Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer Takes the Lead as Outrage Rises for Gerwig

The best thing that came out of today’s Oscar nominations was 13 for Oppenheimer. If they had any collective intelligence whatsoever they would throw as many Oscars as they could at that movie. They would do whatever they could to rescue what’s left of a dying industry that has been handed over to a hive mind of heavy internet users who think it’s way cool that film festivals now decide the Oscars. Yes, let’s skip right over the people who buy tickets because they don’t count.

They love to kill what they can no longer build, which is why Sound of Freedom would never have gotten anywhere near the awards race, even though it was among the top ten at the box office without any help from the media empire on the Left. It topped out at $184 million, beating both Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Was a time when that might have counted for something. That time is long gone.

The same thing that has happened to the Democratic Party has happened to the Oscars and the film industry. It’s become what Laurie Anderson would call “a perfect little world that doesn’t really need you.”

Despite that, Greta Gerwig and her expansive imagination directed a film to a billion worldwide and $600 million in North America. She created — from her vision alone — a cultural phenomenon. Barbie, The Holdovers, and Oppenheimer, are the only films anyone will remember from this year because they — the Barbenheimer phenom — made the best case that there was still a pulse in the elitist cabal Hollywood has become.

Everyone saw Barbie. And yet, the Academy directors branch — whoever they are, in their snooty elitism — couldn’t be bothered to actually vote for Gerwig as one of their top 5, a woman who did what’s never been done. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Alexander Payne has also made one of the few watchable films of the year that is breaking hearts all over the country. But no, his movie wasn’t a big deal at Cannes and he doesn’t make film critics trip the light fantastic anymore so he didn’t make the cut either.

And if there were no room at the nominations table for Gerwig or Payne, then why could they not have honored Cord Jefferson who directed American Fiction. And while you’re imagining an industry that would recognize these great talents, your mind can’t help but go to where this race really should be: five Best Picture contenders, not ten.

Why are two “international features” in the Best Picture category anyway? A few months ago, I was upset over Justine Triet not getting chosen to represent France because (she says) she criticized the government. But now, they’ve not only shut out The Taste of Things, easily one of the best films of the year eligible as International Feature, but The Zone of Interest landed in both categories.

Okay, Oscar voters. We get the message. You’re kind of done with the American film industry now. You like the more international flavor of the awards. That suits many in the hive mind that covers the Oscars quite well because they are fine with movie theaters going the way of Blockbuster. They have a phone in their pocket. They have streaming. They have giant flat screen TVs. They don’t need to worry about the flyover states anymore, or even the box office. Who cares?

Here’s why you should care. The best stories are those that rooted in the everyday struggles of normal people. Films that are only about identity are — sorry to be the bearer of bad news — boring to everyone except people who attend the Sundance Film Festival. When I think back on the movies that were great, they are firmly rooted in reality, in the real world. That is where storytelling matters.

Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest are good movies. The only reason they’re in the Best Picture category at all is because of the expanded ballot. The only reason there is an expanded ballot to begin with is because The Dark Knight was shut out of Best Picture in 2008. Was that genre-bias problem solved? No. The Oscars only because more insular as they fashioned themselves after the First Class section of the airplane and stuck the people in Coach with franchise crap. Then they “woke-ified” the franchise crap and alienated their core audience too.

Starting in 2009, the moment they expanded the ballot and Barack Obama became the first non-white President of the United States, the Oscars and Hollywood changed forever. And it isn’t that it wasn’t important to shake the tree. It’s just that at some point, we all lost touch with reality. We became like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, locked away in our imaginary paradise where we gave out the right nominations and the right awards to the right people. But the entire purpose of the awards has been lost.

Things didn’t really get dire until Trump became president, then the Oscar ratings began a slow, steady decline to where they are now — down to half the number of viewers that watched a decade ago.

The Oscars have a branding problem for two reasons. The first, the awards themselves were used — and are still being used — as a propaganda delivery device for the Democratic Party. For example, many of the shorts this year were pushing the platforms of the Left in overt ways (the best ones didn’t). The agonizing speeches on Oscar Night, the outrage over Trump all became too much for his voters and admirers.

But it’s also that most people now believe the Oscars are under the “Inclusivity Mandate” that was implemented this year. Preparing for it, most films already wokified themselves but now that it’s official, it’s beginning to look a lot like the 1950s.

