The Year Of the Sequel At The Oscars

Sequels are a necessary evil of Hollywood… sometimes they are brought about because the artists from the original film feel that the story had not been finished, while other times there is a second book that could also be made into a film, or a third most obvious reason… money. 

When making a sequel,  studios and creatives are rarely thinking about the Oscars. Sequels seldomly do well at the Oscars, but that trend has been changing ever so slightly. The Godfather Part II is the best example of a sequel doing well at the Oscars, in addition to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but both are films based on books. Recently, the Oscar race was able to welcome sequels like Mad Max: Fury Road, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water which all ended up with Best Picture nominations and some wins for technical awards.

This year will see a great number of sequels released, but what makes this year different is that there are multiple sequels and prequels of films that have been received previous nominations… and even won Oscars. Dune: Part One, Joker, Mad Max: Fury Road. and Gladiator were all nominated for Best Picture with Gladiator winning the award… and each is getting a sequel or prequel in 2024.

Dune: Part Two is the only film of these four that has been seen by the masses and, with its positive reaction from critics and audiences alike, it seems the most likely of these four films to be nominated for Best Picture and several technical awards. More on that could be read here. 

The sequel to Joker, Joker: Folie à Deux, just released its trailer to a great deal of fanfare and excitement. The first film was a tremendous Oscar hit with eleven nominations, including Best Picture, and a Best Actor win for Joaquin Phoenix. However, the film was very divisive with audiences and critics. The follow-up could either be an improvement and learn from those reactions or dive head first into them; whether or not that will lead to Oscar love is somewhat unpredictable. 

Furiosa is the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road and that trailer has been met with a great deal of division; some people feel like it has a strange visual style (exactly how strange the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer looked, i’ll point out).This may not be a one-to-one prediction in trend but has the potential to once again shock audiences and critics, although it will be rare to see lightning strike twice. 

Gladiator 2 is the only movie from this group for which no one (save for CinemaCon attendees) has seen anything yet. A sequel almost twenty-five years later with the titular character dead is going to be a hard sell, but at the very least Ridley Scott will be returning as director with a cast of Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Paul Mescal, and Joseph Quinn. This could lead to a lot of success. The one thing holding the film back will be the ever-prickly Ridley Scott who is always grumpy in his interviews and has caused the campaigns for his films to be held back due to this and his movies not being well-received lately. 

Inside Out easily won Best Animated Feature film in 2016, but despite Pixar’s great success, sequels have a harder time in this category. Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse’s loss to The Boy and the Heron showcased this challenge, but Inside Out 2 will likely grab a nomination for Best Animated Feature even though Disney has been struggling in this category lately. 

The first two Kung Fu Panda films were nominated for Best Animated Feature and the third was not, which probably won’t help Kung Fu Panda 4. Moana was also nominated for Best Animated Feature in its 201 but also lost, which does not bode well for Moana 2. The film already has its issues as it is coming from a series of television episodes turned into a film, which can’t be a good sign. The Lion King’s 2019 film received a nomination for its Visual Effects but was otherwise deservedly dismissed. The Mufasa prequel, directed by past Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, is a tremendous question mark. 

Tim Burton movies have been delving into far more CGI of late which has been one of the main concerns of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to… Beetlejuice. And yet his movies still get technical awards even with the heavy effects, for instance his 2010 Alice in Wonderland. From the teaser trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice it seems like Tim Burton is getting back to his practical roots. The original film won an Oscar for Best Makeup and this film has the chance to overperform even further with Effects, Production Design, Costume, Makeup and potential a performance nomination for Michael Keaton, all of which feel somewhat unlikely but are possible. 

Alien: Romulus is more just a film in a franchise rather than a sequel, but it comes from a long line of films that have reinvented themselves and have continued to rack up wins and nominations. While the film has a shot at many technicals, this is not the type that is likely to get many above the line nominations. 

The First Omen is getting a decent response in theaters but definitely not one that can carry through to the Oscar season. With the original film receiving an Oscar for Best Original Score, that is probably not enough to get this film to win anything. 

Back in 1996, Twister was nominated for Visual Effects and Sound but did not end up winning either award. Twisters is coming out this summer and will probably meet a similar fate, yet there is a world where this becomes a summer blockbuster of quality and could be a surprising success at the Oscars. This is especially true under the directional leadership of previous nominee Lee Isaac Chung; it's a long shot but one that seems possible from that likable trailer. 

It feels almost foolish that the A Quiet Place series has not won an Oscar for its impressive technicals. The first was nominated for a sound award and the second was nominated for nothing, which is a downward trend that spells trouble for A Quiet Place: Day One.

Another set of baffling snubs is the recent Planet of the Apes movies; all of them have been nominated for Best Visual Effects and yet none of them have won the award. With Dune: Part Two threatening in the Visual Effects category this year it looks like another disappointment for this year’s addition to the franchise, Kingdom of Planet of the Apes. 

X and Pearl received Oscar buzz but never came close to a nomination. This year’s Maxxxine could get some nominations to make up for the rest of the trilogy being snubbed, especially Mia Goth, but this film like the others does not sound like it’s the type of film to get near an Oscar… which in some ways makes it all the more cool.  

In this new batch of American Godzilla and Kong films, only Kong: Skull Island received a nomination for Best Visual Effects. Iit does not feel likely that Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire will be nominated for this category, but that could depend on how things shake out with the other probable nominees. 

Boys State shamefully missed out on a documentary nomination four years ago which could mean the same fate for Girls State. Perhaps the film could receive a forgiveness nomination for the snub of Boys State but that will depend again on the other nominees. 

The strangest sequel of the year will be Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2 because the first film is also going to be released this year… an unprecedented move (but one that The Strangers films seems to be following). This makes these two movies absolutely impossible to figure out when it comes to Oscar predictions for this year and that frustration alone will probably mean it won’t be nominated at all. 

For the most part, sequels getting love at the Oscars is always rare, but the films do end up showing up once in a while, more frequently recently, and should see representation come Oscar season.

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