Oscar season has been well underway for a while now, as the official nominations came out last Thursday, January 23, 2025. At this point, the frontrunners are starting to become more clear, with films like Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, and Wicked racking up at least ten nominations apiece. There is still a lot of time left to see how things play out, but when talking to various people across the SNU campus, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions on this award season.
One big consensus among SNU students was that they were very happy to see Wicked do as well as it did. When talking to SNU student Bailey Cauley, she expressed that “Wicked was my favorite.” It was one of the Best Picture nominees that she has seen, and it seems to be a movie that is beloved across the board, being a box office hit, a critical hit, and a ten-time Oscar nominee. Personally speaking, I was not sure that it would be a serious contender for Best Picture, but considering some of the biggest contenders, like The Brutalist and Emilia Perez, are facing varying degrees of controversy right now, something like Wicked could pull an upset victory.
Of course, there were some surprises when the nominations were revealed, whether it be the worthy inclusion of Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong for the Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, or the complete shutting out of Challengers, which did not even garner a nomination for Best Original Score. What turned out to be the biggest surprise to me was that Emilia Perez garnered thirteen nominations–the same amount as films like Oppenheimer and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. SNU student Connor Padgett shared my confusion with that film’s sheer amount of nominations, saying that it was “the only film I have a problem with” and calling the decision “controversial.” Having seen Emilia Perez, I found that it could have been an interesting story if they had not made the decision to make it a musical, and as a musical, it was not visually dynamic and every single song was either not memorable or memorable for the wrong reasons. Comparing this year’s films, musical to musical, the fact that Jacques Audiard received a nomination for Emilia Perez and Jon M. Chu and Michael Gracey were skipped over for their films Wicked and Better Man is ludicrous.
How will these awards shake out? Who will win and who should win? Despite all of its nominations, I actually think that Emilia Perez may end up walking away with only two wins, for Best Original Song and Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana, who gives an admittedly great performance. Its chances for Oscar supremacy may be slipping due to recent inflammatory comments from Audiard and Karla Sofia Gascon, one of the film’s stars. I think that The Brutalist, which I called the best film of the year, will very likely walk away with a number of wins, including Best Director and possibly even Best Picture. However, films that are beloved across the board, such as Wicked, Anora, and A Complete Unknown could be surprise victors. There is still a lot of game left to be played with these nominations and I look forward to seeing what happens on March 2, 2025.
Photo by: Denise Jans on Unsplash