2. The film has enough support from a divided Academy to earn a best-picture nomination.
This possibility raises all kinds of questions about whether a younger (that probably helps), more racially diverse (that’s probably a wash), more female (I’m guessing that doesn’t help) Academy is more likely to break Joker’s way than the votership of, say, 2009 would have been. Here’s what we know: The film’s reviews were, for a best-picture hopeful, awfully weak. Joker scores an average rating of 59 out of 100 on the review-aggregation site Metacritic; in the last 10 years, only four best-picture nominees have done worse. The good news for the film is that one of those four, Bohemian Rhapsody, was nominated just last year, and like Joker, it was a high-grossing popular hit powered by a transformative male lead performance. More good news: Movies pegged as too dark, divisive, or weird often sneak into the top category (see Phantom Thread, The Favourite, Whiplash), and love-it-or-hate-it movies have a structural advantage in the nominating process, since the hate-its don’t matter much. Passion is what gets movies nominated, and it doesn’t take all that many first-place votes for a film to land a spot. Whom might those votes come from? Voters across many branches who want to select something mainstream and popular but not quite as hyper-branded as, say, Avengers: Endgame. Voters who want to make the case for a comic book movie (but not, say, Avengers: Endgame). Traditionalists who want to support a big studio movie (but not…you get it).
What works against the movie? The comparison to Bohemian Rhapsody only goes so far. Nobody leaves Joker humming the songs (and if your reaction is to break into “Send in the Clowns,” please don’t sit next to me on the subway). And the comic book thing matters. Yes, Black Panther got a slot last year, but Ryan Coogler’s film rode a wave of deserved critical adoration, a historic $700 million U.S. gross, and a sentiment dear to the Academy’s liberal heart that a barrier had finally been broken. Joker is not Black Panther; nobody is posting pictures of themselves taking their kids to the movie and saying, “If you can see it, you can be it.” The number of Academy voters who work on superhero movies has grown over the last few years—but so has the number of Academy voters who fear the kinds of movies they love are threatened by the primacy of one genre. A closer comparison to Joker is probably Logan, a genre-busting film that received far better reviews two years ago, plus a best-adapted-screenplay nomination, but still couldn’t crack best picture.
3. Joker runs the table.
A lot of people really like the movie—its grosses certainly suggest as much. So maybe it’s not that complicated. Maybe the Academy will be impressed by Joker’s audacity across the board; maybe nomination day will be one big, bloody grin. If that’s the case, add at least three more possible nominations to best actor and best picture (the latter of which, incidentally, would bring Bradley Cooper his eighth nomination in seven years!). Best adapted screenplay is a real possibility; Todd Phillips and Scott Silver’s work is hovering somewhere in the top seven or eight right now, and its inclusion or exclusion will likely be determined by the overall reception of a handful of movies (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Just Mercy, Little Women, The Two Popes) that have played festivals or screened for voters but haven’t opened yet. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s haunting drone of a score is also a conceivable contender. Finally, there’s best director. Phillips did himself no favors by griping about how “woke culture” has ruined comedy in these pages, and in recent years, the directors branch has tended to have little patience with big studio movies unless, like Mad Max: Fury Road or Dunkirk, they’ve also been strong personal visions. Perhaps Joker qualifies, but given the stiff competition, everything would have to go right for Phillips to make the cut.
More Great Stories from Vanity Fair
— Our cover story: Joaquin Phoenix on River, Rooney, and Joker
— Plus: why a neurocriminologist left Joker completely stunned
— Charlize Theron’s transformation in the Fox News movie wows at the film’s debut
— Ronan Farrow’s producer reveals how NBC killed its Weinstein story
— Read an exclusive excerpt from the sequel to Call Me by Your Name
— From the Archive: How a near-death Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall performance became showbiz legend
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