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Second, there is only so many times that you can catch lightning in a bottle - in movies or in politics. Once upon a time, TIFF was able to boast of a remarkable achievement - it selected for screening two movies that had no distributors and that almost did not see the darkness of a movie theater. Slumdog Millionaire (which almost went straight to video) and The Hurt Locker screened the same year, found distributors, and the rest is history. Both went on to win Best Picture Oscars, and TIFF’s position as a preeminent festival player was cemented.

But like politicians who return to the same lines over and over again long after the electorate tires of them, TIFF has fallen a victim to this success. Now, big-name movies like The Martian and Black Mass (or, say, The Judge last year) flock to Toronto to receive the populist audience boost that the festival provides. The critics who still mostly control the race, however, are not impressed and can mostly see right through it.

Which brings me to the third point: no one likes a preordained winner. The examples in politics abound - remember when Christine Quinn was a mortal lock for New York City mayor, or Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 (or, gulp, even this year)? People do not like to be told what to select as their preference - this is a fact of human psychology that is pure and simple and has been seen time and again in politics and the Oscars. Just last year, Boyhood was arguably derailed by the sense of inevitability that its supporters created around it.

The truth is, nobody likes the obvious Oscar-bait movie. We’ve discussed it dozens of times by now. For years, the Oscars rewarded big box movie epics. The studios made more of those as awards bait, and the Academy got sick of them, turning to small, mostly independent movies.

It is therefore quite possible that we are seeing a cyclical exhaustion with the festival-driven, indie Oscar bait movie that has dominated the scene since mostly 2004 or so. Unlike in the past 10 years, when the eventual winner had been seen in one of the festival, it is quite possible that this year’s winner may come later in the year. To be sure, the film festival season is far from over - Toronto and New York still have a lot of surprises to offer - and movies like Steve Jobs may well go all the way.

But it is also possible that movies that we will not see until much later - David O. Russell’s Joy, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, Inarritu’s The Revenant or even - gasp, gulp, LOL, or whatever - Star Wars, are the movies that we will be talking about down the line.

You have to give the people what they want - but you can’t seem like you are doing exactly that.

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