Oscars Outsider - Who Will Be the Villain of the 2027 Oscars?

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Craig and Dylan ask one of the juiciest questions of awards season: who is going to become this year’s Oscar villain?What actually makes a movie the villain of an awards race? We look back at some notorious examples — The Greatest Show on Earth, Crash, La La Land, and Green Book — and examine how politics, frontrunner fatigue, backlash, and the movie positioned as the “hero” can completely reshape an Oscar season.Then we turn to 2027. Could Fjord become the political lightning rod? Is I Play Rocky the kind of broad, backward-looking crowd-pleaser that awards watchers eventually turn on? Could Michael, Obsession, or even Toy Story 5 become the movie everyone is desperate to see lose?Plus: immediate changes to our Oscars Fantasy Draft, Artificial surging after New York, The Social Reckoning stumbling, Digger fading, and which films came out of NYFF looking stronger — or much weaker.Who do you think will be the villain of this awards season?#Oscars2027 #OscarsPredictions #AwardsSeason #OscarsOutsider

If obsession becomes the best picture nominee, I'll be first in line to call out the Oscars villain. Because, you know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know what, I'm not a fan. Another one that I think could be a potential villain is if the Academy decides to get cute and there's a big push for Toy Story 5, I could see this becoming a little bit of a villain because, well, this movie sucks. So when we first talked about I Play Rocky around the time that it was about to premiere at TIF, we had some comments where people were referring to. I think mostly what I was saying, saying like, oh, you're not going to make I Play Rocky the Oscars villain. And I'm not trying to make I Play Rocky their Oscars villain. But if it happens, I want you to credit me. Welcome to Oscars outsider.

Who is going to be the villain of this year's awards race? That is the question that we're going to be asking tonight. and what do we mean when we refer to a movie as the Oscars villain? We're going to be investigating that by exploring some historical examples of movies that became the Oscars villain before circling back to the present year and asking that question about the current crop of films. So welcome, this is Oscars Outsider, a podcast. About the awards race and Hollywood history, I'm Dylan and that's Craig. How's it going, man? I'm doing all right.

I got a bit of a cold, so I apologize to our listeners for the voice, but maybe you like that. It just makes you sexier. You got to give me some of that. So, the virus. So we like to start things off with a little bit of news and updates. We did do our Oscars draft last year, our awards season draft last week, which is a game that we're going to be playing from now until Hollywood's biggest night. I kind of want to see, Craig, if you wanted to make any adjustments, make any trades, make

any drops or any picks before we move on to the news. You know, maybe it is the virus that I have that is making me a little crazy, but I kind of am itching to drop one and pick up another. So am I. Should we like flip a coin to see who gets to go first or like, because there is strategy in play. Like if you go first, obviously you can claim the title that possibly we're both trying to claim, we don't know.

But if you go second, then you get to claim the title that the other person dropped, if that becomes something that's more interesting to you. Should we just flip a coin? And then we decide, like, whoever wins gets to decide whether they'd rather go first and second because I think we both have something that we want to do here. Okay. Sure. Yeah, let's do it.

All right, right. Call it. Hads. Hold on. Got to redo that. All right. You're going to have to edit this. You are going to have to edit this.

It's hard to do sitting down with a microphone in your face. You said heads. I got tails. That's tails. Okay. Okay. All right. I was not cheating, by the way, just for the record.

Those were mis-flips. Okay, I'm going to go first then. I'm going to go first because this might be obviously recency bias. The thing is, just to explain for our listeners, we are allowed to drop a title and pick up a new title to replace it only twice during the preseason. That means between now and December 3rd. And then we get to do it once more between December 4th and Oscars night. So we have to be strategic about when you do this because you can't just do it an unlimited number of times. Obviously, the advantage of waiting longer is that you get more information, but the advantage of doing it sooner is that you maybe get to jump on titles before the other person does.

And that's kind of my strategy here. So I used the 25th overall pick last week on the misadventures of Cliff Booth or whatever it's called. Bye. I'm kicking that out by Cliff Booth. Okay. I'm using that slot to jump on artificial. Okay. I thought that that might be where you were going on this.

Okay. It might be a knee jerk reaction because artificial just preemie out of the New York Film Festival generally very positive reactions. And really there's kind of two things in there that are making me think, damn, I really want this movie on my roster. One is that it has been made clear that Neon is going to be pushing Andrew Garfield as supporting actor for playing Sam Altman, not as a, as actor, because lead actor, it just felt like there's no chance.

Like there's no room in the race for a new elite actor candidate. Supporting kind of makes more sense. There might be a better lane there. And also you can kind of see the redemption narrative. A lot of people thought that Andrew Garfield got snubbed when he wasn't nominated for a supporting actor for the social network, even though he was nominated in like the Golden Globes and the Sags and a bunch of stuff, but he did not get the Oscar nomination. A lot of people, of course, are comparing the social network to artificial.

you can see the storyline forming there. So I think there's a slot for our best supporting actor nomination. Could there be other things like screenplay? Maybe the ceiling would be a best picture nomination, probably unlikely, but it could happen. And the other thing that gives me a bit of hope is that I feel like neon's other titles are not doing that great right now. Fjord, the Palm Dora winner is a neon title.

