Predictions Friday: When Film Twitter Implodes

It is a difficult time for Film Twitter where the Oscars are concerned. While ordinarily Twitter wouldn’t really matter, the 2022 season is yet another where there is no actual Oscar race. There is too much noise and not enough signal. Because the Academy got pressure from ABC to cut eight categories from the live show, some on Twitter are becoming increasingly upset. But the Academy is caught between worlds, as is the film industry overall. That is, how to please the small but vocal community of fans and critics, and how to still be relevant more broadly. That means it is an event for everyone, not just a select few.

Still, this all doesn’t have much to do with what is going to win Best Picture, which is really what everyone is fretting about. Unfortunately, for that we have to once again separate the noise of Twitter (CODA CODA CODA) from the reality of awards voters. There is just no way to know until groups that aren’t actors choose. That means waiting for the PGA.

But meanwhile, I thought I would give a quick overview of how we arrived where we are right now, which is the Oscars stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Chapter One: An entire generation was born into brands. Their toys, their programming, their Halloween costumes, their candy, their food, their lunch boxes, and yes, their movies all were connected to brands. I know, I raised one of them. I remember noticing that they were the first generation that would grow up not knowing a country that wasn’t ruled by a handful of brands. True of fast food up and down the Interstates, true of mini-malls in every town in this country, and true of the movie events that children, then teenagers, and now adults came to know as their movies. That is what many of them think of when they think about movies.

Chapter Two: Hollywood caught on because they noticed a phenomenon that began with Star Wars and peaked with Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings series. Studios saw they could make more money than they could ever dream of now that they had a whole generation identifying with brands, becoming loyal to those brands, and showing up whenever those brands put out a movie. They didn’t even have to be good. How good they were took a backseat to the communal experience. They were sharing their love of a brand every time a new movie (or game or toy or book or hamburger) came out.

The result? Unimaginable profit.

From Box Office Mojo:

Internationally:

Massive amounts of money made on brands mean they cracked the code. Humans are more likely to choose something (and even like it more) when they have fewer choices, not more. Too few choices and people feel cheated. Too many, and they feel confused and overwhelmed.

Do they care about making the kinds of movies Oscar voters “like”? Well, no. It’s a matter of maybe 100 or 200 mil at the most (Jim Cameron being the exception across the board for all of this) vs. what, a billion?

Chapter Three: The heart wants what it wants. The Oscar demographic doesn’t change much. They’re lifers, for the most part, but even after the infusions of intersectional and international voters to mix things up a bit in the past couple of years, they’re mostly the same demo and they haven’t changed. They are mostly male (70%), mostly white (80%), liberal, wealthy, privileged, well-intentioned. They’re isolated because they can be isolated. They eat the custom meal on the airplane because they can afford the custom meal in the first class section of the airplane. They don’t have to sit in coach and eat whatever they serve. They get hot towels, a comfortable bed, a gourmet meal. Now, these folks aren’t just wanting luxury. They also need a sense of purpose. So in addition to having a special experience in first class, they also will keep asking for a vegan meal, non-leather seats, steel straws — whatever it is that makes them feel like they are doing their part to make the world a better place.

Chapter Four: The rise of the blogs and critics groups and the date change which pushed the Oscars up by a month basically separated them even further from the public. It was great if a movie made money, but when The Hurt Locker made just $15 million and won Best Picture that was the moment it no longer mattered how much a movie made. That is why CODA’s $1 million box office take isn’t even a consideration, nor is Spider-Man’s $780 million. If both films were nominated alongside each other, that would be the Oscar race working. But that isn’t how it went because voters do not care about box office, and why should they care? This is like asking people to fret over the salad McDonald’s offers its customers. Let’s spend all of our time fretting over the salad when no one really gives a damn. In fact, people who go to McDonald’s to eat their salads exist in their own plane of reality. Everyone else is eating their fries, their burgers, and enjoying that experience. But the people who buy the salads are the Oscar voters (even if they don’t really, but if they have to talk about quality they’re going to have to talk about what is healthy vs. junk food).

In the end, though, everyone used to love Big Hollywood Movies, and everyone still does. They might not all like “Oscar movies,” but if the Oscars stay big they can continue to set a high bar for mainstream films as well. The two things should go hand in hand: popular with audiences, popular with Oscar voters. The further apart those become, the more unhealthy this whole industry will be. It isn’t a “Let them eat Marvel” situation, or at least it shouldn’t be.

Chapter Five: Because of political partisanship and division, suddenly the Oscars get even smaller and so does the industry. Audiences start to tune out. The Academy tries various fixes but Film Twitter throws one temper tantrum after another, “Why don’t you care about US, Academy? Why do you hate us when we LOVE YOU!” They’ve managed to nix things like the Popular Film category, made things too hostile for hosts to even want to appear, and now they are angry about the Fan Favorite, for starters. They’re especially really mad about eight crafts categories being taken off the live show — and that’s actually a legitimate thing to be upset about. So now it’s the Boy Who Cried Wolf. They have painted themselves into a corner trying to please Twitter and this is the result. What I don’t get — what I’ll never get — is why they didn’t think about that earlier? Didn’t they know it was going to get to this point?