What do I mean by that? Think of it this way: the idea that there are racists, racists everywhere and that all of us have the evil seed inside us and the only way to rid us of it is to mandate we vote a certain way, like certain movies, read certain books, and accept the changes the industry made to cover their own ass so they wouldn’t be called racists.

It’s not that different from the Red Scare of the 1950s that is expressed so beautifully in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It’s a film about how it was one thing to be a lefty interested in the early ideas about Communism, to someone who was involved in what Communism became at the hands of Stalin (see 1984). But the fear of Communists was then like the fear of racists is now. We even have a government that is persecuting people based on “spectral evidence,” punishing them for what they supposedly believe as opposed to anything they actually did.

That climate of fear we’ve all been living through goes almost entirely unaddressed by people who cover film. They (we) just pretend like it wasn’t happening, that people weren’t losing their jobs, that every word uttered had to be carefully monitored so as not to commit a thought-crime. The paranoia matches the paranoia of the 1950s. Why? Because in post-war America, and now, there was a kind of utopian life Hollywood represented, as well as an alliance between government and the film industry.

The good news is that just beneath the utopia of the 1950s was a simmering counterculture revolution about to explode in the 1960s. If you’re looking at a map, YOU ARE HERE. Where that comes from and what it looks like is not something I can know, only something I can guess at. I do have hope that art and truth and free expression will find its way out.

“And so what?” say members of the hive mind. “It’s all good. What are you complaining about anyway?”

Because we need stories. We need great storytelling. We need movies. We need to be able to share in the experience. What brought people out to see Barbenheimer was just that: a chance for all of us to share in an communal experience together, the kind that most movies used to provide and no longer do.

One of the reasons our country is divided is that Hollywood abandoned most of the country to chase Utopia. Where has it gotten us? In fairly dire straights, I’d say. You won’t get this kind of commentary from most who cover awards. “Just keep your head down, make the best of it,” they say. Who cares about the people who get left behind — they’re just white racists and ignorant bigots and Trump supporters. To hell with them.

But you can’t solve a problem you can’t even name. If you’re relying on the most high-profile outlets to talk about the truth, you’re wasting your time. They won’t. They can’t. All they can do is what most of us are supposed to do, write from within the walls of the royal court and forget about the masses beyond the castle walls. At least until heads roll.

Now that Greta Gerwig missed in Best Director, there will likely be a guilt-vote to award her for Adapted Screenplay, along with Noah Baumbach. I can’t argue with that since I’m so mad about the Best Director line-up, but I can say that Oppenheimer better win everything else. I know it won’t because I know how the Oscar game is played, and I know who votes on these awards and why, but Oppenheimer deserves to win at least 8.

I’ve been writing about the Oscars for almost 25 years, the same age as my daughter. The nominations today aren’t terrible, they just made me feel a little sad. Sad to see that there is desire to escape the problem Hollywood can’t solve: how to make films for everybody? And as the Oscar world becomes smaller and more insular, they begin to matter less.

Domestic Box Office

Barbie — $636 million
Oppenheimer — $326 million
Killers of the Flower Moon — $67 million
Poor Things — $20 million
The Holdovers — $18 million
Past Lives — $10 million
American Fiction — $8 million
Anatomy of a Fall — $4 million
The Zone of Interest — $1 million
Maestro — N/A

Films not in the race:

Sound of Freedom — $184 million
Air — $52 million
The Boys in the Boat — $43 million

You can’t make Barbenheimer do all the work and then ignore Greta Gerwig. I’m not even talking about how she’s a woman that accomplished such a feat. She’s a director deserving of a nomination for this scene alone:

That she was left out of Best Director today is one of the most embarrassing things to ever happen in the Oscar race. But hopefully this doesn’t mean Barbie becomes Argo and starts beating Oppenheimer. Don’t dig yourselves in deeper. Barbie deserved a Best Director nomination, but Oppenheimer deserves to win Best Picture (I won’t complain if either wins, just saying).

If the Oscars had gone back to to five Best Picture nominees with the current Academy membership, expanded as it is now, it’s hard to even know if the frontrunners would still be frontrunners. Would Barbie even make it into Best Picture? American Fiction? Probably not. So perhaps this ship has sailed.