2025 Oscar Predictions: The Oscars and a Close Election - Awardsdaily (2024)

It’s impossible not to see this Oscar race, like every Oscar race, as a reflection of what’s happening politically. I’ve been covering the Oscars since the very end of the Bill Clinton administration, on through the George W. Bush administration, then through Obama, then Trump, then Biden, and now, in just two agonizing weeks, the results of this year’s election.

There is no getting around politics this year, especially not now. So, for this week, I will write THE POLITICAL piece that no one wants me to write and that I try not to write every year. So if you’re not into it, skip it. If you want to know what I think about the Oscars vis-a-vis the political election, then fasten your seatbelts and let’s go.

I was scrolling through TikTok the other day, and I noticed a massive bullying incident unfolding. A very popular content creator named Mamma Tot was the center of what appears to be a cancellation event. She was suddenly the target. This woman has built her platform by listening to other people’s problems, offering comfort and support, sometimes just someone to talk to. I like her but she wasn’t one of my main follows. But as usual, I can’t stomach bullies. I hate swarms. And cancellations are what has destroyed our entire culture in my view.

Why exactly was Momma Tot being canceled? Because she posted a video wherein she expressed rage that the response to Hurricane Helene was so slow. BECAUSE IT WAS. If you scroll TikTok, you see the people suffering, bodies floating down the river (not on video but discussed), horses drowning, power out, no food, no water in the poorest part of the state.

No Sean Penn was turning up to row a canoe around to help rescue people. There were no telethons where Kanye West pronounced that George Bush doesn’t like Black people. It would not be the center of worry on the Left because who cares about those people, right? But Mamma Tot expressing her horror had to mean she was trying to make the Biden/Harris administration look bad, and that had to mean she was MAGA. The amount of videos that whipped around the app made my stomach turn.

I wasn’t the only one. Eventually, Momma Tot had to CONFESS WITCH that no, she wasn’t a Trump supporter and no, she wasn’t voting for Donald Trump. And even then, it wasn’t enough. There are so many videos of people just unloading all of their hate and rage on this woman. There is nothing more terrifying than a mob that believes it is entitled and is justified in attacking someone. I’ve never lived through anything like it and it’s largely why I no longer consider myself someone of the Left.

https://www.tiktok.com/@shoelover99/video/7424321127628999966?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7381581164859983406

We are heading into an election with an outcome that is uncertain. What we do know is that the most powerful people in this country, including in Hollywood, believe that what drives the Trump movement is racism. And therefore, anyone who votes for him is a racist and if he should win the election then racism has been brought back to leadership in America.

That’s the justification, anyway. Really, it’s a way to offload our collective sins. Accuse lest ye be accused. As long as you’re pointing the finger at someone else, no one will come for you.

One of my favorite directors, John Carpenter, has now come out and said it overtly. Bruce Springsteen says it. Stephen King says it. Barbra Streisand says it. Robert De Niro says it. They are comfortable saying it. They are comfortable dehumanizing millions of Americans who can’t stand one more minute under the leadership of the Democrats and the ideology that goes with it.

2025 Oscar Predictions: The Oscars and a Close Election - Awardsdaily (1)

Without going into it too much, the racism thing has been a constant in our lives for the last almost 20 years. It didn’t start with Trump’s win, but it was already an urgent issue by the time Trump won, vis a vis immigration. But when the Democrats took power, immigration became a problem for everyone except white Democrats, per this tweet by Kenny Miles:

Based on this tweet:

So many people are fleeing the Left. Black and Hispanic people, gay and lesbian people, transgender people. Plenty of them are saying, this shit blows. Why, because it’s a drag. For the first time in my life the Left isn’t the “cool” side anymore. They’re the puritans, the scolds, the squares. The cool people are fleeing and they’re landing either outside the bubble of the Left or on the Right.

But Hollywood is stuck inside the bubble. We see their distorted view every time we turn on late night comedy or cable news. And yes, even at the movies.

We already saw Civil War where my friend Jeff said he got a boner when he saw the president shot to death. We have dozens of pro-Democrat documentaries on issues they care about – abortion, the border, climate change, etc. And now, as of today, we have The Apprentice.

So far, the Apprentice isn’t lighting the box office on fire. What else is there left to say about Trump? As most people voting for him know, Trump is not the problem. How about we turn the camera around and start looking at the people in power, the people who have been in power for 12 of the last 16 years?

The supposed “surprise” of The Apprentice is that it humanizes Trump – while attempting to prove how Trump became a corrupt business man, a racist business man and a rapist.

I’d be more interested in The Apprentice if it was following the story I know is unfolding now, the American story. Trump has survived two assassination attempts, two impeachments, four indictments, non-stop attacks by the administrative and security states, not to mention all of the cultural ellites. He made his return to Butler, PA, a town once called out in a video by Tucker Carlson that remains, to date, the best thing anyone has ever said to describe the Trump movement.

If you want to understand the Trump story — the real story — watch that video. I know, it’s Fox News. I know it’s verboten. I know it’s Tucker Carlson. But it’s the truth. That is the story Hollywood will never tell.

It’s only interesting to tell the story through the eyes of the people who have no choice but turn to Trump because they’ve been abandoned by the ruling class. Hollywood is the ruling class. Tell that story. It’s more interesting.

We’re at a tipping point now. There aretwo paths forward. One is a strident utopia where we speak, think, create under strict rules of the new Left. The other path forward isn’t perfect, but it’s about the opposite. Everything collapses and we can all get back to something like normal life.

To many people in this country, Trump represents the America of people who make mistakes, say offensive things, don’t always say or do the right thing. But it is closer to real life than the utopia we’ve built on the Left. It started long ago. I contributed to it. But it’s time it all came to an end at long last.

