Oscars 2025: The Curious Case of the Missing Oscar Race

For the first time in 25 years of covering the Oscars it really does look like the bottom has fallen out and the sky is falling at the same time. I think that’s due to several factors. But let’s look at the biggest one then work our way down. If you believe Neil Howe’s theory that we are in a Fourth Turning — I do — then you know that everything that came before has to die for new stuff to grow in its place. A Fourth Turning happens every 80 years. The last one came just as the Oscars started, more or less. The Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War all fall under the umbrella of the before, the during, and the after.

By the end of the war, America was settling into its own kind of utopian vision. Everything that led up to the war ended and soldiers came home, they birthed the Baby Boom and tried to make things seem normal. Ah, the 1950s. So normal. So square. So boring. So stifling. After that, the counterculture revolution exploded forth. The Fourth Turning explains these cycles like the seasons. Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. The Winter part? That’s where we are now.

Look at the 1944 Oscars:

How different from today’s Oscars.

It should be noted that as many people have watched I’m Just Ken as watched the Oscars on Oscar night.

The Fourth Turning means things change and they change dramatically. Last time, the Academy brought the number of Best Picture nominees to five where they remained until we began heading into the next Fourth Turning. Weird, right?

This dude is a wee bit annoying but his video sums it up mostly:

He made that video three years ago. Since then, Neil Howe has released a new book that puts the end of the Fourth Turning around 2030. And that’s not even that far off.  Neil Howe and William Strauss described it this way back in 1997:

“With or without war, American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.

Good times!

Yes, this is political but it’s cultural too. You can feel it. I can feel it. There is a change underway, and one that old-timers like me will feel sad about. My daughter’s generation, however, won’t notice the difference. That’s how we evolve. Old generations die off, new generations rise. My daughter won’t miss movie theaters. She just won’t. She doesn’t care. She was raised in a world of screens. Smartphones, computers, iPads, etc. Movie theaters aren’t really a thing the way they were for my generation.

That doesn’t mean they’re going all the way away. It just might mean that the way we define “Best Picture of the Year” will have to change to accommodate the future. That shouldn’t mean –I don’t think — disappearing into a tiny isolated utopian diorama, a niche thing that has no relevance to the outside world. Quite the opposite. The Oscars themselves will need to evolve into the new world.

What’s changing? Everything. We’re getting the majority of our entertainment on TikTok and YouTube. That’s just the fact of the matter. Both are ten times more entertaining than anything Hollywood puts out. Moreover, Hollywood has given itself over to a rigid dogmatic social code that is killing its business and making its films unwatchable except for the segment of the population that sees IDENTITY as the story. Maybe for some, identity as the story is enough. But for most, it is not.

Take the documentary Will & Harper. On the one hand, it’s impossible to watch without crying. I came away from the film-loving both of the characters. On the other hand, it’s a pure PSA that hopes to “convert” people who don’t think one man’s journey to becoming a woman is enough for a whole story. What was missing from Will & Harper? The truth. This documentary is one slice of pie but a whole pie is missing. It wasn’t the truth because all of the cast members at SNL act like they’re celebrating an 11 year-olds birthday. Say what you will about Harper but she is a grown adult person.

Her children are having problems with this change, but they, too, are pressured into keeping all of that silent. Every second of this movie is a forced smile. Everyone knows that there is a gun to their head and that they can’t say what is true because their lives will be ruined.

So where do we go instead for the truth? Anywhere but Hollywood.

What would be exciting to me right now? Awards for creative TikTok videos and podcasts that tell great stories. Film awards are fine and all, but they feel too limited now with so much changing all around us. I see for the Oscars either the end—100 years is maybe enough—or the beginning of something entirely new, something that can survive the next 100 years. What would that look like?

This year’s Oscar race will start with the Gotham nominations, which will be announced at the end of this month, October 29th. That’s when we’ll begin ranking and assessing films and performances. Right now, Anora has all the heat, but I’d keep my eye on Sing Sing as a potential underdog CODA-like spoiler.

The election will be over, finally, on November 5th and that is going to change the vibe in one direction or another. At the moment, I am unclear as to how this will go. On the one hand, Harris has the better ground game and is leading in the polls. On the other hand, the Trump vote is always undercounted. If he’s tied with Harris, that means he has a good chance of winning the Electoral College and the popular vote. Trump winning is very much a “Fourth Turning” kind of moment. Harris winning, I think, means we go to war with Russia and perhaps Iran and that will be our Fourth Turning instead. One way or the other, the storm will come.

I see evidence of the Fourth Turning everywhere I look. This website, for instance, my role in it, my role online after spending 30 years staring at a computer screen is changing dramatically. I would never have predicted that friends I knew and people I trusted would become so involved in politics that they would be willing to end friendships. That shocks the hell out of me and wakes me up to the real danger of this moment, where things might go on down the line. If people are capable of that, they’re capable of anything.

I can only hope the end is near, that the sun will once again rise, and that people will start acting like human beings, like Americans, again.