Could “Moonlight” Actually Upset “La La Land” at the Oscars?

The overarching story of awards season this year has to be La La Land's dominance from beginning to end. After winning a record-breaking seven Golden Globes and tying the record for the most Oscar nominations with 14, it seemed that Best Picture was a done deal. And I think it probably is. Smart pundits will put their money on La La Land because it did what it had to do at the precursors. It was nominated for Best Picture (or equivalent) at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Producers Guild of American Awards – winning that latter two. It nabbed director, screenplay, editing, and acting nominations at the Oscars. And it's doing incredibly at the box office. So why do I think there is room for doubt?

Well, there are a couple things.

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The first thing is that it was snubbed for Best Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Now, a lot of pundits are saying it's because there really isn't much of a cast. I agree. Really, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are the only major players with John Legend having a small supporting role and J.K. Simmons and Rosemarie DeWitt barely registering. However, per SAG rules, the movie would have five credits. That is more than Beasts of No Nation, Boyhood, Hotel Rwanda, and Best Picture winner Million Dollar Baby had. Granted, Million Dollar Baby got nominations for all three of its actors at the Oscars. More than that, though, these are actors voting on these awards. Not critics or Oscar pundits. They don't look that deep into things.

If the love for the movie was that strong, wouldn't it have still been nominated? Especially over Captain Fantastic, which barely registered at the Oscars. The reason I bring this up is because of the pretty solid statistic that the SAG awards have. No movie has gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture without a SAG ensemble nomination since 1995 when Braveheart won. Even last year, when people were so sure that The Revenant was going to win, it lost to Spotlight. 

Even that isn't the reason I don't think it's going to win.

The first real reason is the way the Academy votes on Best Picture. They use a preferential ballot to vote, which means instead of voting for one film, voters rank the nine nominees. A movie needs 50% of the vote to win. The first round, only the voters' number one vote is counted. If no movie reaches the threshold, the movie with the LEAST number one votes is eliminated. The ballots with the eliminated movie at number one will instead have their number two movie counted. If no movie reaches the threshold again, the same process is repeated.

This means, that you don't just need a lot of number one votes. Though, obviously, they help. You also need a lot of number two and three votes. This is because, if voting movies past the first round, then those votes will count as number one votes. This is the same process the Producers Guild of America Awards use (the best predictor for the Oscars). More on that later.

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I think there's no doubt that La La Land will get a lot of number one votes. There is even a possibility that it'll get enough votes to win in the first round. However, if it doesn't, I think Moonlight will be able to sneak in and take it all. The Producers Guild went for La La Land. And they've been nearly infallible since switching to the preferential ballot. However, I think the frontrunner backlash is going to affect La La Land more than any other movie.

I've found that people love both movies. However, with this La La Land backlash, I'm finding less and less people that just like La La Land. The issue with La La Land compared to other frontrunner backlashes is that it has broken a lot of records, which brought up the sentiment that it's good, but not THAT good. I think that's going to drive a lot of people to rank it lower on their ballot. Which, is going to allow Moonlight to slip in and win it all. Is it plausible? Yes. Likely? Probably not. But I think if any film is going to upset La La Land, it's Moonlight and that's how it's going to do it.