After one of the year’s biggest and earliest mornings in Hollywood, the 2018 Oscar nominations are officially in and they are as equally as exciting and disappointing as we have come to expect.
2018 marks the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 90th anniversary. As they age another year older, it’s fascinating to watch as things change and as some things stay the same. Bright and early this morning, Tiffany Haddish and Andy Serkis ushered in the moment we wait all year for.
The full list of nominees are available here.
Below we discuss some of the most welcomed surprises, biggest disappointments, those nominees that made history, and the Academy’s growing pains.
Best Director category surprises
It’s normal to expect one, maybe two first time directors to secure nominations for Best Director; this year there are four. Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, Greta Gerwig, and Guillermo del Toro all earned their first nominations in the category this year.
Those nominations are particularly exciting — and surprising — in a year where longtime favorites of the Academy like Steven Spielberg or front-runner favorites like Martin McDonagh were in the running for nominations. This is the third year in a row that this has happened!
Del Toro and Christopher Nolan both received nominations after several years of hard work. Nolan has earned three nominations in the past, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, but never managed to make his way into the directors category. Del Toro earned an Original Screenplay nomination for Pan’s Labryinth in 2007, but his work after that went unrecognized.
Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig represent a different end of the spectrum. Their respective films — Get Out and Lady Bird — are both directorial debuts that made a huge impression on audiences and critics alike. That they were both recognized by the Academy this year marks what will hopefully be a changing of the guard.
In the 90-year history of the Oscars, only four Black people and four women have ever been nominated for Best Director. To that end, zero black women have been nominated. Progress is slow, too slow, but the diversity in this year’s best director category signals a progress.
Meanwhile, as Paul Thomas Anderson earned his second Best Director nomination for Phantom Thread, a film released quite last minute at the end of 2017, Martin McDonagh missed a nomination in this category. After winning big awards at both the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards, many considered his film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to be the frontrunner. His exclusion from the Best Director category casts some doubt on the film’s chances.
Nominees that made history
As if an Oscar nomination wasn’t exciting enough already, some of this year’s nominees actually made history.
Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer for Dee Rees’ Mudbound is the first female nominee in this category ever.
Timothée Chalamet’s nomination for his performance in Call Me by Your Name makes him the youngest Best Actor nominee since 1939. If he manages to win at the big ceremony in March, he will be the youngest Best Actor winner ever.
Saoirse Ronan, only 23 years old, is the second-youngest woman to ever become a three-time Oscar nominee.
Meanwhile, Agnès Varda and James Ivory became the oldest Oscar nominees ever (Varda being only eight days older than Ivory.) If either nominee wins, they would be the oldest winner in Academy history.
Only a year younger than Varda and Ivory, Christopher Plummer earned a nomination for All the Money in the World — a film that he wasn’t even supposed to be in until about two months ago.
Jordan Peele is the first African-American writer and director to be nominated for the trifecta of Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay.
Meryl Streep, always a favorite of the Academy, beat her own record of nominations by earning her 21st acting Oscar nomination for Spielberg’s The Post.
For the first time ever, the same five films were nominated in both the Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing categories.
Oscars…mostly white
In the last five years, the Academy has come under greater scrutiny for the diversity of their nominations as well as the voting body itself. That scrutiny helped bring about an important Academy initiative to bolster the diversity of its membership. While progress is slow, too slow for an institution that is 90 years old, change is happening. With a slightly younger and more diverse voting pool, the nominees are beginning to reflect the diversity we expect to see.
Thanks to movies like Get Out, Roman J. Israel, Esq., and Mudbound, we avoided another a year of “Oscars So White,” but that didn’t stop the nominees from being mostly white. While Academy favorites like Denzel Washington and Octavia Spencer were nominated for their roles, performances like Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip, Jason Mitchell in Mudbound, and Hong Chau in Downsizing were all overlooked in the nomination pool.
