Mavericks, multiverses and martial arts: can the geeksphere pull off an Oscar triumph?

Awards season hasn’t always been a happy hunting ground for geeky movies. Every now and then the Academy will pick out a film such as Joker, The Dark Knight or Black Panther for recognition but its top prizes are usually reserved for more esoteric fare. Not since Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2004 has a fantasy film swept the board at the Oscars – and even then, voters were arguably rewarding the trilogy rather than its final instalment.

This year looks a little different, however. And not least because so many critical darlings have struggled so badly at the box office. Usually, movies that pick up early awards-season buzz begin to motor pretty nicely at the box office too. But in the wake of Covid, and cinemas’ glacial march back to financial stability, a number of films have been forced to slink sheepishly into the VOD shadows with nobody willing to pay to see them on the big screen. The case of Todd Field’s Tár, for which Cate Blanchett remains in the running for best actress (but which has so far made just $6.3m at the global box office) is an obvious case in point.

It’s perhaps no shocker then, that movies such as Everything Everywhere All at Once, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Top Gun: Maverick and even Avatar: The Way of Water are finding themselves pushed diffidently into the Oscars mix. After all, these are the films that people actually wanted to see in 2022. And if the Oscars isn’t at least partly about celebrating that then the Academy won’t have to worry about avoiding a repeat of last year’s mayhem, because sooner or later nobody will be watching anyway.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, with its joyful and beguiling spin on the same idea Marvel has been exploring in its cinematic “multiverse”, seems to have come along at the perfect time to mop up all those votes from Academy members looking to reward storytelling ingenuity, while also taking note of unexpectedly impressive box office clout. It is not often that a movie featuring alternate universes, kung fu and a Chinese-American owned laundromat is in the running for best picture, best actress (Michelle Yeoh), best supporting actor (Ke Huy Quan) and best director. Still, if the luminous Yeoh really does beat out Blanchett we might just have to pinch ourselves and wonder if, like Doctor Strange in Avengers: Infinity War, this is the one instance in six billion alternate realities where it ended up being so.

Likewise, Angela Bassett had looked an outside shot for best supporting actress for her striking turn as a grieving mother and ruler of the titular African kingdom in Wakanda Forever. Then she picked up the Golden Globe and Critics Choice gongs, and suddenly a win (or at least a nomination) doesn’t look beyond the bounds of possibility, even if these awards ceremonies are not always the best Oscars bellwethers. The Black Panther franchise’s remarkable journey over the past few years has been one of stupendous verve and resilience, and there will be more tears of joy on Oscars night if Bassett takes home the gong.

Speaking of staying power, the Academy will no doubt be keen to reward James Cameron for defying the naysayers and delivering a return to Pandora that at least kept audiences happy (if not all the critics) with the mind-bogglingly weird and wonderful Avatar: The Way of Water. It’s probably a shoo-in for a best film nod and will no doubt win in various technical categories, allowing the Oscars to reward what looks likely to be the highest-grossing film of the post-pandemic era without having to hand it any of the gongs that really matter.

The year’s other major box office powerhouse is of course Top Gun: Maverick, a movie that defied the box-office downturn to get filmgoers of all ages back into multiplexes faster than an F-18 pilot. After all those years stuck in development hell, the surprising thing was how natural it felt to see Tom Cruise back on the big screen as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Joseph Kosinski’s laser-guided direction identified all the most vital sentimental touchstones for our boyish 60-year-old hero to connect with, from breaking bread with Val Kilmer’s Ice Man to making right with Miles Teller’s Rooster. Cruise is a decent bet for a best actor nod, with Kosinski an outside shot for best director, and the film a dead cert to make it onto the 10-strong list of nominees for best film.

It won’t win, because no movie that features a completely pointless “love interest” subplot that could have been excised from the movie deserves to win an Oscar. But we’ll all be glad to see Cruise in the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles come March 12. Nothing says “Hollywood” like seeing the thrice-nominated actor on Oscars night, gracious in defeat and clearly pondering inwardly whether his time will ever come.