Oscar 2013: The Dark Elephant
Can Rises Go Where No Superhero Film Has Gone Before?
By Tom Houseman
August 6, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
There are three questions that have to be answered before we can accurately assess the prospects of Rises: will it be as commercially successful as The Dark Knight, will it be as well-received by critics as The Dark Knight, and how many nominees will there be for Best Picture this year. The first question wasn't even a question, as everybody knew that The Dark Knight would be a huge hit, and what limited box-office numbers we have gotten thus far have confirmed that. Will it be as big a hit as The Avengers? Probably not, but it will likely be either the second or third highest grossing film of the year, depending on how successful The Hobbit is.
(Note: I will not be discussing the impact that the events in Aurora, Colorado might have on the Oscar chances of the film, partially because it is impossible to speculate how the shooting might either positively or negatively effect the film's chances, especially so soon after it occurred. Mostly though, the thought of looking at a tragedy of that magnitude through the lens of something as trivial and meaningless as The Academy Awards makes me feel icky. Yes, my first thought when I found out that Heath Ledger had died was that he was at that point guaranteed a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but the scale and horror of that shooting makes the thought of discussing it in an article about the Oscars unconscionable, even to someone with as little a conscience as me.
The second question has finally been answered, and the results are promising for those hoping for a Best Picture nomination for Rises, if not completely reassuring. While The Dark Knight scored a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 82 on Metacritic, The Dark Knight Rises managed only an 86% and a 78. It is hard to find people stepping up to declare Rises superior to The Dark Knight, with even the most glowing reviews finding it comparable in quality, or even lagging slightly behind its predecessor. Depending on the success of The Hobbit, Rises might not be able to claim that it is either the highest grossing or best reviewed Best Picture contender.
But the big question, the one that will truly determine the Oscar chances of Rises, is how many Best Picture nominees there will be. The Academy has not yet announced this important decision, and they might very well go back to having only five nominees if they determine that last year's system did not achieve the desired results. For those who cannot remember, under last year's rules any film that received at least 5% of the total number of first-place votes (or approximately 275 first-place votes) was eligible to be nominated for Best Picture, with at least five films guaranteed a spot and no more than ten films allowed into the race.
If the Academy reverts to their old five-film field, I can confidently predict that The Dark Knight Rises will not be a nominee. If they decide to go back to having ten guaranteed nominees, the chances of Rises are extremely good, but this scenario is highly unlikely. If, as I think most people are assuming, they decide to go with a “flex field” for the second year in a row, then the situation is far more nebulous. Would Rises find success in such a race? It is hard to say.
There is some history that we can look back on to help inform our decision, although none of it is particularly helpful. The three years that are most relevant to this discussion are 2009, 2011, and 2012. In 2009 The Dark Knight was in contention, but in a field of five it was edged out by more typical Oscar fare. Many people specifically point to The Reader as the film that stole the spot that could have gone to either The Dark Knight or Wall-E. In 2011 Inception was able to secure a nomination in a ten-nominee field, but without a Best Director or Best Film Editing nomination it was relegated to the group of also-rans that were ornamental in the race between The King's Speech and The Social Network.
2012 was, of course, the first year that involved a flex field, and gives us some insight into how Academy voters take advantage of such a voting system. While none of these fields give us much to work with, hopefully combining their information will give us at least a little bit of insight, especially by looking at how the same group of films would have fared under alternative systems.
In 2009, the nominees were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and, of course, Slumdog Millionaire, so it is safe to assume that in a flex field those films would have also shown up. Films that were also in contention and ended up having some success at the Oscars that year include Changeling, The Dark Knight, Doubt, Frozen River, Revolutionary Road, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Wall-E, and The Wrestler.
If there had been ten guaranteed spots in the race, the list would almost certainly included The Dark Knight, Doubt, and Wall-E, with two other films filling out the field, probably Vicky Cristina Barcelona (to add some levity to an otherwise really depressing list of films) and The Wrestler. If last year's system had been in effect, Wall-E would have comfortably gotten in, and Doubt would have gotten a big enough push by the actors to make it in, but The Dark Knight would have been on shakier ground. Still, I think we can safely say that the film would have been a Best Picture nominee under those rules.
In 2011 there were ten nominees, including Nolan's Inception. Based on the way the other categories broke down, it can be safely assumed that, had there been only five nominees, they would have included Black Swan, The Fighter, The King's Speech, The Social Network, and almost certainly True Grit. An argument could be made for The Kids are All Right, but Inception, without a Best Director nomination or any acting nominees, would have had difficulty breaking into a field of five.
Which films would have made it into a flex field in that year? Winter's Bone would almost certainly not have, but I would guess that all of the other nine films would have made it in. Could 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, or even Inception have gotten snubbed? Yes, but it is unlikely. So based on this haphazard guesswork, I have concluded that both of Nolan's last two films would have been Best Picture nominees in a flex field. The question is, will Rises do as well? Let's next look at what nominations in other categories the film can expect to receive.
