Will the promised surge happen? The Oscars kick off Sunday with an unorthodox ultra-favourite: Everything Everywhere All At Once, a zany comedy intertwining a bagel-shaped black hole with sex toys used as nunchucks.
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The Academy hopes that big night audiences will be there to witness the announced triumph of this crazy film, which was nominated in 11 categories and was a massive box office hit with $100 million at the box office.
Which can finally make us forget Will Smith’s famous slap in the face, which made headlines last year.
Combining action, schoolboy humor and sci-fi, Everything Everywhere follows the adventures of an overworked laundromat owner, played by Michelle Yeoh, who is suddenly summoned to save a multitude of parallel universes from an evil force: his depressed daughter’s alter ego.
In order to achieve this, she must use the powers of her various alternative lives, often visiting completely insane worlds where some people have fingers shaped like hot dogs, for example.
A poignant reflection on family love, the film is supported by a brilliant cast made up primarily of Asians. He won the most awards given before the Oscars.
“Behind the film is a very lovely group of people who are impossible not to sympathize with,” summarizes Scott Feinberg, technical columnist for The Hollywood Reporter.
But this dominance, which has been predicted for weeks, could come up against the voting system for the best picture Oscar, which tends to penalize divisive works.
So one of the Oscar voters confides in AFP that certain members of the academy, especially among the oldest, have reservations about the film’s success.
“It was a very daring and unique film, but not a traditional film, (…) it could end up ranking higher for a lot of people,” he explains on condition of anonymity.
This could benefit the German adaptation of the pacifist novel Nothing New in the West, or Tom Cruise’s blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, a popular map that has allowed the public to finally reconnect with dark spaces after the pandemic.
The competition between the actors is much tighter.
“I can’t recall a year (…) where three of the four categories of actors were actually quits or stand-ins,” notes Mr. Feinberg.
The Oscar for Best Actress will be pitted between Cate Blanchett, ruthless conductor in ‘Tar’ and Michelle Yeoh, heroine of ‘Everything Everywhere’, who could become the first winner of Asian descent to win the award.
Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) and Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) are tied for best actor.
As did Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”), Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) and Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) for the Best Supporting Actress statuette.
Only Ke Huy Quan, former Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom child star who has been forgotten by Hollywood for more than 20 years, seems all but certain of winning an Oscar, reaping the rewards for his second role as the lovable husband in “everything everywhere”.
Also the shadow of Will Smith’s famous slap in the face to comedian Chris Rock last year after joking about his wife’s alopecia hovers over the ceremony.
The episode was supposed to spark some inevitable banter, but Oscars executive producer Molly McNearney clearly wants closure. “We will talk about the event (…) and move on,” she said this week.
Last year the academy was criticized for presenting Mr Smith with his award for best actor on stage following his attack. He has since been banned from ceremonies for 10 years, and this year a “crisis team” has to work behind the scenes to prepare for any eventuality.
The ceremony counts on the presence of the sequels to “Top Gun” and “Avatar”, two big blockbusters, to counteract the general decline in their viewership.
Because despite an upswing in the past year, interest in the Oscars has waned sharply since the golden age of the 1990s: in 1998, 57 million viewers – an absolute record – watched the triumph of the “Titanic”, which was rewarded with 11 statuettes.
“This world has disappeared,” states Mr. Feinberg. “But if viewership doesn’t increase from last year, the academy will have a big problem.”