2024 Oscars: The year of ‘Barbenheimer’ comes to an end

This Sunday’s Academy Awards bring to a close a long journey that began on July 21, 2023. That was the day that Oppenheimer and Barbie were released in the United States, setting in motion a cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer. Seven months later, it’s clear the Mattel doll movie won the box office battle, grossing $1.45 billion worldwide. On the other hand, the film about the creator of the atomic bomb, is tipped to be crowned Best Picture at the movie industry’s big night, after its triumphant wins at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards and the BAFTAs.

The 96th edition of the Oscars appears to be focused on big productions. The biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, which is nominated in 13 categories, reduces to three hours an ambitious biography that took 25 years of research and 50,000 documents. Thanks to the vision of its director, Christopher Nolan — who could win his first Oscar for Best Director — the film became a near billion-dollar phenomenon at the box office.

Some 19 million Americans tuned in last year to watch the Academy Awards, as it took a leap forward, and awarded seven prizes to Everything Everywhere All at Once, an independent film that connected with young moviegoers. Oscars producers want to continue the honeymoon with viewers. The ceremony, hosted again by ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel at the Dolby Theatre, will start an hour earlier than usual this year, at 4 p.m. local time.

The new time will make it easier for Spanish viewers to follow the ceremony. Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow is nominated for Best International Feature Film and Makeup and Hairstyling, while Pablo Berger is in the running for Best Animated Feature Film for Robot Dreams.

In France, there are also high expectations. The French movie Anatomy of a Fall — which became a cinema phenomenon a thanks to its canine actor Messi, a border collie who also stole the show at the Oscar nominees luncheon — is nominated in fave categories, including Best Picture. The movie’s director, Justine Triet, could become the fourth woman to win the Oscar for Best Director.

The Oscars will also be closely watched in Latin America. Rodrigo Prieto is hoping to become the fourth Mexican to win an Oscar for Cinematography (joining Guillermo Navarro, Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón) for his work on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which is nominated in 10 categories. The Eternal Memory by Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi is in the running for Best Documentary Feature Film, a category where all the nominees are foreign films, including the favorite to win, 20 Days in Mariupol.

Diversity at the Oscars

This is the first edition of the Academy Awards that follows new rules to encourage diversity. These rules were adopted in 2020 after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of 2015 and 2016, when all 20 nominees in the acting category were white. The films nominated for Best Picture had to meet at least two of the four standards.

For Standard A, a film must meet one of the following criteria: at least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group; at least 30% of supporting actors are played by women, actors from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, members of the LGTBQ+ collective or are people with cognitive or physical disability; or the main storyline is about one of these groups.

For Standard B, the movie had to meet one of two criteria: at least two creative leadership positions are fulfilled by underrepresented groups, or at least six other crew and technical positions are from these groups.

For Standard C, the film had to provide training opportunities and paid apprenticeships to people from underrepresented groups; and for Standard D, the movie had to include minority groups in executive positions in marketing, publicity and distribution.

But activists say it is too easy to meet these guidelines. The found that 265 films out of 321 that were submitted to the Academy Awards were eligible for the Best Picture category.

Many believe that Hollywood’s diversity problem will not be corrected until studio executives come from more diverse backgrounds. However, the 96th edition of the Academy Awards may see Lily Gladstone become the first Native American to win the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon. Gladstone is leading a new generation of diverse actors: seven of the 20 actors nominated for an acting award are not white. Another favorite is Da’vine Joy Randolph, for her role in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

It is clear that Barbie meets the Academy Awards’ new diversity standards, despite the fact that Greta Gerwig missed on a nomination for Best Director —a snub that outraged many in the industry. As does American Fiction, which is also nominated for Best Picture. This movie, starring Jeffrey Wright, is about a Black writer who writes a book to satiate American cultural institutions’ appetite for diversity (a more than ironic nod to this year’s Oscars). Fellow nominee Past Lives, a love story starring a Korean American, also meets the standards. But local media have been recently wondering whether Oppenheimer complies with this set of new rules.

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