And it does kind of feel like it, you know, it's slipping since it's been playing in North American. festivals. A lot of people have been critical or dismissive of it. All of a sudden is another one they have. It's like three hours long. I'm not sure if that's going to be everybody's cup of tea. Otherwise, they've got paper tiger. Kind of hard to believe that they're really going to go full court press on this. So which movie is Neon really going to muster their forces behind and push? After a big premiere at the New York Film Festival, that could be artificial. So that the supporting actor potential, the fact that Neon might like really be rallying their forces around

it because they don't really have another film that feels really well positioned makes me feel like them. I want to grab that before Craig grabs that. Were you thinking of grabbing that or not at all? So that did cross my mind. I was not actually going to pick that up, but I think that is a really, really smart pickup. I'm going for something a little more stupid. I am just feeling so good about my coyote crew. I am dropping Fatherland and picking up Acme versus our coyote versus Acme. So let's go.

Give an Aru in the comments if you're on the coyote crew. But I yeah, I just want this one on my roster and I feel like when we have to trim our rosters, there's no way this is making the cut, obviously. But I just want

to ride the coyote train. So I'm going to strap on those rocket skates and let's go. And drop an anvil on Pavel Pavlovakowski's heads. Yeah, exactly. But I think your pickup for artificial is really smart. I do think it has a pretty high ceiling, actually, if it gains momentum. And like you said, the New York Film Fest premiere actually seemed like it went really well.

I could see this building up a lot of momentum, especially, like, maybe it's just because social reckoning is bombing right now. But this could be the film that people. want social reckoning to be. Yeah. It has the timeliness factor. Who did the score for this one? It is,

so it's not Trent Resner, but it's, oh, you know what, it's Damon Alburn, the guerrillas guy. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's going for another like indie pop star instead of Trent Resner this time,

Luca Guadino is. I mean, there was a, there was a huge, like, outcry about challengers not getting its score nominated. And I just feel like Guadonino has an ear for what a good, what would make a good score. So there could be- The Tom York soundtrack for Susperia is insane, by the way.

I just feel like that doesn't get enough love sometimes. There you go. So I do think that that's something that's in play. This is one that I really feel like is on the rise. And we could be talking about this in the best picture conversation for sure. I mean, I could definitely see it. Yeah. I do kind of enjoy that whenever Guadino needs to find somebody to do a score for his movies,

he's just like going to whoever was on his iPod playlist in 2000 or whatever. But maybe, yeah, you know, there could be some other stuff and some other nomination potential in there. Like I could maybe see screenplay. So, sure. Very recency bias. Of course, that's kind of the risk here is that I'm just reaction. reacting to what happened yesterday, you know. And, you know, it's not impossible that I regret dropping Cliff Booth if when that eventually opens,

it has a better than expected critical reception. But for now, I feel good kicking Cliff Booth to the curb to make room for artificial. You know, the thing that I don't like about Cliff Booth is I feel like Brad Pitt is a little bit untouchable right now. Like, I don't think that Academy voters or the general popular. is really that supportive of him. So I feel like that is probably going to hurt the chances of the cliff booth. And I don't know how motivated David Fincher is going to be in order to be pushing this movie since he has exited his Netflix deal. I mean, that's just like a wild guess.

I don't know. He might still be like super active on this if it sort of emerges as a potential contender. but I think that that's a really smart, smart drop. Yeah, or how active Quentin Tarrantino will be in pushing the movie too, since. Yeah, exactly. Fincher's not doing a lot of interview availability. People are going to be trying to seek out to Tarantino.

But he might be too busy pushing his swashbuckling comedy for the West End Theater with Sasha Mara Cohen that was just announced this week. Yeah, I saw that. Endless side projects before he gets around to making his 10th film. So you mentioned the social. Recording and that was a movie that neither of us drafted and when I asked the question at the end of our draft we drafted 26 movies between us which one do you think people might find most surprising that we didn't draft you immediately said the social reckoning I think we both look pretty big brained about that right now because as you alluded to the opening weekend for social reckoning was just happened was not good a lot of critics were were very tepid about the film and it did not make very much money something like 6 million or something. Deadline said in their headline,

the social reckoning gets downvoted at the box office, which I love because downvoting is not a thing you do on Facebook. It's a wrong website. But yeah, doing pretty poorly right now. This definitely looks like a movie that's going to be disappeared long before we really get to award season proper. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Speaking of movies that feel like they're kind of disappearing, Digger got yanked out of IMAX theaters. I saw that. And they're just putting the Odyssey back. Just more of the Odyssey. So that could not be a more clear message of which movie is continuing to gain momentum. How you get into awards season and which movie is just on the way out. I don't think people are done debating Digger.

