Alright! In preparation for the upcoming 2022 Oscars, I have taken it upon myself to try and predict the Best Picture winner as I did in 2021 (I was correct) and 2020 (Off by one film). To do this, I analyzed nearly 100 years' worth of Oscar data to try and create a formula that could use statistical findings to predict the Best Picture winner.
To recap, here are the six qualifications that a Best Picture movie should have:
- Be R-Rated. In the past 30 years, 70% (22 films) that won Best Picture were R-Rated.
- Make enough money to be known but not enough to be popular ($50-$150, the cap is that of The Incredible Hulk's $360 million. 1917 crossed that benchmark the day of the Oscars and lost Best Picture).
- Be a drama, war, epic, period piece, or thriller.
- Have a diverse cast (This is a great way to get nominated but hard to win with. Only two films starring African Americans have ever won - 12 Years A Slave and Moonlight). Being a foreign film is also pretty bad, as only one foreign film has ever won (Parasite, 2019).
- Have a nomination for Best Director. Only 5 Best Picture winners have not had nominations in that category: Wings (1927), Grand Hotel (1932), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Argo (2012), and Green Book (2018).
- Don't be a streaming movie. Being a streaming movie is all in good fun, but surefire Oscar bait like The Irishman and Roma keep losing to theaters-only flicks. You can still win, but it really doesn't help.
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| The Best Picture/Rating win chart, as per 2021. |
The nominees for this year are as follows:
Belfast
CODA
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
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| Will Smith in King Richard is the favorite for Best Actor. He really did a fantastic job here. |
Eliminating the PG-13 movies gets rid of Belfast, CODA, Dune, King Richard, and West Side Story. Half the nominees, gone like that. That leaves us with:
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
Because having a Best Director nomination is a must, we can then get rid of Don't Look Up and Nightmare Alley. This leaves Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, and The Power of the Dog. And, I must digress, Denis Villeneuve was snubbed in this category for his work on Dune.
Because subtitles are too hard to read, the Japanese-imported Drive My Car is eliminated from the race. This leaves us with Licorice Pizza and The Power of the Dog.
Licorice Pizza
The biggest problem with Licorice Pizza is that it's described on Wikipedia as a "coming-of-age comedy-drama" film. Only one comedy has ever won Best Picture, and that was Birdman in 2014. However, the biggest thing going against the movie is not the genre but the fact that it only has three nominations for the entire ceremony - Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. While a Wikipedia page full of accolades never hurts, it's always a good sign to have, like, 7 nominations or more.
The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog is the clear-cut favorite for Best Picture. The only thing holding it back is that it's available on Netflix, and digital media is a no-no in the eyes of the Academy. But the film is heavily acclaimed and has Oscars noms in the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, and Best Sound. That's, like, 11 nominations.
The movie also has all the right buzzwords - psychological drama and sexuality. It's already won the Best Motion Picture - Drama at the Golden Globe Awards, and these things often correlate. While The Power of the Dog is the favorite, only time will truly tell.
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| Dune is my personal pick for Best Picture. No, it's not because I only saw two of the nominees. |
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