The 96th edition of Oscar nominations came forth on Tuesday morning, and there was, of course, plenty to glean from the latest class of Academy Award nominees.
While Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster epic Oppenheimer scored a whopping 13 nominations, Greta Gerwig’s titanic comedy Barbie earned the biggest snubs of the morning in Best Director and Best Actress for Margot Robbie.
Of course, both films did get in Best Picture, as did plenty of other deserving titles. We’ve got takeaways from the full list of nominees, including some thoughts on why Oppenheimer is the favorite, why Barbie might’ve stumbled a bit and why you should pay attention to Poor Things.
Oppenheimer might be the new Return of the King
About 20 years ago, Peter Jackson’s trilogy capper The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King stormed the Academy Awards and won all of the 11 categories where it was competing, including Best Picture.
It got to the point where people, even those accepting awards for other films, were joking about how many Oscars the movie was winning. It wasn’t just a tidal wave; it was just a foregone conclusion by the end of the night.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer most likely won’t win all 13 categories where it’s nominated, but it feels more and more like the historical epic will win the most trophies of any film come Oscar night.
It’s got the best chance to go the distance to Best Picture of any film nominated this year, and it feels more and more like this is Nolan’s moment to finally take home his long-overdue Best Director Oscar.
Oppenheimer has everything on its side from an awards standpoint, but it’s the rare Best Picture frontrunner that also blew up at the box office and reached into the zeitgeist in a way few films have lately.
There are always shocks, but Oppenheimer feels inevitable at this point.
What happened to Barbie?
Much like The LEGO Movie nearly a decade before it, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie transcended its intellectual property status and delivered a wildly creative, deeply thoughtful comedy about its characters and the world around them.
It also befell some unfortunate Oscar controversy like The LEGO Movie (still the most egregious Best Animated Feature snub of its time), as director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie weren’t nominated in Best Director and Best Actress, respectively.
Barbie didn’t quite have the nomination spree some thought it would, even if it snagged key recognition in Best Picture (where Robbie earned a nomination as a producer), Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrera) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gerwig and Noah Baumbach).
Gerwig and Robbie still earning nominations in other categories for their work on the generational blockbuster takes away the sting, but we’re just chalking up their misses as unfortunate casualties in an incredibly competitive year (particularly for Gerwig in a stacked directing category).
Why exactly this happened is tough, though the irony of the film’s message showed through the lack of these major nominations. Robbie made it in with the Screen Actors’ Guild and the BAFTAs for her performance but not with the Oscars? It’s a shrug from us as to why she’s not here.
For Gerwig, the international vote clearly tipped the scale for Justine Triet and Jonathan Glazer for Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, respectively. Hers is just a tough miss in a very stacked directing category.
However, don’t be surprised if these public snubs spark goodwill for Barbie, particularly in Adapted Screenplay where voters might want to recognize Gerwig’s achievement after she missed out on a directing nomination.
Could it become the next Argo and land a Best Picture win after a high-profile directing snub like Ben Affleck did all those years ago? If it weren’t for Oppenheimer, it’d be a more curious proposition.
Poor Things might be Oppenheimer's biggest competition
While we’d fall over in our seat backwards if Poor Things actually won Best Picture, it feels like the biggest competition to Oppenheimer right now in actually challenging it in the night’s biggest category.
The genre-bending Yorgos Lanthimos film earned plenty of recognition across the board, and such a strong showing might have positioned its star Emma Stone to be the frontrunner for a second Oscar in Best Actress.
We think Poor Things will win an Oscar or two in March, and it’s intriguing to imagine where those wins could come.
Doc branch gonna doc branch
We’ve spent years trying to figure out exactly what the Academy’s documentary branch has against popular documentaries, as the deeply moving Jon Batiste project American Symphony, the stellar Michael J. Fox documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie and the harrowing North Korean documentary Beyond Utopia became the latest high-profile documentaries to miss the category outright.
It’s not to suggest that the films nominated are unworthy of recognition, but it does show a branch that still shows resentment if a documentary earns recognition past the audience that typically engages with the format.
This is also the branch that propelled My Octopus Teacher to a nomination (and win), so consider us baffled by the continued confusion in this category.
The international influence on the Oscars continues to grow
A decade ago, films like The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall likely wouldn’t have registered as strongly with the Academy as they did this year.
However, Anatomy of a Fall joined Oppenheimer and Poor Things as the only movie to earn Best Picture recognition, Best Director recognition, an acting nomination, a screenplay nomination and an editing nomination. The Zone of Interest joined in most of those categories, sans acting.
It shows that the Academy’s efforts to expand its voting base for more international members are fiercely showing in the nomination results.
The Oscars are more global than ever, and we’re not expecting that to stop anytime soon.
10 nominations that caught our eye
- Legendary composer John Williams earned a surprise 54th Oscar nomination for his score in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Talk about the return of the king!
- Married creative team Jared and Jerusha Hess, best known for 2004’s cult classic Napoleon Dynamite, earned their first Oscar nominations for the animated short Ninety-five Senses. Flippin’ sweet!
- Good for Robot Dreams, a charming independent animated film that earned recognition in Best Animated Feature.
- Mark Ruffalo held on in Best Supporting Actor after missing with the SAGs and the BAFTAs for Poor Things. It reminds us a bit of when he got nominated for Spotlight despite some misses there, too.
- Random name nominated in Best Picture as a producer: Steven Spielberg (Maestro)
- Maybe France really did mess up by not picking Anatomy of a Fall for its international submission since its actual pick, The Taste of Things, didn’t even get nominated.
- What a life for Animated Feature nomination Nimona: cancelled by Blue Sky after the Disney/Fox merger, saved by Netflix, now an Oscar contender.
- Biggest surprise of the morning in terms of inclusions: Edward Lachman’s cinematography for El Conde getting some love.
- Diane Warren’s annual “Wait, what?” nomination for Best Original Song came through. It’s almost comforting at this point in its regularity.
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One became the first Ethan Hunt adventure to be recognized by the Academy. However, the nominations will self-destruct after they’ve been revealed.
5 snubs we didn't get
- How does Willem Dafoe not make it into Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars for Poor Things after making it in with the Screen Actors’ Guild for the same movie? Stranger things, we guess.
- Hayao Miyazaki’s longtime music collaborator Joe Hisaishi should’ve gotten one of those spots in Best Original Score for The Boy and the Heron. The Academy whiffed on that one.
- May December not registering any acting nominations means that the acting branch really can’t take a joke.
- Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t necessarily need another Oscar nomination, but him missing Best Actor for Killers of the Flower Moon is very odd, especially considering Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro made it in.
- Ditto for Robbie in Barbie in Best Actress, particularly since Gosling and Ferrera also earned acting nominations. How do you not nominate the actual Barbie for the movie Barbie? Swap out Annette Bening for Robbie, and the category looks much better, at least to us.
Early predictions in the top eight categories
- Best Picture: Oppenheimer
- Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
- Best Actor: Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
- Best Actress: Emma Stone, Poor Things
- Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
- Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
- Best Original Screenplay: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall
- Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
