The second that people started realizing that everyone was actually loving the new Star Wars episode, you could feel the Oscar buzz wave building and building and broke with lots of "Best Picture nomination! demands online. The BFCA even announced a ridiculously embarrassing extra ballot measure to ask the members if they'd like to add the movie into their Best Picture lineup after the fact. In short: no one will ever take this group seriously again. (Sigh) 'The Force Awakens will be swimming in Oscars!' the internet seems to have proclaimed en masse.
But not so fast young padewans.
Oscar nominations can prove elusive, especially for franchises, family films, and genre films three groups to which Star Wars belongs. People will cite "Oscar voters grew up with the franchise -- they'll be nostalgic!" but, consider: I grew up with the franchise. I loved episode 7. And I wouldn't vote for it.
This is not to say that I would make a typical Oscar voter. I would not. But typical Oscar voters tastes lie somewhere in the space between critics and general audiences. Put more plainly: there's a difference between totally enjoying a spectacle and wanting it honored as the very "Best" of its year.
Let's look back at Star Wars Oscar history to get some clues as to how The Force Awakens will fare after the jump...
All Statistics are drawn from the first six films. The Star Wars saga has thus far amassed...
• 22 nominations
• 7 wins
• 3 special Oscars
Or roughly 3½ nominations and 1½ Oscars per film if you distribute them evenly. Not that you would as this is one uneven franchise.
an FYC ad for Return of the Jedi's sound workOrder of Academy Preference
- Star Wars (1977) 10 nominations | 6 wins | 1 special Oscar for Sound fx
- Return of the Jedi (1983) 4 nominations | 0 wins | 1 special Oscar for Visual fx
- Empire Strikes Back (1980) 3 nominations | 1 win | 1 special Oscar for Visual fx
- The Phantom Menace (1999) 3 nominations | 0 wins
- [Tie] Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) 1 nomination each | 0 wins
Most Common Honors
- Visual Effects - 5 of 6 films
It's hard to believe now but the Visual Effects Oscar category didn't truly stabilize until 1991 (!!!). Since then there has always been an annual competition. Before then there were many years where they just handed out a special prize to one film. - Sound and/or Sound Effects - 4 of 6 films
- [tie] Score -3 of 6 films (original trilogy only)
Art Direction - 3 of 6 films (original trilogy only) - Other nominations occurred only once in the series history though it should probably be noted that the Makeup and Hair category (the series was only nominated here for Revenge of the Sith didn't exist until 1981 so perhaps the first two films would have been nominated had it been created earlier.
Magazine praising Dolby sound. Oscar's sound branch usually loves these films.
Zero Oscar Attention
There are only four traditional Oscar categories that the saga has never been nominated in. The most surprising is Cinematography (not not even for the first film) and the least surprising is Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress (there being no supporting actresses in the films).
So What of THE FORCE AWAKENS?
Of the ten Oscars which have been gifted to the Star Wars franchise, 70% of them arrived on April 3rd, 1978 when Star Wars had only recently left theaters (after a record smashing 44 week run) and had impacted the culture with an immediate force unseen since The Sound of Music and Gone With the Wind. In short it was a total colossus and remains so to this day. The obsession stuck with the world and you could argue that all subsequent nominations are afterglow for the initial infatuation and, much later, nostalgia for that early love. Notice the kindness expressed to The Phantom Menace (3 nominations and decent respectful reviews) despite it being a plainly terrible movie.
So what of The Force Awakens, by any measure the best Star Wars film since the original trilogy? Oscar voters only have 5 slots on their nomination ballots for Best Picture (despite the intricate math of voting bringing us a Best Picture list composed of 5 to 10 pictures). And given the tabulation process you really need a lot of #1 and #2 placements to secure a slot. Will people really abandon their favorites en masse to laud a new Star Wars above all the other films they've loved this year? My guess is no. Both because the rave reviews are somewhat a case of grading on a curve (it doesn't get worse than 1999-2005) and because people love it largely because it reminds them so much of an earlier Oscar-winning Best Picture that spawned a franchise. I mean they aren't going to watch it and think it's a technical masterwork on the scale of Mad Max Fury Road you know. If loving a film as a successful rebirth of a former Oscar winner were a criteria for buzz, you'd see Creed doing a lot better in precursor season and shaping up as a major player in all the races.
I could be wrong of course -- the crystal ball works sometimes and clouds up at others -- but my sense is that Visual Effects and Score are the only locks with probably both Sound categories thrown in for a 4 nomination total. That's more than enough to say "job well done, people -- looking forward to the next one!" Oddly Best Picture is probably the fifth most likely nomination (if the Force of Nostalgia prove irresistible) but 5 nominations is the ceiling.
Enjoy it for what it is!
The Takeaway: Don't pin your hopes on the Academy loving it as much as its diehard fans. That's the lesson we always learn with Todd Haynes films (can you feel the nail-biting of tension of how they will treat Carol?) but it applies to other kinds of movies too, especially beloved franchises.