Flasz On Film

Nobody got slapped. All the envelopes were in order. Nobody blurted a slur. Snow White didn’t do a ten-minute opening song number with Rob Lowe that turned out to be unfortunately unsanctioned by the Mouse House. A few progressive speeches. A small handful of firsts (Jessie Buckley, the first Irish national to win Best Actress). Some seconds (Ryan Coogler, the second black writer to take Best Screenplay prize). No major upsets. The Oscars 2026 were uneventful… which is the worst outcome the Academy could have asked for, especially at a time when this once central celebration of the best and brightest in the film industry is struggling to stay relevant in the ever-shifting cultural landscape.

Quite predictably, One Battle After Another swept the show and walked away with six awards, including the inaugural Best Casting Oscar, Best Director and Best Picture. At this point I could say that I called it on the day the nominations were announced as I outlined that the movie with the second-largest number of nods is the likeliest to emerge victorious. Though, being completely frank, this prediction is like tossing a slightly weighted coin. Based on nomination numbers alone, the probability was somewhere around 60%. But as the various guild awards were given out it became abundantly clear that would take a major upset or a miracle for One Battle After Another not to take home the top prize. In fact, as the Awards race slowly unfolded to be thoroughly one-sided, it became clear as day that no drama was to precipitate out of it.

This probably explains how the press was desperately trying to conjure sensations wherever they found them, be it by manufacturing suspense in the Best Actor race between Timothée Chalamet and Michael B. Jordan, the latter of whom ended up the odds-on favourite after bagging the SAG Best Actor award, or by making a mountain out of Chalamet’s comments about opera and ballet being niche art forms. Between a few anti-AI comments, a handful of calls to stand up against tyrants of different extraction and at least one instance of “Free Palestine” captured by the microphone (which, unlike the BAFTAs, was allowed to stay in the broadcast), this year’s Oscar ceremony was a little bit of a nothingburger and will most likely result in a slew of Monday quarterback articles about the growing irrelevance of the art form, which might mean that Chalamet was actually onto something. The biggest winner of the night was therefore KPop Demon Hunters which grabbed both the Best Animation and the Best Song awards, thus cementing its cultural prominence as an unmatched phenomenon the likes of which we haven’t seen since Frozen.

However, what drew my attention to the Oscars this year—and I’m pretty sure I’m not in the mood to write another thousand words on the continuing irrelevance of this self-congratulatory tradition whose reach shrinks each year while younger audiences shun the idea of tuning in and choose whatever it is that kids do these days instead—was a handful of comments I found in the press and on social media. In addition to noticing pretty much what I just outlined, that this year’s Oscar was a big fat “meh,” some commentators took solace in pointing out that at least this year we didn’t see any blatant Oscar bait make it to the pool of nominated titles. This made me raise my eyebrow because from where I was sitting I could definitely spot a handful of those. But for my own observations to make sense we would have to take a closer look at what the term “Oscar bait” actually means.

What lies hidden behind this phrase was defined as “a film that appears designed primarily to attract nominations or wins at the Academy awards.” In practice, many film fans would translate this to mean movies which used to win Oscars in the past and which older, predominantly white, Academy voters were likely to enjoy, champion and vote for. Read: biopics, war dramas, historical epics. But this is where things become interesting because by definition this term will mean different things depending on the makeup of the Academy voting body.

And in fact, data confirms this because what “a movie that looks like something the Academy was likely to vote for” changed over the years and decades. In the 80’s and early 90’s when prestige biopics and historical dramas like The Last Emperor, Gandhi, Amadeus, Dances with Wolves and The English Patient reigned supreme, movies like The Color Purple or The Remains of the Day would fall under Oscar bait by those standards. Actually, this is quite a tricky exercise because oftentimes the Academy did “take the bait” as well, which complicates matters since what frequently goes unsaid is that the term “Oscar bait” is bestowed upon movies that score a lot of nominations but not a lot of wins.

In the post-Titanic era, which was defined by Harvey Weinstein’s toxic influence over the film industry, the idea of Oscar bait shifted slightly from “just” biopics and war dramas to “whatever Prince Toad Harvey’s minions were ordered to push during the Oscar season.” Think Chocolat and Gangs of New York together with some hangers-on from other stables like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and American Hustle, or Precious. You could say that they all still fall within the parameters of what historically had been understood as Awards bait, but the flavour of this bait was ever so slightly altered.

However, things have changed drastically in the mid 2010’s, specifically in the aftermath of the #OscarsSoWhite debacle. The makeup of the Academy was altered after a massive influx of female members and people from ethnic and other minority backgrounds. Therefore, it only follows that the concept of what constitutes “Oscar bait” would change alongside it because—again, in line with the definition of the phrase—what constitutes bait is something that might appeal to Academy voters. Who are now different than thirty years ago.

Therefore, today’s idea of what should be seen as “Oscar bait” is markedly different than the established meme of a solemn biopic or a historical epic dripping with pathos. Because the balance of voters has shifted and also because the collective sensibilities in Hollywood have become more politically progressive than ever, the prestige picture has evolved to focus on increased social consciousness, the plight of marginalized groups, inclusivity, and widely understood reckoning with America’s troubled past. Consequently, we have seen such “movies of the moment” like Parasite, Moonlight and even this year’s One Battle After Another take the top prize. These are films the Academy voters are likely to respond to. And with them you will also find complementary bait: Green Book, CODA (which looked like an evolution of the kind of movies Miramax spent millions campaigning for twenty years ago), The Brutalist, Women Talking, Emilia Perez, Conclave.

Socially conscious movies driven by political messaging, often directed and/or written by typically marginalized voices have effectively replaced bloated epics and meandering biopics as movies that studios might be inclined to spend money on campaigning during the Oscar season. Therefore, films like Hamnet, Train Dreams and even Marty Supreme now qualify to be seen as potential catnip for voters—now more diverse, more progressive and more inclusive than ever. I’d go as far as to suggest that in the coming years we will see a deluge of Sinners-like genre-adjacent prestige fare specifically targeting the Oscar race. The Oscar arithmetic has now been altered.

Still, we’ll definitely see some old-school bait make it through the filtering process, like Frankenstein did this year and the sub-genre of movies that pat Hollywood on the back for being awesome and full of splendor (like La La Land, Mank or Babylon) will periodically make an appearance because for all their progressive fire, Hollywood will always remain firmly infatuated with itself. But the definition of what is and isn’t Oscar bait ought to be revisited. Or at least understood.