I was reading this article on FiveThirtyEight which tracks previous award shows as data points to forecast the Oscars.
It showed DiCaprio and Larson as prohibitive favorites, which of course was born out. It had Vikander as a decent favorite (she won) and Stallone as a slight favorite over Rylance (Rylance won).
As for Best Picture, he were was their rankings on February 5th:
I've captured the top four data points.
My reaction to these data points was to craft a theory. It was based on my personal history of observing which films win Best Picture. I call this The Inverse Awesome Theory.
In short, the more awesome a movie is, the less likely it is to win Best Picture.
It's important to note that awesomeness in this case is objective criteria, not a subjective assessment of quality. Awesomeness is what you find in summer blockbusters. Car chases and special effects and Tom Cruise dangling from wires. In other words, fun. If you go to the movies to have a fun time, and ranked them accordingly, the inverse is how likely it is to win Best Picture. You get the point.
I was able to eliminate Room, Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies solely on their position in the chart. The #5 ranked film was The Martian, a thoroughly fun film that felt more like a summer blockbuster than the trailer would lead you to believe. I knew this had no chance.
#4 was Mad Max: Fury Road, arguably the most awesome/fun movie released in 2015. There was no chance in hell this was going to win. I would have believed Room or Brooklyn had a better shot.
#3 was Spotlight. At the time I didn't know anything about it other than the title. I'll come back to this.
#2 was The Big Short. I saw the trailer and wanted to go see over it Christmas break, but didn't have time. Based on the trailer, it seemed pretty funny. It had Steve Carell in it. While not as awesome as Mad Max, it seemed like a fun time. I eliminated this from the possibility.
#1 was The Revenant. This had 2.29 points compared to 1.71 for Spotlight. I knew from the trailer that this seemed pretty artsy, based on the director and the cinematography. But I also knew that DiCaprio was attacked by a bear. That seemed pretty awesome. Again, I didn't know anything about Spotlight other than the title, but it seemed like The Revenant was more awesome because it had more bear attacks. So I posted that Spotlight would win Best Picture.
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The next day I was telling our editor my theory and he tells me what Spotlight is about. And I immediately know I'm going to be right. A movie about journalism heroes exposing child molesters may be a quality film, but it is certainly not going to be awesome.
Pretty solid reasoning.
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