I think that's going to continue for the rest of the year. Maybe years to come, this like this split between people are being like disaster, terrible, fail, and other people are being like, it's secretly a masterpiece of the public didn't appreciate. That's that debate's not going to go away, but Digger is not necessarily going to be something we're going to be talking about as a movie winning awards going forward. I do like that we have this new test for movies that are playing in IMAX that other films potentially maybe like, you know, Avengers, Dune 3 or the Cliff Booth movie might have to face going forward, which is like, how long can you stay at IMAX theaters before they just say,

now we want more Odyssey. We want the Odyssey back in there. Get Out. Get Out. Get out. Right. Well, what else has been going on? What else has been going on this week? The New York Film Festival just wrapped up. What do you think, Craig, are the big kind of winners and losers of the New York Film Festival in terms of there aren't awards, of course, but in terms of the narrative around them? I mean, I think artificial is definitely the biggest one for me. You know, a great response. I think this is something that was not on a lot of people's, like, top 10 lists for best picture.

and I'm seeing it start to sneak in. So that's huge. That's definitely the big one. The debut as well, I think, is like a medium winner. I think it's some people are saying it's not exactly what they expected. So I think that there are maybe a bit more question marks, but it still there's not a lot of negative attention on it, at least that I've seen.

So I think that that's good. I feel like weird is is good. I feel like if this movie wasn't at least a little weird, then it might end up being boring and a little bit award sloppy. Because the story that we get previewed within the trailer feels a little bit cookie cutter to me. You know, there's pretty like well-worn archetypes within this. And I think that having something to spice it up a little bit and make it a little bit weird is going to really go in its favor. So I'm excited for that.

And yeah, it's risen in my books, at least. Yeah, I think New York is a more favorable audience for it than Tell You Right in Toronto, where I think some critics were a little more lukewarm on it. I think maybe some of the weirdness or complexity, if you prefer, plays better in that room. I think the worry over the debut in terms of its Oscar chances is like, is it just becoming a movie that's all about Julianne Moore and nothing else? Because people seem to really dig her performance and it had a midfilm standing ovation or at least a applause break, maybe not standing ovation, but applause break at New York, which is not necessarily the kind of thing you expect from New York. But you wonder if this is going to be a movie, which is going to produce the best actress winner very potentially, but not how. have any other nominations because it becomes just all about the performance and not the film itself. But yeah, I agree with that. It's maybe a medium riser at New York.

There could be some projection of like a real pain onto this like this narrative of it producing just the lead, just an acting winner or whatever. Yeah. Which I think is fair. Obviously, probably the best comparable that we have at this point. But I think that, yeah, I still see it as like having a pretty good shot. Oh, also, you can see everything is rising as a result of New York Nell Fest. But what the ceiling for that film remains to be seen, I think. Yeah. I would put possible love in the category of a movie, which continues to rise just because critics love that movie

in every festival it's played. that so far. It is going to probably finish the year as one of the year's best reviewed films. It is going to be on top 10 lists. The question is, will the critical love actually translate into award season reception or not? But in terms of at least how the critics are viewing films, possible love feels like just such an unstoppable force. All the critics really seem to love it a lot. Let me talk about movies that might be falling. And I think that the weak reception for behemoth might have been even worse

than I thought last week when we talked about it when I mentioned that the initial screening did not, was generally well received, but a lot of the reviews were not always great. And some outlets were actually totally negative towards it.

I think with a bit more time to digest, that is really translating to a poor reception for the film, which I traded to acquire during the draft, despite the premier already having happened and me, you know, having some vocal misgivings about how it went. Stupid fucking bitch. Jesus Christ, Craig.

Calm down, first of all. But, but yeah, that's a movie that I think is one of those examples where the, where the premiere went sideways for it and might not be. in the Oscar conversation at all. Though we'll see. I mean, I saw Clayton Davis in Variety trying to push the angle that that we should rally around

Pedro Pascal as like the Latino actor that Oscars don't nominate Latinos enough and that should be the narrative that we should go with to get Pedro Pascal a best actor nomination. Not sure it's going to happen though. Yeah, I would agree that this one is definitely falling. I think the worst thing that could have happened was a mostly tepid review here with some negative that's like it's not even getting

the fjord like people are debating about it or the digger people are debating about the thing it's mostly it feels a little too meh which is kind of the worst of both worlds yeah totally right um any other news that we should cover before we jump into our feature um i don't think that there's anything too huge that i saw i mean i'm seeing there's something that there's something Some pushing for the Musk documentary. Alex Gibney, I think, did like a Reddit AMA. And I think it was just at the London Film Fest. Also, Taylor Swift is on the campaign trail.

She's going to be performing at the Academy Museum Gala. But nothing too crazy that I have seen in the news this. Right. Well, what we're going to ask tonight is a especially juicy question, which is which movie, not which movie is going to be the first. front runner, which movie is going to win, but which movie is going to emerge as the Oscar season villain? And to do so, I kind of want to talk about what we mean when we call a movie the Oscar season villain. Because for one thing, it has to be kind of a contender, right?

The movie's not really a villain if it has like one nomination for production design. We're talking about a movie that has to be a contender that a lot of people just really want to see lose, that a lot of people just really don't like. So to try to get a handle on what we're talking about, we have decided to each pick one film that was an Oscar villain in their year from Hollywood history. Two, actually. We're each going to do two. We're going to go back and forth here.