That’s the short story of the Oscar race up to this point. But if that weren’t dramatic enough, now Film Twitter has decided that the Oscar race, as it’s been shaped thus far, has become boring. They’ve decided the way to shake that up is for a surprise winner, CODA, to suddenly take the lead and inject SOME excitement into the race. This is definitely something that can happen and has in the past, Parasite being a recent example.

What’s funny is that, to them, CODA seems more like the “populist” choice, meaning you can sit anyone down in front of it and they’ll get it if not love it. Truly, that has often defined the Best Picture winners of the past. And it’s true about CODA, no doubt. It also has the benefit of being a “first.” This is what has been driving not just the Oscars, not just the film industry overall, but the Left overall. Firsts like first female to win Best Director, the first Best Picture winner by a black director (although no black director has won to date), first foreign language film to win Best Pic. There is a high attached to a first. It makes the entire machine happy. So now there is first film with a predominantly deaf cast. That gives them a reason to be engaged in this entire circus, right? It doesn’t so much mean Best Picture of the Year — it means something else, something about defining who they are and how they want to be seen.

The Power of the Dog and Belfast are, in typical Oscar-season fashion, being “punished” for being early frontrunners. When the awards chatter gets bored, they look for some kind of uplift. What’s funny is that The Power of the Dog wasn’t even film critics enough for film critics. They largely went for Drive My Car, which also ended up in the race. Belfast would be a bit like contraband for these voters. They’re not supposed to like the “white guy movie” even if they do like it. CODA is easy to love and comes with the least complications. That is, of course, until it wins — and with just three nominations I’m not sure that one will go down well when people look back on it from the future.

Complicating matters will be that CODA will probably win the WGA since The Power of the Dog/The Lost Daughter are ineligible, which will send Twitter into even more of a frenzy. It will be difficult to pull out of that frenzy to see clearly. Over at Gold Derby and AwardsWatch it’s all quiet on the Western front, where most are sticking with The Power of the Dog, a few have Belfast still, and some have West Side Story even.

As it is, my friends, it’s a mess. And if it ain’t, it’ll do until the mess gets here.

We must wait for:

The ACE Eddies — a showdown between The Power of the Dog, Belfast, and Dune, which should be somewhat revealing.

The WGA — if anything other than CODA wins, that will mean something.

The PGA — probably will give us SOME intel.

The DGA — is considered locked but we’ll see.

Here are the predictions for this week, such as they are.

Best Picture
The Power of the Dog (Globe Picture/Director winner)
Belfast (Toronto audience winner, Globe Screenplay winner)
CODA (SAG ensemble winner)
West Side Story
King Richard
Don’t Look Up
Licorice Pizza
Dune
Nightmare Alley
Drive My Car

Best Director
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Adapted Screenplay
The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Scripter)
The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion
CODA, Siân Heder
Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
Dune, Jon Spaihts, and Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth

Original Screenplay
Belfast, Kenneth Branagh (Globe winner)
Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson
The Worst Person, the World, Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
King Richard, Zach Baylin
Don’t Look Up , Adam McKay, David Sirota

Best Actor
Will Smith, King Richard (Globe winner)
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
Andrew Garfield, tick, tick…BOOM!
Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Actress
Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye (SAG winner)
Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos (Globe winner)
Kristen Stewart, Spencer (has momentum)
Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers

Best Supporting Actor
Troy Kotsur, CODA (SAG winner)
Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog (Globe winner)
Ciarán Hinds, Belfast
Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog
J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos

Best Supporting Actress
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story (SAG/Globe winner)
Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
Judi Dench, Belfast
Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog

Best Animated Feature
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon

Best Cinematography
Dune, Greig Fraser
The Power of the Dog, Ari Wegner
Nightmare Alley, Dan Laustsen
The Tragedy of Macbeth, Bruno Delbonnel
West Side Story, Janusz Kaminski

Best Costume Design
Cruella, Jenny Beavan
Dune, Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan
Nightmare Alley, Luis Sequeira
West Side Story, Paul Tazewell
Cyrano, Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran

Best Documentary Feature
Summer of Soul
Flee
Ascension
Attica
Writing with Fire

Documentary Short
Audible
The Queen of Basketball
Three Songs for Benazir
When We Were Bullies
Lead Me Home

Best Editing
Dune, Joe Walker
The Power of the Dog, Peter Sciberras
King Richard, Pamela Martin
Don’t Look Up, Hank Corwin
tick, tick…BOOM! Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum

International Feature
Drive My Car, Japan
Flee, Denmark
The Hand of God, Italy
Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Bhutan
The Worst Person in the World, Norway

Makeup and Hairstyling
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Coming 2 America
Cruella
Dune

Original Score
Dune, Hans Zimmer
Encanto, Germaine Franco
Don’t Look Up, Nicholas Britell
Parallel Mothers, Alberto Iglesias
The Power of the Dog, Jonny Greenwood

Original Song
“Down To Joy” from Belfast, Van Morrison
“No Time To Die” from No Time to Die, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell
“Be Alive” from King Richard, DIXSON and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
“Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto, Lin-Manuel Miranda
“Somehow You Do” from Four Good Days, Diane Warren

Best Production Design
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Best Animated Short Film
Robin Robin
The Windshield Wiper
Affairs of the Art
Bestia
Boxballet

Best Live Action Short
Ala Kachuu – Take and Run
The Long Goodbye
The Dress
On My Mind
Please Hold

Best Sound
Dune
Belfast
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Visual Effects
Dune
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Free Guy
No Time to Die
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings