by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
Oh, would you look at the calendar? It appears another month has come and gone. Guess it’s time then to look at another awards season gone by! As a reminder, with our Oscars: What If… series we look at categories the Academy Awards should be honoring, but, for one reason or another, they aren’t. So, we’re going to imagine what could’ve been regarding past Oscar seasons. Hopefully someday the Academy will do right by these creative talents, but until then we must do the Academy’s job for them. Let’s look back at one of the worst years in modern human history!
The year the United Kingdom enacted the Brexit process and formally withdrew from the European Union, a massive explosion due to poorly stored chemicals in Beirut ended up killing 200 people, the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd sparked nationwide protests and the revitalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, Donald Trump was acquitted for his first impeachment, but then proceeded to lose the Presidential Election to Joe Biden and was such a sore loser about it he went on to lie for years about a rigged election, and the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide prompting global lockdown mandates, travel bans, economic instability, and an official death toll of over seven million people, with an estimated death toll between 15-30 million people. Oh, and did I mention murder bees? Damn, wasn’t this year just the most fun thing to ever experience? It is time to examine the films of 2020, celebrated at the Oscars in 2021. Let’s see what could have been!
Best Stunts and Choreography
Given to the best achievement in dance, stunts, related performances, and overall choreography for film.
And the nominees are… Another Round, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), Da 5 Bloods, Extraction, Tenet
And the winner is… Tenet!
Christopher Nolan doing Christopher Nolan things means that time is a construct more than in the hands of any other director… Which means stunt choreographers have to hit the next level to deliver a complete experience. While some of the imagery throughout this film is as simple as running some footage in reverse to project the illusion of time running backwards, a lot of this is still based on excellently timed and well executed choreography and stunt manipulation. Whether it’s exploding buildings and people running around through the debris, or two people wrestling and tackling each other to the ground as they fall backwards and forwards through time simultaneously. This is one of those movies that, as you watch it, you can’t help but be impressed at the sheer scope of the project and all the planning that went into delivering a solid experience. While some might not be the biggest fans of the frequently confusing plot, the choreography and stunt work is nearly above criticism.
Best Performance by Voiceover or Motion Capture
Given to the best off-screen voice performance, or on-screen motion captured performance, for film.
And the nominees are… Tina Fey as 22 in Soul, Jaime Foxx as Joe Gardner in Soul, Honor Kneafsey as Robin Goodfellowe in Wolfwalkers, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Laurel Lightfoot in Onward, Ben Schwartz as Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog
And the winner is… Tina Fey as 22 in Soul!
While this starts off as a simple voice performance that is inherently the embodiment of a child who never wanted to grow up, this Peter Pan archetype reveals itself to be so much more in the hands of Tina Fay, who completely transforms into someone very vulnerable, melancholic, and enthusiastic by the film’s end. By delivering her trademark sense of humor and comedic timing, Fay provides more than enough as 22 to keep us entertained and invested. But it’s her incredible emotional range and sense of expression that has her standing above the crowd relative to all the other nominated voice performances for the year. Happy to award her this Oscar gold.
Best Performance by an Ensemble Cast
Given to the best overall ensemble cast performance for film.
And the nominees are… Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Judas and the Black Messiah, Minari, One Night in Miami…, The Trial of the Chicago 7
And the winner is… One Night in Miami…!
Though this is based on a play that doesn’t really give the most cinematic visual experience, because it’s a play it delivers some of the most sincere and emotional performances you can ask for. Particularly when those performances intersect with one another to provide incredible ensemble energy and chemistry. One Night in Miami… is top-notch. Having these four men, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and Leslie Odom Jr., representing four legendary figures in history, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke respectively, allows the audience to experience these men as never before. Usually, these legends were curated for the public eye, but seeing these excellent performances express such vulnerability and range as these four men contemplate their lot in life, and more importantly their place in history in a world on the brink of social change as the black community is grabbing ahold of their much deserved civil rights, is beyond excellent. Bouts of joy and laughter are just as impassioned as fits of anger and despair, all in service of telling a moving and heartbreaking tale that would never click nearly as well as it does if it were not for these four spilling their hearts out on screen. This is ensemble excellence.
Best Directorial Debut
Given to the best achievement in direction by a debut directing talent for film.
And the nominees are… Max Barbakow for Palm Springs, Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, Regina King for One Night in Miami…, Darius Marder for Sound of Metal, Florian Zeller for The Father
And the winner is… Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman!
Alright, alright. Calm down. Put your pitchforks away. It’s my article, not yours. I will not indulge any of your shenanigans here! Acknowledging the fact that many people are phrasing this politely, not a fan of Fennell, I’m sorry but I feel her work is incredible here. Her later works? Not so much. But Promising Young Woman? This is worth recognizing. Setting aside the controversial ending, this is clearly a well-directed film. From pacing, understanding of tone, the pop art production design and corresponding cinematography. All while garnering some outstanding performances from a talented ensemble cast, Fennell is pulling a lot of levers and delivering some impressive cinematic art. Then, when considering the ending, the decision to subvert audience expectations and ground the storytelling in a heartbreaking fashion is a move that very few directors would even dare to tackle. One that is even more devastating today as the film has seen a resurgence due to the news last week of the tragic Cornell University rape scandal. It’s always a bummer when films like this remain eternally prescient because men cannot respect women and the institutions whose responsibility to protect their students cannot be bothered to hold these men to account. Props to Fennell for pulling off this film given how upsetting the subject matter remains. Props to Fennell for pulling it off. Or another way to say it, you may not agree with Fennell’s scriptwriting choices, but her directing choices are always on point. Fennell, the gold is yours.