And should we maybe just go in chronological order and start with the oldest one and then move on to the most recent one? Yeah, sure. That works. Yeah, that lets us bounce back and forth. So we're going to have a couple more familiar recent cases. But I wanted to start by digging a little. little deeper into the past and talk about an older Oscars villain. And I'm talking about the greatest show on Earth, which was a contenter at the 25th Academy Awards held in 1953 for the

films of 1952. The greatest show on Earth you might know is a circus movie, a big circus spectacle filmed by Cecil B. DeMille in collaboration with Ringland Brothers Circus, starring Charlton Heston in as a steely-jawed circus manager and an all-star cast, including Jimmy Stewart as a sad clown who wears clown makeup throughout the entire film, one of its more baffling choices. And one of the points that I want to make on this show is that I think, like when we talk about an Oscars villain, it's always, or usually in reference to the prevailing political climate at the time. There's always a political dimension to this.

And usually we're talking about a movie that is either seen as being abetting the worst parts of the current political climate or failing to contradict the worst parts of the prevailing political climate. And when I talked about the prevailing political climate in Hollywood in 1952, I'm talking about the Hollywood blacklist. So to quickly explain what the Hollywood blacklist is for anybody listening who doesn't really understand that well what this means. Basically, so where we got to in 1952, starts kind of in 1946 when the Hollywood Reporter starts publishing these lists of people working on Hollywood that they see as fellow travelers, as people who have communist sympathies who are secretly trying to put communist messages in films.

This is being done by William R. Wilkerson, who is the founder and publisher of the Hollywood reporter. And some more right-wing figures in the American government started picking up on this. The House on American Activities Committee was founded in 1947. This committee started telling people from Hollywood who were on these lists published in the Hollywood reporter to come down to Washington, D.C. and sit in front of Congress and answer questions about whether or not they had communist affiliations. And initially, the reaction from most bigwigs in Hollywood's was indignation, was just like, you know, how dare you try to interfere with our business like this? though a few people on Hollywood were immediately sympathetic to this and wanted to help it like Walt Disney, Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan. Most of the big stars, while they banded together and formed what they called the Committee for the First Amendment, they seem to see this as an opportunity to show the world, you know, we're standing on principle, we're brave and we're not going to be bullied by these weird right wingers in the government.

The Committee for the First Amendment includes a lot of the biggest stars at the time. the big directors too, like John Ford and John Houston and stars like Henry Fonda, Betty Davis, Judy Garland and Humphrey Bogart, who was a huge star at the time, was kind of their ringleader. They flew a chartered plane with a lot of press coverage to Washington, D.C., and it kind of didn't go how they expected it to. They discovered that a lot of the American public was actually sympathetic to the Hewack Committee, the House on American Activities Committee, and actually agreed with this idea that was being pushed by right-wingers in the press, that, you know, we got to do something about these damn communists in Hollywood. Also, Humphrey Bogart found out that some people in the Committee for the First Amendment

had at some point in their past been members of the American Communist Party, including the actor Sterling Hayden. So Humphrey Bogart did kind of a dramatic about face and published a column that was syndicated throughout the William Randolph's newspapers at the time called How Bogart sees it now, where he basically backtracked and said, like, you know what, actually, I'm a proud American, by the way, and we do have to be worried about communists. And that signaled kind of this beginning of this period where Hollywood kind of started cowering and fear of the of the unamerican activities committee and began cannibalizing itself. And suddenly the Screen Actors Guild started requiring everybody, all the actors to sign loyalty pledges saying that they're, you know, loyal to the United States of America.

They've never been affiliated with a communist organization. Studios, especially RKO studios started enforcing loyalty pledges. and everybody started throwing their friends under the buses and snitching on their collaborators. And a bunch of people ended up getting basically banned from having any work. Some people faced jail time and fines. A lot of people had to flee to Europe. And by the time we get to 1952, a new round of Hewak hearings was being held. But this time, they were much more emboldened because Hollywood was basically completely complying out of fear and cowardice, basically, with what was going on.

And a lot of people were losing their jobs as a result of this. That's where we are in 1952. This is a big deal about what's happening in Hollywood right now. And a lot of people are kind of outraged that nobody is really showing any moral courage anymore in Hollywood. So in that climate, we get the big new Cicill B. DeMille movie, the greatest show on Earth, which on the one hand, a lot of people dislike it because it's kind of just a big dumb spectacle. Bosley Crowther's review in the New York Times, which is positive in a lot of ways. Nonetheless, it kind of chastises it for being kind of, kind of, kind of silly and and dumb.

And he's got the quote, it isn't penetrating. It certainly is not profound. It is simply a romance of the circus, which makes no dramatic claims. So it's a very like, the show must go on kind of like, we got to keep entertaining the people no matter what.

That's all that matters. And a lot of people did not like that message at the time. Also, Cessal B. DeMille, who had been making these spectacle movies for a long time, he was well into his 70s at this point, was kind of getting a lifetime achievement award by getting his movie into the Oscar contender status.

