6 days til Oscar. 6 was the magic number this year.
Monday, April 19, 2021 at 11:19AM by Nathaniel R
Mank led the nominations this year. A period drama often does.
Though we keep a lot of lists surrounding Oscar trivia and nomination and win stats, some things are much harder to research then others and we wish we had magical charts which could delineate literally everything, like accountants working with pivot tables or something (we dont actually know what those are but they sound fancy). One of the most curious stats this year was seeing the second highest nomination tally be an enormous tie with six movies all earning six nominations. We don't think there's ever been another Oscar year like it though we aren't certain. Here are some examples of the breakdowns...
In our two decades of covering the Oscars and the years before it geeking out as an Oscar fan we can't recall this ever happening before, not just that many movies tied for second place in "most nominations" but the second most nominations being such a low number. Usually, we get one or two movies with double digit nominations (or close to it) and then the rest trailing by various degrees but not all clumped together like that!
We think this is an all time record (seven films sharing the two highest nomination tallies for that season).
Let's glance at some other years...
2019 was an unusual year in that there were a lot of films with double digit tallies so we had four films dominating...
2018 was slightly more typical but still four films...
For fun i picked a few random years to look at from the distant past.
2005
8 nominations
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (3 wins)
6 nominations
CRASH (3 wins)
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (3 wins)
1999
8 noms
AMERICAN BEAUTY (5 wins)
7 noms
CIDER HOUSE RULES (2 noms)
THE INSIDER
1986... had a broad spread of support like this year but five films not seven...
8 nominations
PLATOON (4 wins)
A ROOM WITH A VIEW (3 wins)
7 nominations
ALIENS (2 wins)
HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (3 wins)
THE MISSION (1 win)
1975
9 nominations
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (5 wins)
7 nominations
BARRY LYNDON (4 wins)
1964
13 nominations
MARY POPPINS (5 wins)
12 nominations
BECKET (1 win)
MY FAIR LADY (8 wins)
1951
12 nominations
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (4 wins)
9 noms
A PLACE IN THE SUN (6 wins)
That's only a random sampling but you can see it generally falls along the same lines of 3 movies dominating the nominations. Not 7.
How do you think this happened this year? A lack of passion or just an honest reflection of a lot of movies with the general same amount of passion?
Oscar Trivia, Oscars (20)
Reader Comments (13)
It's possible lack of passion was a factor, but I really appreciate that the categories chosen for these films make a lot of sense. I don't think we'll remember The Father was likely to miss out on Production Design and Editing, because those nominations make so much sense. Same goes for Judas in Cinematography, and while Stanfield is obvious category fraud, he's an actor doing great work that I assumed would be nominated eventually. If 2019 showcased passion with all those Joker nods, and this year was such a wide spread because of apathy, then maybe passion is not always a good thing from the voters. Frankly, maybe apathy means fewer voters, which means the voters who watched everything have more sway.
Before it happened in 2018, never would I guess that a Yorgos Lanthimos film would be a nomination leader. But it makes so much sense when you consider the fact that it's a costume drama that so many of the craft branches love, filled with Oscar-friendly actresses, and with a daring outre attitude that the writing and directing branch loves.
I think this year, the films that were top contenders and had passionate support weren't the types of films technical and craft branches typically go after. For example, Nomadland is of no interest to the costume design branch's sensibilities and Sound of Metal is of no interest to the production design branch's sensibilities. And, among the acting branch we didn't see any actors get swept away - the most any film has is 2.
More than anything, this year is missing a big World War I/II film and/or a costume drama that would typically such up all of the nominations.
Honestly I think it's an alarming trend, since it indicates that the Academy is nominating the same set of films in a lot of categories. The members are getting lazier in their viewings, they just fill the same names over and over again if they pass a certain mediocre threshold. It's still better than whatever the hell we had before in terms of quality, but it's certainly less colourful in a sense.
Since a lot of the more expensive, craftier films (West Side Story and Dune come to mind) were pushed out of 2020, it helped create this situation. I think if West Side Story had come out and received positive enough reviews, it probably would have been one of the nomination leaders. Promising Young Woman would have probably suffered the most and The Father probably would not have the production design nomination that it received nor would Trial of Chicago 7 be in the cinematography race.
Roma won only 3 awards: Foreign Film, Director and Cinematography.
@jack - I agree completely. The past decade has seen a troubling decline in spreading the wealth. Fewer films are hoovering a majority of nominations for the reasons you said - voters aren't seeing a wide swath of films.
In addition to laziness, I think it's also an issue of time. By moving up the oscars timeline and having nominations announced in early January, voters have even less time to catch up on movies. They may skip film that has buzz in only 1 category and only have time to catch up on juggernauts. It's depriving the race of those fun single nominations, outside of best actress, which the single noms are an act of necessity because the juggernauts are usually sausage fests.
I miss those random fluke nominations, especially in the supporting categories (marisa tomei/my cousin vinny, amy adams/junebug, edward nortion/primal fear and american history x)
6 days till Oscar nominations? 🤔
@Jack
The expanded best picture field is directly responsible for voter bodies to become less championing of outlier potential nominees.
Very interested in finding out how this affects the final tally. A sweep? Many pictures with 1 Oscar? or zero? I have doubts!
Does anyone know on average how many total movies were nominated in prior decades? The total number of nominated movies this year are roughly the same as the last three years (below).
2017 - 59 total films nominated
2018 - 52
2019 - 53
2020 - 56
Seems like they spread the wealth better than usual this year amongst the nominees but did not make much headway nominating more movies overall. But any other year Chicago 7 could have easily been a 10+ nominee.
My answer is the reason I don't watch the Oscars anymore but I want to explain it first
Hollywood is one of the biggest movie industries in the world but every year they "promote" a very little quantity of films through the nominations considering the number of films released pear year.
I know many people disagrees with the 10 nominees by the principal category (which almost never happen) but I honestly think that if the members of AMPAS were interested in watch a great number of films no matter genre, movie producer, directors & actors involved or if the movie is critically acclamied they easily could puzzle a solid (or at least decent) top 10 every year.
Even if they would just nominate films from USA in all categories the awards would it be interesting because of the diversity but they show that they are not interested in films as an art but just as show business and that provocates that the same films are repeated by inertia in every category.
To resume, my answer: They are simply lazy.
I don't remember who said it in the smackdown podcast, but apathy was the big winner this year. 2020 had a lot of good movies, but audiences had to go about different ways of finding them. No local cinemas to go to, searching different streaming options for the film you wanted to watch, and overall pandemic fatigue probably tired people out so instead of seeking new options they chose familiar ones instead (how many people rewatched seasons of The Office last year)
And what about 2002?
Chicago 13 noms
Gangs of New York 10 noms
The Hours 09 noms
The Pianist 07noms
The Two Towers 06 noms
Road to perdition 06 noms
Frida 06 noms
If we where truth to the qualities...
The Two Towers 14 noms
Far from heaven 12 noms
Catch me if you can 11 noms
Minority Report 09 noms
The Pianist 08 noms
Talk to Her 08 noms
Spirited Away 04 noms