Best Popular Film
Given to the best audience supported motion picture that earned a spot as one of the top 25 box office films of the year.
And the nominees are… Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), The Invisible Man, Palm Springs, Soul, Tenet
And the winner is… Soul!
Traditionally, at the beginning of every article in this series I list a bunch of events that took place in a given year to set a place in time for you, the reader. Mentioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 terrorist attacks paints a picture and gives context to the world, and then subsequently the movie landscape, as it pertains to handing out these awards. However, for as long as I’ve been listing these historical events, such events have always been relegated to the opening introductory paragraph in these articles.
Until now.
It is impossible to talk about what could possibly be the Best Popular Film from 2020 without talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. While we were all impacted by the pandemic, very few industries went through such a public crisis as the movie theater industry. With government mandated shutdowns and lockdowns taking place worldwide and going much longer than most citizens of the world anticipated, there was almost no physical way people could go see movies, and that’s if people were even comfortable with going out in public and being around other people in the first place. Studios started being pro-active with postponing the release of many of their films, from large blockbusters to indie awards contenders, and by mid-March 2020 most theaters were closed down. While some opened later in the year to release films like Tenet which Warner Bros. tried to force into existence to the detriment of their ongoing relationship with legendary director Christopher Nolan, most movies ended up going straight to streaming with the highly controversial day-and-date release strategy where people could pay $30 or $40 to watch a new release at home the same day it would be released in theaters. All of this combined to nearly kill cinema-going experiences and deteriorate the movie theater industry.
By year’s end the highest domestic grossing movie was Bad Boys for Life, which was a surprising smash hit bringing in $204.4million despite not even being that great of a movie. But do you know what the second highest domestic grosser was? 1917. A 2019 film from the previous year that was a Best Picture nominee. Yup, the second highest grossing film of the calendar year, wasn’t even from the calendar year. In fact, only two films released in calendar year 2020 actually broke $100 million domestically, and that’s the previously mentioned Bad Boys for Life as well as Sonic the Hedgehog. To go one step further, four of the top 11 domestic earners from 2020 were actually released in 2019, and of the other six films in the top 11, all 11 of them were released before theaters shut down in mid-March. The highest grossing film released after lockdowns started in mid-March was the aforementioned Tenet, sitting in 12th place domestically on the year and bringing in a measly $57.2 million. Can you imagine that? A Nolan film not even breaking $60 million. Not great.
Why was all this preamble necessary? To establish the fact that the main metric we have always used to nominate a Best Popular Film, the film’s box office performance is a non-factor in 2020. So, it just comes down to vibes, baby. What were people streaming, watching, talking about online, and logging a whole bunch on Letterboxd while we were all stuck at home. Unfortunately, this kinda leans into a “Trust me, bro” style of argument, which I hate, but without raw numbers to back up my points you’re just gonna have to trust me… bro.
With all that said, I’m giving this win to Soul. While Bad Boys for Life was the one and only box office hit, it wasn’t the greatest movie so it’s not even getting nominated. The only box office earner in the conversation is Tenet, which was controversial in its own ways so it’s not getting the win. The other films were streaming hits, while Birds of Prey had a couple of weeks theatrical run, as theaters were shutting down and transitioned into a streaming success. In terms of why Soul was more popular, well, you just had to be there. The online discourse surrounding this movie at the time was very positive with some suspecting it was in the Best Picture conversation at one point. The Christmas day Disney+ release also guaranteed a lot of eyes on this film, even from people’s living room couch. If you’re going strictly on accolades, the winner is also absolutely Soul. It did exceptionally well in the awards circuit, including two BAFTA wins, a Critics’ Choice win, two Golden Globe wins, and two Oscar wins for both Best Animated Feature and Best Score. As much as I’d personally love to award Palm Springs the winner due to my own admiration for that time-twisted romcom, it’s undeniable that Soul is the Best Popular Film of 2020 and all the crazy COVID-19 pandemic awfulness we had to suffer through.
That’s gonna do it! Thanks for joining me on another trip down memory lane to see what could’ve been! We got to talk about another action flick full of Christopher Nolan time manipulation tomfoolery, Emerald Fennell’s controversial debut, and arguably the greatest time-loop movie ever made. Be sure to come back next time when we look at films like Dune, In the Heights, and Spider-Man: No Way Home as we’ll examine the Oscars of 2022, celebrating the films of 2021!
You can read more from Heath Lynch, and follow him on Letterboxd