He was also a very staunch Republican. And it was seen as kind of a very, very safe choice. The movies that I was going off against, because the other thing about having a Hollywood villain is that you have to have a Hollywood hero that counters it. And the nominees for Best Picture for the 1952 films included John Houston's Moulin Rouge and John Ford's The Quiet Man.

but the movie that was seen as the hero to the villain by most people who hated the greatest show on earth was High Noon. High Noon, directed by Fred Zimmerman for Stanley Kramer as producer, was written by Carl Foreman, who had in the past been a member of the American Communist Party. And High Noon would end up being the last movie that he got to have his credits on as an official writer before he himself was blacklisted. And at the time, High Noon was out. it was pretty clear that Carl Foreman was going to be a target of the blacklist. Hinen's story about a small town sheriff, who's the only person who has a spine in the town when everybody is just kind of crumbling into cowardice faced by bullies from the outside, was seen by a lot of people as a parable for the blacklist from a writer who himself knew

that he was about to get blacklisted. So that was seen by many people as like the more courageous film. And when the greatest show on earth won best picture at the 1953 Academy Awards, the first Academy Awards to be televised, it was seen as a disgrace by a lot of people who wished that Hollywood had more courage in the face of what was going on. So that's why I pick the greatest show on earth as an early kind of prime example of what we mean by an Oscars villain. That's great. And people hate this movie. Like to this day, this is one of the best picture winners that shows up on any sort of list of, of worst best picture winners. So this is a great, like, proto villain for what, when we talk about an Oscar villain,

what we're talking about. Yeah. And I think the stink of it being an Oscars villain is really why it carries that reputation. The fact that it won two, it won on just having five nominations. There weren't as many nomination possibilities then as there were at the time. But, like, those other movies I mentioned, Moulin Rouge, the Quiet Man, High Noon, They all had seven nominations each. The Greatest Show on Earth only had two wins.

It was the, that was a record from fewest wins for a Best Picture winner until Spotlight tied it with also getting just two wins. But the fact that it has that bad reputation today, I think is really a result of this. I don't think the greatest show on Earth is a bad movie. I like the greatest show on Earth. I think it's a pretty good movie. But the reputation, I think, is really the kind of continuing cultural residue. of those narratives from that time.

And, you know, not everybody hates it. Steven Spielberg is, like, the biggest fan in the world who, who said it was, like, the movie that made him, well, it was the first movie he saw, apparently. And he made it his, like, origin story in the fableman. So, like, him as a child going to see the greatest show on Earth and seeing the train wreck scene. But there's a lot of people who probably hate the movie and who hate Spielberg, too, who would say, like, yeah, that makes sense.

Awesome. That's great. Well, I want to talk about one that is a little bit more recent than that. It feels like just yesterday that this happened, but it was back in 2006, I believe, the 78th Academy Awards. And I'm talking about crash. So to kind of set the stage for this going into awards night, there was a pretty clear favorite. And that was Brokeback Mountain. Angley's beautiful film

and it had previously won the Golden Line at Venice it won the Golden Globe for drama. It won the BFTA's Critics Choice PGA, DGA, it was definitely the favorite and I think bookmakers at the time had it

with odds as short as like one and two so I this was the film that people expected to win. This was the film that people wanted to win. So this was the odds-on favorite to win that year. And ultimately, what ended up winning when Jack Nicholson opened the envelope was Crash. So the villain's story around Crash really emerged after the awards for the most part. So there were a ton of pieces that came out in the various

trade, uh, trade publications that said this was the, the, the safe choice. This was, um, you know,

an uncomplicated film about racism by a white Canadian losing to a, um, like a, a beautiful nuanced gay love story. And overwhelmingly, like you said, the failure to meet the,

the politics of the time when there was a clear film that did was what kind of hardened this idea of crash as as a villain. And this was later reassessed in 2015. There was a re-vote of Academy members that ultimately said that broke back, broke back mountain should have been awarded that year. One thing that I found interesting while I was researching this was there were a special set of circumstances that ultimately led to crash winning. And at the time, there was a screener ban that all of the major studios were under.

So they weren't allowed to send out DVDs or VHSs to voting members at the time. Because there were major concerns about piracy. Crash was exempt from this for two reasons. One, it was Lionsgate. So it was not a major studio. It was an indie. So it wasn't part of this agreement. The second was that it was already out on DVD.

It was a spring release, which is really uncharacteristic of a Best Picture winner. And so they were able to really blitz the screeners. They send out like over 100,000 DVD copies to SAG members. And they spent about like $250,000 overall on the, the blitzing of the screeners, and they were ultimately able to win based on this. So, yeah, so there's definitely some villainy within the campaign for this, but, and even I think Paul Higgis was asked in 2015, like was Crash the best film of the year

and admitted that it probably was not. But this is a film that emerged from. from TIF basically, which I think is a bit of a birthplace for a lot of Oscar villains. And it ended up making like 15 times its budget. And audiences generally seem to like this. So I think the status as a villain is mostly within, I think, either awards, awards watchers and critical circles and, you know, cinnophiles and film Twitter. but at the time this was a film that people did like. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

That's, I did not know that stuff about the screeners. That's really interesting. And I think the other thing that made it a really good villain, like you say, the hero was Brokeback Mountain. And I think a lot of people saw it as very unfair because at that point, the Oscars had not yet started their campaign to try to diversify and make younger their voting body. So it was well known that the voting body of the Oscars was,

was getting very old. It was geriatric at that point. The average age was like 60 something. Like it was a very old voting body. And I remember, I think there was at least two actors, Jack Lemon and Ernest Borg died of memory serves, who just straight up said, they're Oscar voters. And they straight up said in interviews, I'm not going to see that movie, broke back mountain because it's gay.

