2024 Oscars Predictions

A paean to predictability (conditional on liking the outcomes)

Tonight, Oppenheimer will win at least seven, probably eight, and maybe nine Oscars. Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic has been an awards season behemoth as large as any in recent memory, stampeding its way through precursor after precursor, systematically snuffing out the hopes of essentially every competitor in every race. Best Director has been Nolan’s almost since the moment the opening Prometheus quote rolled across the screen at the film’s premiere. This magisterial line reading got Robert Downey, Jr. his first Oscar months ago. Best Picture was a brief dance with The Holdovers and Poor Things, but that race too seems all sealed up. Best Actor was perhaps the last to fall, but Cillian Murphy’s victory over Paul Giamatti is now all but assured.

It would be an understatement to say that this year’s Academy Awards is a bit lacking in suspense. Even the Everything Everywhere All At Once freight train at last year’s show lacked the air of inevitability that underpins Oppenheimer’s momentum going into this evening. Sure, there are races here and there which are laced with a bit of uncertainty – Best Actress being the big remaining toss-up – but beyond that the steady march to oblivion shall proceed one soaring Ludwig Göransson string composition at a time.

What is most striking is the utter lack of controversy or consternation in the discourse about Oppenheimer’s incoming sweep. Last year Everything Everywhere All At Once had its detractors from the start, and their volume grew in proportion with the film’s momentum through the race. Here, Oppenheimer’s few critics were always a bit halfhearted, and have been essentially silent through its months-long coronation. Instead of criticizing the film itself, awards season prognosticators and enthusiasts have instead been relegated to criticizing predictability itself.

To which I respond: who cares? I happen to think Oppenheimer is one of the signature cinematic achievements of the past decade, if not the century – a sensational technical feat, as most of Nolan’s films are, but in service of something more important thematically than anything he has produced before. It would be an utter travesty if any of the other (excellent) nominated films were to dethrone it from its rightful perch. We look, for once, poised to absolutely nail almost every award on the night in terms of those who should win actually winning. What a beautiful and rare thing. And yet we decry predictability!

I suppose the broader question is about the purpose of these awards. Are we more focused on the right films getting recognized, or about the show being “exciting?” Do the Oscars exist to crown the best work of the year, or to entertain us for one random Sunday in February or March? Would we be happier if against all the odds, Bradley Cooper’s absolutely hilarious awards-season antics lead to Maestro (this year’s weakest Best Picture nominee) taking home some big prizes? Think about that counterfactual on Monday when the reviews inevitably come in deriding the ceremony as “boring.” Between the two, I know where I stand.

The moral is that even when things are going just about as well as they can, the magic of the human spirit is that we will always be able to identify something to complain about. Ah, well. Here are my predictions.

Best Picture

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

Best Director

Will Win: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

Best Actor

Will Win: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) – not really, though
Should Win: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)

Best Actress

Will Win: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Could Win: Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Should Win: Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)

Now here is a race. Gladstone and Stone have been trading awards all season – both won Golden Globes (in different categories), Stone won the BAFTA and Critics’ Choice, Gladstone the SAG. The thing is that the SAG has recently been far more predictive than any of the others, and moreover Gladstone was (appallingly) not even nominated at the BAFTAs, which much like their country of origin are increasingly insular and externally irrelevant. So, Gladstone it is. I am not sure I really think Hüller should win the award, but I do think her performance is as deserving of praise as the other two that are in contention. All three of these performances are unimpeachable, and so wildly different – Hüller’s a study in complex narcissism, Gladstone’s an expression of generational grief, Stone’s a portrait of becoming – that comparing them is a fool’s errand. Pity the Academy members who were forced to make a choice between these three tours de force.

Best Supporting Actor

Will Win: Robert Downey, Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)

Downey has this sealed up, but a quick word of praise for De Niro, whose venal, vicious William Hale is among the most memorable villains put to screen in years, and is certainly one of the best bits of work of the back half of the veteran’s career. There is a soullessness and remorselessness with which De Niro conducts himself here that is deeply chilling – a swaggering sense in which the horrific crimes he is orchestrating are not unjust, but merely in service of the way things ought to be. His performance gets to the very essence of how people manage to justify their proto-genocidal actions – a mentality into which, at this awful moment, we need all the insight we can manage.

