Why Elvis Will Win Best Picture
'Tis just over a week until the Oscars, and for the second consecutive year-- but just the third time ever! -- no less than 10 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture. The biggest award has the potential to be either one of the most anticlimactic or most surprising result in recent years. The former is true, because one film has won the vast majority of the top prizes on the awards circuit thus far, the buzzy Everything Everywhere All At Once. However, not only would the multiverse comedy with a big heart and primarily Asian cast be a wildly abnormal winner, few if any other top contenders are traditional 'Oscar bait,' and none are without its detractor.
Those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can truly be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, Parasite's stunner in 2020, and CODA's late surge last year all taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 12th.
Baz Luhrmann's Elvis tells the story of Elvis Presley's life and rise to stardom, as well as the malevolent influence and presence of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Parker is played by Tom Hanks, and you may remember this is the film on which the actor caught COVID-19, an event I (and I imagine many others) mark as the first time I thought "oh, this whole coronavirus thing could get serious." The beloved actor recovered, fortunately, though I can hardly say his cartoonish villain character was the role worth risking health for. Anyways, in Luhrmann's signature style, the movie incorporates mostly fact with some noteworthy fiction, and features liberal use of music and flamboyant sets.
Elvis would be a longshot winner, but definitely wouldn't come completely out of left field; the Oscars love a biopic, as we've seen by the increasing number of acting award winners that have earned a trophy for portraying noteworthy historical figures (see: last year's Best Actor and Best Actress winners, for example), and Best Picture nods for films like this, Bohemian Rhapsody (about Freddy Mercury and Queen) in 2019, and Darkest Hour (about Winston Churchill) in 2018. Furthermore, it's got a similar 'mass appeal' angle that I argued for Avatar just a couple days ago: Elvis was the third-best performer at the box office of all nominees, and far and away the most-streamed out of all contenders. You can't discount the notion that the sheer number of eyeballs on a movie might weigh on the minds of voting members of an Academy that constantly attempts to stay relevant in the public eye.
Critics were much less swayed by Elvis than the public, as the nearly 3-hour epic earned the most mixed reviews of any nominee. But critics don't dictate awards season, and just like Bohemian Rhapsody before it, this film has shaken off the criticism to be an awards circuit mainstay. It's yet to score a big win at any of the major precursors, but it was among the nominees for Best Picture at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, and Producers Guild Awards. Being in the mix at all the major pre-Oscars ceremonies is a good sign of an Oscar contender.
If that's not enough to convince you, there's a case to be made that its director and star could carry it to victory. While Baz Luhrmann is highly divisive among critics and cinephiles alike, he has plenty of admirers, and many may still feel he didn't receive appropriate recognition for Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, both modern cult classics. And if you're hoping to spring an upset for top honors, it helps to have a lead actor or actress that could be poised for a big night, and in Austin Butler, Elvis's Elvis is the current frontrunner-- albeit in an abnormally tight race --for that Best Actor statue.
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