Like, I'm just not going to see a gay movie. So if there's a couple people saying it, how many people are not saying it? And that was part of the outrage at the time was like all these, all these, old-ass men who had careers in the 1950s are just not going to vote for a gay movie. And that's why even though the gay movie is better, according to a lot of people, including me, like, I'm by no means a crash hater, but broke back balance and rules. Like, that's a really good movie.

That they're just like stubborn out-of-date politics is what's preventing the better movie from winning. Even though the vote was apparently super close, right? Like they say this is one of the closest votes of all time. which means that just a few bigots could have turned the result. Totally, yeah. All right. So keeping things chronological, I'm going to move a little bit later, about 10 years later, to the 89th Academy Awards held in 2017 for the films of 2016.

And my next example of an Oscars villain is La La Land. For sure, a lot of people like La Land too, but at the time it really got embroiled in controversy. And once again, I just want to call attention to the political climate at the time. This Oscars campaign happened around the same time as the first election of Donald Trump heading into Donald Trump's inauguration. So we're talking about 2016 here. This was not coincidentally as Donald Trump was rising to power was kind of a moment that we could call like peak woke 1.0. Like there was this was really a high watermark in terms of like Twitter activism,

people writing articles on medium about how this thing is problematic for this reason. and La La Land gets dropped into the middle of this extremely contentious atmosphere. And what a lot of people call like a fun throwback musical, a lot of other people start jumping on as like a regressive movie that is not part of the resistance, but is actually part of the problem. Some jazz critics called it really bad for jazz. Other people called it like a white jazz savior movie. And I think probably kind of summing up the tone of this, there is a Pace magazine article by Jeff Nelson, which was titled The Unbearable Whiteness of La La Land, which include the lines.

There lies a profound irony in liberal white folks heading to La La Land to repair after a political season overflowing with the nostalgia of white supremacy. For all its gauzy backwards glancing, Chazelle's film might be subtitled, Make Hollywood Great Again. there is a lot of, I guess, suspicion towards anything that was nostalgic, anything that felt regressive, that anything that was looking with starry eyes towards the past, especially as regards, you know, white people at that time. And a lot of people pounced on La La La Land for that reason and turned into the villain. So if that's the villain, the hero this year would, of course, would have been Moonlight, which was a movie that was not a razzle-dazzle spectacle,

the way that La La Land was. And that's part of it too, right? Like with The Greatest Show on Earth. And this is also a case of people, I think, just being like, we don't want to rally behind a movie that's all about spectacle and colors and dancing and singing and stiging and trapeze artists and stuff. You know, movies should be serious art, God damn it. You know, stop celebrating the distracting entertainment. But it felt like this was not the moment that it was the moment. for a movie like Moonlight, which was a more low-budget movie,

a more realistic movie, a movie whose hero was a poor queer black guy, you know, set in a suburb of Florida, something that spoke to the current moment that spoke to people whose stories are not often being told. And I think that's what made it in that climate just a very, a very potent villain at the time. And of course, no Oscars villain could possibly have had a more Hollywood perfect defeat then La La La La Land's defeat,

which this was the famous year where they had the wrong envelope where Warren Beatty and Faye Dunway originally announced that La La La La Land was the winner before it was revealed that no, they had been given the envelope for Best Actress by accident and the actual winner.

The whole La La La La La La Lawn crew is up on stage giving their acceptance speeches when one of the producers had to say, actually no, Moonlight, you guys get up here, you guys actually won. So if, most of these Hollywood villains we're talking about our movies that won.

La Lallad is the rare instance of a villain that gets the actual victory snatched from its hands right on stage on Oscars Night, which is one thing that makes it an especially iconic Hollywood villain. That's great. Well, there's a little bit of a thread here

because I'm going to talk about two years later. And this is also a film that stars Mashala Ali except this time he's in the villain and that's of course the green book which if Crash was supposedly unnuanced

this is I don't know what to say about this this movie this is a film that rightfully was criticized along the campaign trail about having a lot of tropes within this prestige like

race drama that are just very dated. And I think what compounded that was the fact that this also had films that like Black Klansman from Spike Lee and Black Panther, there were lots of better choices within this race. But the frontrunner was Roma. So a lot of the criticisms that came about this for this movie were with regards to this white savior trope and this bigot redemption arc

that the black lead within this film only existed in order to make a white man better. But there were multiple other controversies that came up. One was that a resurfaced

tweet from Nick Valolonga, who was the co-writer of this film, emerged where he was agreeing with some sort of misinformation that came out of Donald Trump where there's a story of Muslims cheering on 9-11. And this is a film that really just, again, failed to meet the moment. I believe that Vigo Mortensen also dropped an end bomb on the campaign trail during a Q&A. and he was trying to make a point about period language,

but had to issue a apology. There were Newsweek stories from 1998 that reemerged about fairly flashing his colleagues as a prank. There was just all sorts of controversy about this film. But at the end of the night, it ended up winning against what emerged as the favorite end and the critical darling, which was Roma. Yeah.

