Awards Outlook - The 2023 Oscars 10 Years From Now
Photo from Variety
Awards analysis is provided by Sean from @MathTeacherMovies.
It’s 2033 and the Tik Tok Wars have reached their third year with the Battle of Savage recently won by General Charli D’Amelio. (I had to do a lot of weird googling for that bit). The Oscars are still happening as fans of the award show look back at the Oscars of 2023. What do you think they will think? How will they be looked at?
The main story of the night was an unconventional win and practically a sweep from one of the weirdest movies in Everything Everywhere All at Once. When a film wins so many awards it always faces a bit of backlash even though this film was easily an audience favorite. In ten years, there is no doubt in my mind that this film will still stand out and be considered one of the more liked winners.
Everything Everywhere All at Once winning was due to a massive amount of popularity and good will but it will be interesting to see how this will look when people don’t remember that phenomenon. With the sweep of Everything Everywhere All at Once many films were entirely blanked including The Banshees of Inisherin, Tar, Elvis, and The Fabelmans. It will be interesting to see if these films age into classics and how people will look at this year with either a backlash toward the front runner or it will also be beloved like the rest of the films.
The film will probably be a mark of the old guard of the Academy changing as the reputation of the Oscars being stuck up will most likely begin to change as the more film school like movies will not be awarded as much as those with a much wider audience appeal. This means more movies like Everything and less movies like Tar, more like CODA and less like Power of the Dog. All of these movies are quite good, but there is a chance as the Academy grows in diversity and youth, that many of the more accessible films will win. This is not an exact science and one film winning does not mean a change in the entire Academy, but the trend does seem to be pointing in this fashion.
One of the more notable narratives throughout the ceremony was the lack of movie stars that were there on the big night. Tom Cruise and James Cameron were notable absences especially with their films being nominated that night. However it was also notable to hear that Denzel Washington and Spike Lee skipped the Oscars for a Laker game, even though they were not nominated. Almost every year has a “mayor” of the Oscars who is a legend and sits in the front row keeping the audience energy up. Past “mayors” have been Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Jack Nicholson throughout the nineties. This does not mean there are no longer movie stars going to the Oscars, but just that there is also a changing of the guard, and younger movie stars are beginning to show up, most prominent being Michael B.Jordan and Jonathan Majors who were apparently a huge hit in the room.
It will be interesting to take a look at which nominees this year will have the most promising career surges. The four winners all had narratives in their careers in which they were due for their Oscars and so their careers are already pretty solid as they are all stars but this could be a resurgence in their careers for all of them. Austin Butler definitely had the greatest career trajectory as someone who was virtually unknown and has gotten a great deal of goodwill from his performance of Elvis. Barry Keoghan and Paul Mescal were already internet darlings but the two of them just grabbed roles in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator sequel which sounds very promising to them. Cate Blanchett and Angela Bassett may have gotten snubbed from their wins, but there is a chance that both of them will be back to finally win their third Oscar or finally win an Oscar, respectively. Stephanie Hsu was considered the favorite of her category and she had already been placed in some promising movies coming out this year that will hopefully raise up her career.
The A24 studio had an amazing year for nominations and then turned out to be the first movie studio to win every single major award which is mainly due to Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale. A24 is the studio that has received a great deal of popularity for film snobs but at this point they run such great campaigns they are now officially the go to studio for celebrities to try and get their Oscars. They have become what Miramax was in the nineties, but they are far less toxic in their campaigning.
The actual ceremony went up quite a bit in ratings which was expected as people were curious to see how the slap was going to be addressed and also because there were popular films of good quality as nominees including Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water. It will be interesting to see how the ceremony will be delivered in the future as ABC has rights to the ceremony for five more years, but the Academy president has cryptically said there might be streaming options before then and on its one hundredth year may be entirely sold to a streaming company where people won't have to worry about ceremony times, long speeches, and viewership numbers.
In general, this Oscars ceremony had a positive reception for the most part and will probably be remembered in a positive light for many years to come with Everything Everywhere All at Once being a beloved and wholesome film that will probably be loved as more time goes by.