This is, naturally, a deeply complicated issue that won’t be solved by a more diverse Academy. If we want more diverse Oscar nominees, we need more movies that are written, directed, and star people of color. This is a systemic issue and the responsibility lies in the hands of those that finance and distribute films every year. Big movie studios and indie distributors alike must rise to the challenge and elevate the voices and stories of non-white artists.
The year’s biggest disappointments
Last week, we listed 10 Oscar contenders we wanted to make it onto the Oscar ballot. Of those 10 hopefuls, only one managed to secure a nomination; Greta Gerwig’s Best Director nomination for Lady Bird is a huge victory and not one to be overlooked. Naturally, however, there were a few disappointments.
Michael Stuhlbarg, who starred in three of the year’s Best Picture nominees, missed out on a nomination for his role in Call Me by Your Name. It’s hard for me to think of a supporting actor performance better than the subtle grace and empathy of Stuhlbarg’s performance.
While Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread exceeded expectations, earning nominations for Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Costume Design, and Score, Vickey Krieps couldn’t manage to break into the Best Actress race. Her performance as Alma anchors the film, overshadowing Daniel Day-Lewis’ immense talent in several scenes.
Sean Baker’s film The Florida Project was almost entirely shut out, earning only a single nomination for Willem Dafoe’s performance. Given the film’s beautiful cinematography, heartfelt performances, and superb direction, many hoped it would secure a place among the Best Picture nominees.
Both Get Out and Lady Bird were overlooked in the Best Editing category in favor of films like I, Tonya and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. While those films might have flashier editing, Peele and Gerwig’s films embody the way editing enhances the tone and pacing of a film.
Other disappointments include Luca Guadagnino missing out on a Best Director nomination, Tiffany Haddish’s Supporting Actress snub, and The Post missing out on several expected nominations.
Do the Oscars really matter?
Every awards season, you can sure to see someone say, “Well, the Oscars don’t really matter.”
Sometimes we say this to make ourselves feel better about our favorite movie missing out. Sometimes it’s because of our general disdain for awards season shenanigans. At other times, we dismiss the Oscars because how could they possibly, in their limited scope, judge what is the “best” movie, performance, script of the year.
Full disclosure: I’m sure I’ve said this, be it out of frustration or disappointment.
Regardless of intent, it’s not necessarily a bad question to ask. Do the Oscars really matter?
The simple answer is yes. After all, here we are talking about them! An average of 34.4 million people will tune in to watch the awards telecast. The Oscar statues are valued at over a half a million dollars. The total cost of the ceremony will exceed $40 million, not to mention the millions of dollars spent on awards campaigns. The more interesting questions are those that stem from this: To whom do they matter? Why do they matter? What do they matter for?
Most generally, the Oscars matter within a certain scope. There appears to be an internal and external scope through which we can understand their importance. The Oscars are, first and foremost, an indicator of industry success; an Oscar win can help solidify someone’s reputation, help them make more money or more movies (or both).
The Oscars denote recognition that comes from the industry itself, even if this is a tad self-congratulatory.
On the other hand, the Oscars matter to a broader, external community — the one that exists outside of Hollywood. The Oscars intend to recognize good and important films. This will help bring attention to these films for years to come. In that sense, the Oscars matter because they are a sort of historical document that records those films that were significant at the time of their release.
However, there is no denying the limited scope with which Oscars judge what is good and significant. The western-centric perspective of the Oscar’s purview and the influence of money on awards campaigns mean that the Oscars are inherently exclusionary, a prestige award given to those works that have the preexisting cash and credibility to make their way into the spotlight.
With that in mind, it’s not difficult to say to oneself, “The Oscars don’t matter.”
This leads to one final, perhaps more essential question: How will the Oscars maintain their significance in the years to come? Art is one of the essential pieces of any society and recognition of that art matters. It matters because it gives value and credence to those who want to create.
It’s essential that we have institutions that work to preserve, recognize, and reward art. In the decades to come, it’s crucial that the Academy find a way to look beyond its outdated frameworks and the hierarchy that has defined its legacy.
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