And also the other thing I remember about this was that so, Mahershal Ali's character is Don Shirley, who was a real guy, a jazz musician. His family did not agree to making this movie. And his family was actually against it. Don Shirley was no longer around then. But his family was vocally against the movie saying like, that's not, you know, that's not what our dad was like.

like he this is like a this is a dumb trope character that does not resemble our father and so that's that's a weird thing for a movie to have to contend with when you're a biopic having the family of one of the two principles in the biopic be like no we hate this film and it has nothing to do with the guy it's supposed to represent especially when that guy is the black character in a movie which is you know supposed to be about overcoming racism yeah i i think it was uh don shirley's brother maurice shirley that called it a simple Infany of lies and said that he never considered Tony to be a friend. So, yeah, the family was not consulted in this.

And, you know, I mean, what do you expect from Peter Farrelly? The brain behind there's something about Mary and dumb and dumber. You just hit as big as hits. You're being a lot more kinder than I am when I refer to him as the director of movie 43 and balls up. Those are the best movies he's made, actually, Craig. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And for both La Lela Land and Green Book, which like you said, come out two years apart, this also takes place in the aftermath of Oscar. So White and the kind of the academies stilted attempts to try and diversify their voting body when it had became too apparent that they had just gotten too old, too white, two male, just too out of touch with the reality of America as it was at the time. And so there was. so much scrutiny being paid attention. So many people who are paying attention to the Oscars and scrutinizing it in terms of, like, what are they going to actually do in terms of who they're going to nominate and who they're going to give awards to that shows that they're actually course correcting. And these were two movies that made people think like, no, it's the same old crap. They're not, they're not fixing the problem. One thing that I find interesting about the green book is like there's a fairly close parallel

with Amelia Perez in that there were a lot of scandals that came up. There was this kind of settled narrative amongst the online consensus and film Twitter about this film. But that ended up like tanking

Amelia Perez, whereas the Green Book obviously did not get hit in the same way. Do you have any kind of sense as to why that might be? Yeah, the Green Book had like easy populist appeal, whereas Amelia Perez

was weird as hell. I think that's the big difference there. Yeah, yeah, fair. And Amelia Perez is kind of, it's kind of the way more interesting movie for that reason because it's such a weird goddamn movie. Yeah. Yeah.

And for the record, I kind of like La La La Land too. Like, I'm not like, when I say it's a great Oscars villain, that's not being like the movie sucks. I think it deserved its villainy at that time at that moment. Moonlight is way better.

I love Moonlight. It's a great film. But I, you know what? I like Lola too. I think that's a pretty good movie. Yeah. So I think, yeah, those are four pretty good examples that I think give a pretty strong idea of what we're talking about when we refer to a movie as the Oscars villain. So something that feels like it's regressive in regards to the prevailing political climate that it's part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Something that also I think part of it is movies that feel like same old stuff or like empty calorie, Hollywood spectacle or rather than serious art. And of course, they have to be movies that can be contrasted easily with another movie that is the hero. I think, I don't know if maybe you can agree with me that those are kind of like the key principles of what makes a movie a good Oscars villain. Yeah, I would agree. So with that in mind, let's go back to the current year, look at some of the movies that

we've been talking about as likely contenders to get a lot of Oscar nominations. what looks like a movie that could emerge as this year's Oscar's villain? So there's a few that I had kind of locked in on as potential villains this year. The first one is Fjord. I think that there's a possibility that Fjord becomes the villain because of the politics of it. Yeah, that's one that I think has the potential to be a villain. Yeah, definitely being very discussed as a conservative movie, supported by people who have more conservative viewpoints,

criticized by people who have more liberal viewpoints. And for me, the big question around whether a fjord can emerge as this Oscar season villain is whether it can emerge as a contender. Right. Like I said, it has to be a real contender or kind of doesn't get to be called the villain. You need to earn that title by having a real good chance at winning best picture. And as we've already discussed, Fjord might not have the momentum

to even be a Best Picture nominee at this point. Though we will see if the debate around it can kind of keep it in the spotlight long enough for that to happen. Let me give you another one here. This might have been on your list. So when we first talked about I Play Rocky around the time that it was about to premiere at TIF,

we had some comments where people were referring to, I think mostly what I was saying, saying like, oh, you're not going to make I Play Rocky the Oscars villain. And I'm not trying to make I play Rocky their Oscars villain. But if it happens, I want you to credit me. Because I think that it definitely has the juice for that. I think it definitely has the juice.

Well, for one thing, it is from Peter Farrely, the same guy who made the Green Book. And for similar reasons, it is a movie that feels like kind of a regressive crowd pleaser, kind of like an empty calorie thing that gets like that easily appeals to like all types of people that is, kind of easy spectacle and entertainment and not critical art. It feels kind of regressive in the sense that it's it's cannibalizing a famous story from the past. It's cannibalizing a famous movie from the past. It's looking backwards rather than looking forwards. For all those reasons, I think it could make a pretty good Oscars villain.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's also the element of it being a little bit revisionist about Sylvester Stallone's personality. That's something that people could really push up against. It's going to come down to maybe how this ultimately gets received both by the online audiences and the general public, all the co-workers. I think that's definitely a possibility. Another film that I think for the revisionist reasons and for the looking backwards that I think could potentially, be a Oscar villain. It's kind of falling out of the awards conversation, but I think that it would be

foolish to say that it is completely right out is Michael. I think that this is one that does not have the critics on its side. It does not have, you know, film Twitter on its side. It is carefully dancing around the elephant in the room, moonwalking around the elephant in the room. And I, think that it made a ton of money. Obviously, there are huge amounts of people that like it. And it could definitely, there's a world where it finds itself within that best picture conversation. I don't see it as a serious threat to win best picture, but it could still be within that conversation. Yeah. So when we held our draft last week of the 26 films we drafted, neither of us drafted Michael. So that shows that we at least do not see it as a real contender. but we might be wrong about that.