In 2009 The Dark Knight was nominated for eight Oscars: Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Makeup, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, and the two categories in which it won, Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor. Two years later Inception was also nominated for eight Oscars, including five that it shared with The Dark Knight. In addition to nominations for Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Visual Effects, it was also nominated for Original Screenplay, Original Score, and of course Picture. It did not receive nominations for Makeup or Film Editing (a particularly surprising omission, as I have discussed before), nor did it receive any acting nominations.
Based on that shared history, it is safe to assume that Rises will be nominated for Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Visual Effects. It might fall victim to sequelitis with the Art Directors, but it is likely that it will also find a place there. The makeup nomination for The Dark Knight was probably largely due to the makeup for Heath Ledger's Joker, so a repeat is extremely unlikely.
Will Rises get snubbed for Film Editing the way that Inception was? It's not out of the question, so that nomination can't be counted on. The film's score is not as integral to the film as Zimmer's work was in Inception, and considering that The Dark Knight did not receive a nomination for its music, it is highly unlikely, but not impossible, that Rises will be present in that category. That leaves Rises with between four and six technical and artistic nominations, which is as many as Inception (five) but fewer than The Dark Knight (seven).
Last year was the first year with the new “flex field” that allows as few as five and as many as ten Best Picture nominees. Admittedly, that is an extremely small pool of evidence from which to come to any sort of conclusions. But it is worth noting that of the nine films nominated, eight received either a Directing, Acting, or Writing nomination. The only one that did not was War Horse, which probably just barely snuck into the field largely on the back of the Academy's overwhelming respect for Spielberg, its beloved source material, and its serious subject matter. But Nolan is not Spielberg and Batman is not World War I.
This puts Rises in a tricky position. Three films based on graphic novels and/or comic books have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, but they were all indie films, Ghost World, American Splendor, and A History of Violence. The only superhero movie that ever really had a chance at a Screenplay nomination was The Dark Knight, but in a field with four Best Picture nominees taking up spots, it lost out to Doubt (further confirming my suspicion that Doubt would have been more likely to succeed in a flex field). Unless several of the high-profile Oscar bait films (The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, Lincoln, to name a few) fall through, and no indie films step up to take their places, Rises will fail to be the first superhero adaptation to be nominated in this category.
The acting categories make for even more bad news for Rises, both in tangible and intangible ways. While there will likely be FYC campaigns for a few different actors (Bale, Hardy, and, if there is any justice in the world, Michael Caine), the odds of any of them getting nominated are very slim. Best Actor is always a crowded category, and I can't imagine there being room for a Bale performance in which he doesn't lose sixty pounds. As for Hardy? He is the villain, which gives him an advantage, but his performance is very subdued and stoic, effective for the part, but not the kind that gets Oscar attention. He is certainly not as flashy or flamboyant as Heath Ledger's Joker.
And that might be the key reason why Rises is left out of the Best Picture race this year. The universal praise and acclaim heaped on Ledger, in addition to the emotional weight added by the fact that it was his last finished performance before he died, gave The Dark Knight a huge boost. If that film, with that performance, couldn't make the top five, Rises would seem to not have a chance. But in a field that can include up to ten nominees, will the disadvantages that Rises has compared to The Dark Knight be too much to overcome?
The last issue is whether Christopher Nolan will finally be able to score a Best Director Nomination. It is becoming abundantly clear that the Academy straight-up doesn't like the guy; if there is another director who has been thrice nominated for the DGA Award without ever scoring an Oscar nod, I would be shocked. Will this be the film that breaks the trend? While Fincher was only able to score his first Oscar nomination with a work totally different from his previous efforts, Rises is very stylistically similar to everything else Nolan has done, which means that the directors will probably respond to it with a shoulder the same temperature as it has always been for him.
So without a Screenplay nomination, a Director nomination, or any Acting nominations, the bias against superheroes and the been-there-done-that-but-better feeling that some voters might feel about the film in comparison to The Dark Knight, will Rises make it in? You could argue that they will want to give the film a nomination as a reward for the series, but that didn't work for the last Harry Potter film, which was as well received and as financially successful. Some of the votes that might go for Rises will instead be siphoned off by The Avengers, Prometheus, and The Hobbit. That will give Rises an even steeper hill to come in order to get 5% of the first-place votes in play.
When I started writing this article I was thinking that Rises would probably end up scoring a nomination, but I may have just talked myself out of it. Of course, this early in the year we are working purely in the realm of the speculative, without any evidence to back up any of these claims. If the National Board of Review names Rises on its top 10 list, and the Globes follow suit with a Best Picture – Drama nomination, then we are working with an entirely different race. Until then, though, it will be difficult to make a convincing argument that The Dark Knight Rises will be a Best Picture nominee in 2013.