for Rustin remains a threat.

Best Actress — Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon seems to have this locked up.

Challengers:
Emma Stone for Poor Things. In many ways it’s the performance of the year and her best. But she’s already won an Oscar so it’s hard to know whether or not she’ll defeat Gladstone.
Fantasia Barrino for The Color Purple. The film pulled in a surprising box office take, which has given it a second wind in the Oscar race.

Supporting Actor — Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer

Challengers:
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Supporting Actress — Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Challengers:
None

Original Screenplay — The Holdovers

Challengers:
Past Lives — if there is a desire not to give it to a white male…it could go this way.
Barbie, — which could finally hand Greta Gerwig her first (and well-deserved) Oscar, not to mention Noah Baumbach, though it would be kind of funny that they would win for this.

Adapted Screenplay — American Fiction

Challengers:
Oppenheimer — it is very rare for a Best Pic winner to also take both Best Director and Screenplay, but it could happen.
Killers of the Flower Moon — if the film wins either Picture or Director, it could pull in this award too.

Cinematography — Poor Things

Challengers:
Oppenheimer (if it wins this and Picture, it will be a rare sweep)
Barbie

Editing — Oppenheimer

Challengers:
Killers of the Flower Moon (Thelma!)
Barbie

Production Design — Barbie or Poor Things — a tossup!

Challengers:
These two films have it locked up. Flip a coin.

Costumes — Barbie or Poor Things — a tossup!

Challengers:
These two films have it locked up. Flip a coin.

International Feature — The Zone of Interest

Challengers:
The Taste of Things (if people watch it)

Animated Feature — Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Challengers:
The Boy and the Heron

Documentary — American Symphony

Challengers:
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
20 Days in Mariupol
Beyond Utopia

That’s where I think things are now. But none of this feels very secure to me. It could change after just one award ceremony. Ultimately, the movie I feel picking up steam right now heading into the heat of the season is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Full predictions coming Friday.