After a solid first year with the Contenders series, I wanted to try to adapt and refine my methodology to see if we could increase the accuracy.
To that extent, one of my first changes was in segmenting out each film into a handful of categories if you will. Each of them represent a different type of contender at the Oscars. Below are explanations of each grouping along with examples from the 96th Oscars. I’ll also list a couple from the 97th Oscars as well, some of which will be getting contender profiles next week, not all of which will end up as contenders.
Broad: These films are contending in nearly every Oscar category at once. They are technical marvels with exceptional above-the-line representation. Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer would fall into this category. For this year, the likes of Dune: Part Two and The Nightingale will go here.
Narrow: When you have a strong film but it’s not a period or sci-fi spectacle, this is the category you would fit into. While they will compete in categories like Film Editing, Original Score, and Cinematography, the rest of the craft categories are unlikely. The Holdovers and Past Lives would fit here. The Bikeriders and Hit Man might also contend.
Acting: Films with middling critical approval but which have great performances at their cores would find a home in this category. Movies like Rustin and Nyad didn’t do great with critics but their central performances were nominated anyway. For this year, we have Shirley and Bob Marley: One Love as possible entrants.
Craft: These are films that are technically marvelous but aren’t particularly well liked by critics or audiences, yet their design styles are strong enough to earn them Oscar nominations. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Napoleon, and Golda are examples of this. El Conde, which was well respected by critics, would also fall into this category, but its critical acclaim was not its reason for getting nominated. This year, we’ll have Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on this list.
Effects: The vast majority of summer blockbusters (or all-year blockbusters these days) would be placed into this category. The Creator and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One were examples of this and each was differently felt by critics with the former receiving mediocre reviews and the latter getting terrific ones. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire are examples here.
Animation: This one is self-explanatory. Animated films fit into this category. While they often have a chance in the Original Score, Original Song, and rarely Best Picture and screenwriting categories, they would still fall into this category regardless. The Boy and the Heron and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are both fitting examples as they would also have qualified for Original Score if the Academy were less traditional in its selections. Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and The Wild Robot are this year’s most obvious in this category.
International: Lastly are the international films. Not the ones that will contend for the Best International Feature Oscar but films that have the potential to cross over due to a same-year release as their International Feature candidacy. Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest are easily identified figures in this kind of category. So far, the international contingent is murky. We’ll probably see a few pop up at Cannes.
With those category breakdowns, it also becomes important to weight the various categories differently. Below is a description of how I intend to generally break down these trends.
The adjustments start at the stage level wherein different quantifiers will be awarded differently. Let’s start with genre. While dramas, comedies, and romance films can benefit in the top races, fantasy, sci-fi, action, superhero films, and more would benefit in the craft and effects categories. As such, the genre will be weighted by what type of film it is and which category it is being graded in.
Another factor that tends to benefit effects films differently is release window. A mid-year release is much better than a late-year release but not always. The end of the year still gets solid scores but for effects films, May, June, and July are where they thrive.
Another factor changing is the film’s festival release. There are two changes here. One is related to the scores given to craft, effects, and animated films. These films don’t typically make strong showings at the festivals, so those aren’t penalized for that factor. The other has to do with festival releases that get shunted into subsequent years. Usually, it’s because they weren’t good enough to compete against the majors and so they waited a year and hoped that people might forget. This typically doesn’t work out for them and, as such, the festival score for these films will be halved.
The legacy and MPAA rating factors are other considerations that effects films tend to get hit hard by. While they don’t benefit from their legacies being original, they aren’t penalized for being sequels, prequels, or remakes either. For the MPAA, an R rating isn’t likely to help an effects-driven film as much as it does for a major Oscar contender but, in general, the rating doesn’t matter as long as it’s a success.
That’s also why the release strategy doesn’t matter as much. A wide release is generally better than a limited one but the smaller the release, the less likely it will be remembered. Exceptions exist though. At the box office, craft and effects contenders don’t get a special benefit for their box office when released on a limited basis; however, if a major wide release is a box office dud, that can seriously dampen its prospects while a tremendous box office tally is going to bolster its chances.
And with that, the individual ratings will lead to overall Stage scores and those scores will also be weighted differently depending on the type of contender the film is.
We’ll start with Pedigree. The Pedigree stage is a bigger benefit to acting and craft films since those will be hotly anticipated and, while disappointments can often befall them, the buzz built before their release can often land them in contention even if critics don’t care for them. The most common benefit in animation and international categories is that having a well known pedigree doesn’t always mean it will be an Oscar contender. This is where many “unknown” names will show up and still draw attention. After all, neither The Zone of Interest nor Anatomy of a Fall had very high pedigrees but did incredibly well.
In the Content/Genre stage, broad and narrow Oscar contenders aren’t as dependent on genre or legacy factors among others and thus don’t have as high a weight placed on them as the others, which depend heavily on the content and genres to become a success.
While there might have been a time that the release strategy of a film determined its Oscar potential, those days are long gone as blockbuster wide releases and tiny micro-releases have done quite well with the Academy. While it might matter a wee bit more for broad, narrow, and acting contenders, it is generally the lowest factor for any given film.
Critical Response, on the other hand, is significant for most films. You can have a high pedigree, be released wide, or be the right type of film and an awful critic’s score can destroy your chances. This is often the place where many high-pedigree films stumble. As such, for broad and narrow contenders, this stage is of the utmost importance. It’s also a large factor for animation and international contenders.
Finally, we have the Audience Response. This is the most important factor for Effects films. A disastrous box office performance or terrible reviews from the common moviegoer will kill your buzz faster than anything. For other types of films, it’s not really a big factor. After all, audiences may not care for your film because it’s too esoteric but the Academy might still love it because it’s technically well made.
Those are the five stages and how they will be impacted by the changes. Since the percentages vary so widely, it won’t be easy to quantify and itemize but they will be applied uniformly.
But wait! Aren’t you forgetting a stage? I’m not. Stage 6 was the Precursor stage but, by that point, we’ll already have an inkling of what the big contenders are and when the preponderance of awards point one direction, it often becomes a fait accompli for the feature and our contenders program becomes less important. As such, I’ll be removing the precursor stage from all final ratings. Let’s see where the films land once things get locked in for precursor season.
That doesn’t mean we’ll not look at the precursors. Our site will always look at precursors. However, in terms of the performance of the Contenders series, it won’t impact the final score anymore.
As with any model of the film slate going into each year’s Oscars, there are bound to be bumps in the road and tweaks that need to be made. This is just my attempt to quantify Oscar quality and determine in advance whether a film will be a fitting contender or not based on all the traditional factors we’ve used to predict Oscar nominations over the years. There’s always an element of subjectivity to predictions and that’s not going to be completely eliminated with these mathematical computations since some of them, like pedigree, are entirely subjective. It’s the overall aim of this series to try and squeeze out as much objective foundations as possible.