Best Supporting Actress

Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

As long as America Ferrera doesn’t win for her one ham-fisted monologue in Barbie, things will be okay. (There was plenty of yammering about Greta Gerwig’s snub in Best Director, but this scene and the glorified Chevrolet commercial that completely take the air out of her movie were disqualifying. Margot Robbie in Best Actress, on the other hand: that was a bona fide travesty of an omission. Barbie would collapse upon itself in her absence.)

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will Win: American Fiction
Could Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: American Fiction

This is Oppenheimer’s possible ninth Oscar, but I think this is where the Nolan train is thwarted. If even the BAFTAs decide that it has the edge, much less the USC Scripter awards, American Fiction should bag this, and deservedly. While Nolan’s adaptation of the Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin Pulitzer-winner American Prometheus is structurally inventive, Cord Jefferson’s work taking the bones of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure and coercing it into a decidedly contemporary satire is extraordinary, bold, and riotous.

Best Original Screenplay

Will Win: Anatomy of a Fall
Could Win: The Holdovers
Should Win: Anatomy of a Fall

The Golden Globe win for Anatomy of a Fall, along with the immense amount of buzz generated by breakout star Messi the dog’s red carpet presence, makes it seem as though the Palme d’Or winner will take home at least one prize tonight. I love The Holdovers as much as anyone, as a beautiful homage to a kind of film we’ve all seen countless times. Anatomy of a Fall, though, is truly sui generis, capturing the wedge between facts and truth and the way context, subjectivity, and bias shape how the former translates into the latter.

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I have less to say about the rest of these awards, largely because I cannot claim to have seen all of the nominated films in these categories and because I lack the technical acumen to comment on sound, editing, cinematography, production design and the rest beyond “looks nice!” (Well, I could probably write some nonsense, but a resolution I have for my recently inaugurated twenty-fifth year is to increase my content-to-words ratio, both in conversation and writing. In other words, less yapping.) So, I will simply present the rest of my predictions below. Enjoy the show, if you are one of the increasingly withering number who plan to do so!

Best Animated Feature

Will Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Could Win: The Boy and the Heron
Should Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best International Feature

Will Win: The Zone of Interest
Could Win: This is over – The Zone of Interest is the only nominee here also up for Best Picture.
Should Win: The Zone of Interest

Best Documentary Feature

Will Win: 20 Days in Mariupol
Could Win: Four Daughters
Should Win: 20 Days in Mariupol

Best Editing

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

Best Cinematography

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

Best Production Design

Will Win: Poor Things
Could Win: Barbie
Should Win: Poor Things

Best Sound

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Could Win: The Zone of Interest
Should Win: The Zone of Interest

(This is Oppenheimer’s probable eight Oscar, but there is a world where the sonic horror of The Zone of Interest triumphs.)

Best Original Score

Will Win: Oppenheimer
Could Win: Nobody else!
Should Win: Nobody else!

Best Original Song

Will Win: “What Was I Made For?” (Barbie)
Could Win: “I’m Just Ken” (Barbie)
Should Win: This category should be relegated to the dustbin of history and replaced with awards for casting (which actually is going to start being given in 2026!), stunts, and first-time director.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Will Win: Maestro
Could Win: Poor Things
Should Win: Poor Things

Best Costume Design

Will Win: Poor Things
Could Win: Barbie
Should Win: Poor Things

Best Visual Effects

Will Win: The Creator
Could Win: Godzilla Minus One
Should Win: The Creator, a pretty mediocre/bad movie which is also one of the most amazing visual achievements in recent memory.

Best Documentary Short

Will Win: The ABCs of Book Banning
Could Win: Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó

Best Live Action Short

Will Win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson’s first Oscar!)
Could Win: Wes has this sealed. Yay! Now hopefully he can get an Oscar for a feature film…

Best Animated Short

Will Win: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko
Could Win: Letter to a Pig