We definitely talked about it as such earlier. I feel like the days of a musician biopic being kind of like an easy bet to get Oscar nominations have passed. I think the Bruce Springsteen documentary being completely ignored last year was kind of an early bellwether of that. Though the big difference between that and Michael is that that movie did very poor box office and Michael did huge box office. Right. But this will be a big test of whether that's true or not, of whether. this actually does get in. But if it does get into the Best Picture nominations and has some weight behind it,

then totally it'll be a great villain. It'll be a great villain. People, so many people are so sick of these musical biopics. And to have a big musical biopic that most people, that most like critics think sucked and like you said is like failing to address these big obvious famous, you know, child sexual assault allegations is like a great candidate for villainy. Yeah. Do you have any others that are on your list?

Man, I don't know. I mean, Digger would be a good one if it was in the conversation, but it feels like that ship has sailed at this point, I think. So I feel like those are the big ones. I feel like those are really the big ones there. I don't see Diller as a villain necessarily. I do think that there are people that are weirdly passionate about that film. It would have to have been a hit to be a villain.

That's the thing. And it's obviously been. bomb so it's that it kind of lost that potential to have that title i think there's other types of villains that we maybe didn't cover in our examples but the the frontrunner fatigue villain is one that is certainly possible i think that people are getting tired of hearing about obsession to be honest and i i think there's definitely world where this is in the best picture nominee list i I mean, obviously, we're going to be talking about Indy Navarette until awards night. So I think that people are getting tired of hearing about it.

And so I think it's possible that there's a little bit of villainy within Obsession. If Obsession becomes the Best Picture nominee, I'll be first in line to call out the Oscars Phyllis. Because, you know, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know, I'm not a fan. I kind of think it sucks. And I would think that it would be an example for a slightly. different reasons on most of the movies we talked about of the Oscars caving to to box office to public opinion to to just making whatever's the most popular movie whatever the kids are seeing a nominee that's that's how I would see it so I would be happy

to call it a villain for certain people who see that the way I do it would be a good candidate another one that I think could be a potential villain is if the Academy decides to get cute and there's a big push for Toy Story 5. I could see this becoming a little bit of a villain because while this movie sucks, I think Toy Story 5 sucks, I am on record saying that I think this movie sucks. But like there is going to be a lot of people

within the more like Disney adult animation circles that are talking about how inspired of a nomination this would be if it's within the best picture conversation. and maybe it's just going to be my villain. Maybe it won't emerge as the consensus villain, but definitely one that is on my radar that I'm hoping dies a relatively quick death. Someone take its batteries out.

Yeah, all right. I think that's a pretty good list. I mean, of course, for some people, the Odyssey is going to be the villain, but that's mostly due to it being the front runner or like the people saying that being, you know,

our right wingers who are consistent. still remain upset about it, like having, you know, black and trans people in the cast or whatever. But that's a bit of a different thing from what we've been talking about. And any movie that is the frontrunner becomes a prime candidate just for that reason. Like you said, there's the frontrunner factique aspect where people just, after they've been hearing about it for months and months, they want to find reasons to hate it.

And there are just known Nolan haters too. What about Project Hail Mary? Do you think there's villainy potential here? That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah. Again, that's one where I'd be first in line to make it the villain. because I think that's a bad, dumb movie.

Yeah, there's villainy there. There's villainy there for sure. Just in terms of it being like kind of a... Just having a cringe sense of humor. That's one of my problems with the movie. I just find that that kind of comedy to be like really cringe and annoying, just the fact that it's kind of cartoonish

and has like a very kind of epic bacon, I fucking love science vibe to it. That, yeah, you know what? That's a good pick. If that's the best picture nominee, which it very well might be, and has a lot of potential for a lot of nominations. And if Ryan Gosling gets a best actor nomination,

which he could for for doing, for catering to his worst instincts of like just getting cheap laughs, like being like the charming dofus, which he can do so easily, but it's so like unchallenging for him. For all of those reasons, yeah, I would absolutely want that to be a villain.

And I think a lot of people would think the same way as me. Yeah, his A-list Ryan Reynolds stick. Yeah, I could see that. Cool. Well, if any of you who are watching have different villains this year, let us know in the comments. Who do you think will emerge as the consensus villain? Who are your personal villains this year? We want to know. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Anything else we got to cover before we wrap things up, Craig? No. Let's shut it down. Yeah, let's do it. All right. We'll see again next week on the Oscars Outsider. My name is Dylan Ferguson.

you can find some of my writings about movies on Substack if you like. And that's Craig Midwinter. What final words do you want to leave our listeners with Craig? Just hit the like and subscribe button, tell your friends. And again, let us know who your villains are. Yeah. And we'll see you next time with another episode next week of Oscars Outsider. Bye-bye.