I saw a headline today while doing a search. It brought me back to when so much of Hollywood began to change. It was partly activism, but it was also this idea that offensive jokes were borderline criminal offenses.

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It was 2013, three years before Trump would win. It was just before the #oscarssowhite hashtag hit. 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture. Yet, Seth MacFarlane’s jokes at the Oscars were the end of the world already.

Here was the opening bit – a thousand million times better than any opening bit we’ve seen since. Why, because every drop of fun has been squeezed out of the lemon. It’s gone. In its place unhappy people who can only be made happy if they can obliterate all of the thought criminals.

Here is what Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote the morning after:

The Academy is supposedly a trade group, and yet it devoted its opening number to degrading a good part of its membership. And who knows what the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus thought that it was doing by serving as MacFarlane’s backup singers; one does wonder what the rhetorical point was meant to be. We saw your boobs, but that’s not even what we find attractive, so you exerted no power in doing so—all you did was humiliate yourself? Maybe that’s reading too much into it. It could be that MacFarlane just thought it would be funny for him to say the word “gay” as often as possible.

You can read the rest for yourself, and when you do, think about what’s coming next. Think about 2016. Think about how mass hysteria caused the industry to turn on itself. Think about how La La Land was racist. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was racist, and Green Book’s win was like Trump winning all over again. By 2020, the entire industry, along with the left, abandoned all pretense and became what looks like a cult of a kind. A cult that demanded obedience from everyone all of the time. We’re still there now. We’re still stuck in it.

This is how normal people out in the world see the Left:

So what I’m saying here is lighten up on the Trump thing. Just chill a little bit. Be a little more forgiving. A little less hostile. There won’t be a happy ending for Hollywood. TikTok influencers are now the A-List. AI is coming in hot, preparing to take jobs away from everyone in the industry. The box office is a ghost town. There is next to nothing left.

So maybe the answer is to try to relax a little. Can we try to see each other as human beings again – flaws and all. Imperfections and all. Is that even remotely possible?

And I know for many readers here, you see Trump as an existential crisis to your community, that he’s going to take away gay marriage. That he will imprison transgender people. That he will ban abortion. I follow so many gay, lesbian and even transgender Trump supporters on TikTok. They do not see an imminent threat to them and their safety. You really have only two choices. Learn to live with a country that is full of lots of different kinds of people or build gulags and start jailing the undesirables. There is no other option.

Every day I am confronted with the nasty, blinding hatred of the Left. In the comments here, on social media. I’m not the only one. More and more people are jumping the sinking ship. We’re at a tipping point. It’s a terrifying place to be. But I know that what we’ve been doing to the other half of the country is wrong.

I am still determining how the election will go. It’s too close to call. If the polls hold, Trump will win a second term. He has the momentum now. Harris is doing everything she can to try to blunt that momentum but her problem is that she is a prosecutor rather than a politician. She made history as the first woman of color to be a district attorney, attorney general, senator, and vice president. She has never lost an election. But she didn’t exactly win her spot at Veep. Biden hand-picked her after she couldn’t win even in her home state of California.

She did not campaign for the nomination. They handed it to her, assuming all would go well. But primaries are necessary to test a candidate. If she loses, that will be the lesson. She might win. Who knows. It’s anyone’s guess. But we should all be prepared to live with each other, no matter the outcome. I hope Hollywood and the Oscars can stop demonizing half the country as “racists.” I hope.

Here are my predictions for this week.

Best Picture
Anora
Conclave
Emilia Perez
A Real Pain
The Brutalist
Sing Sing
Dune Part Two
Gladiator II
Blitz
All We Imagine as Light
Alts: Saturday Night, Wicked, The Piano Lesson

Best Director
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Edward Berger, Conclave
Jaques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Payal Kapadia, All We Imagine as Light
Alt. Ridley Scott, Gladiator II; Jason Reitman, Saturday Night; RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys; Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain

Best Actor
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Daniel Craig, Quee
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Paul Mescal, Gladiator II

Alts: Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain; Joaquin Phoenix, Joker Folie a Deux; John David Washington, The Piano Lesson

Best Actress
Mikey Madison, Anora
Angelina Jolie, Maria
Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Pérez
Nicole Kidman, Baby Girl
Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun

Alts: Amy Adams, Nightbitch; Cynthia Erivo, Wicked; Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie a Deux; Julianne Moore, the Room Next Door

Best Supporting Actor
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Denzel Washington, Gladiator II
Stanley Tucci, Conclave
Samuel L. Jackson, The Piano Lesson
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Alts: Yura Borisov, Anora; Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing; Paul Raci, Sing Sing; Pedro Pascal, Gladiator II

Supporting Actress
Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
Lady Gaga, Joker Folie a Deux (unless lead)
Selena Gomez, Emilia Pérez
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
Alts: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys; Rachel Sennott, Saturday Night; Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door; Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Original Screenplay
A Real Pain
The Brutalist
Anora
Saturday Night
Sing Sing
Alt. Emilia Pérez; The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Adapted Screenplay
Conclave
Nickel Boys
The Piano Lesson
Gladiator II
Inside Out 2

Editing
Conclave
Anora
Saturday Night
The Brutalist
Gladiator II

Cinematography
Dune 2
The Brutalist
Conclave
Gladiator II
Anora

Production Design
Dune 2
The Brutalist
Conclave
Gladiator II
Wicked

Costumes
Wicked
Dune 2
The Brutalist
Maria
Gladiator II

Original Score
The Brutalist
Conclave
Queer
Emilia Perez
Dune 2

Thank you for being patient with me all of these years, dear readers.

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2025 Oscar Predictions:  The Oscars and a Close Election - Awardsdaily (2024)
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