What do this year’s Bafta 2024 winners mean for the Oscars?

Is it too early to speculate about who might take the big prizes at the Oscars next month? Victoria Luxford on the clues we can glean from last night’s Bafta 2024 awards ceremony

The Bafta 2024 ceremony welcomed the great and good of Hollywood’s A-List to London’s Southbank Centre last night to celebrate the best of last year’s cinema.

The awards are often a good indicator of the films likely to win Oscars. So with that in mind, here are a few trends to keep a lookout for come the evening of Sunday March 10 for the Oscars.

Oppenheimer takes the lead

Christopher Nolan’s historical biopic swept the major categories at Bafta 2024 with seven wins, including Best Film, Director, Actor and Supporting Actor. There can be very little doubt that the film has the best momentum going into the Oscars. It’s not a case of if it’ll win, but how many major awards it’ll win when it comes round to March’s ceremony. 

One man who may feel the tide of history shifting is Christopher Nolan. Despite being one of the most successful British filmmakers of all time, he had never won a Bafta before scooping the Best Director and Best Film awards at this year’s ceremony. In 2010 Inception lost out to The King’s Speech, and then in 2017 his war film Dunkirk lost out to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. But this year, Oppenheimer is the film with a sense of destiny. 

Since 2000, Bafta’s Best Film has matched Oscar’s Best Picture nine times out of twenty-three. 

Barbie’s award season nightmare continues

Was it the commercial nature of the film? Its skewering of the patriarchy? An over reliance on pink?! Something about Barbie is just not jiving with awards voters. Headlines were made a few weeks ago when the two creative forces behind the film, director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie, were snubbed in the nominations for their respective categories.  At the Golden Globes, it missed out on the major categories and took home a new award for Box Office Achievement. At the Bafta 2024 ceremony it missed out in all five nominated categories. 

The film’s success at the box office may be the greatest thing going against it. Since 2000, the only film that was both number one at the worldwide box office and won a Best Film Bafta or Oscar was The Lord of The Rings: Return of The King in 2004. There are mitigating factors of course (big box office doesn’t always mean great cinema), but Barbie may be suffering from what Steven Spielberg termed as “commercial backlash”.  

What does this mean for the Oscars? My hunch is that Greta Gerwig may win Best Adapted Screenplay with co-writer Noah Baumbach, as the screenwriting awards often seem to celebrate writer-directors who aren’t viewed as contenders for the big categories. Any win, at this point, would be against the run of play. 

Is this Downey’s year?

From Iron Man to Little Gold Man? Amid the noise of Barbie Vs Oppenheimer, one of Hollywood’s greatest comeback stories is quietly gathering pace. Once considered a lost cause due to addiction problems, Robert Downey Jr now seems an inevitability to win Best Supporting Actor for his stand out turn in Oppenheimer. He took home the Bafta equivalent, charming the audience with a funny and humble speech that seemed Oscar friendly. I would say the Supporting Actor categories may be sewn up after gracious wins for the Marvel star and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, a deserving Best Supporting Actress Bafta winner for The Holdovers. 

Best Actor and Actress remain close

What’s less clear are the Best Actor and Actress Oscars, and the Bafta 2024 ceremony has only muddied the waters. The buzz for Best Actor seems to be with Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, but he lost out on a Bafta to Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy.  Many had Lily Gladstone as a certainty for Best Actress, but she wasn’t even nominated for a Bafta, and her film Killers of The Flower Moon went home empty handed in all nine nominated categories.

Emma Stone won the Bafta, and remains an Oscar contender for her unique turn in Poor Things. Unlike previous years, where emotional favourites seemed destined to take the crown, Best Actor and Actress may be the toughest to call. 

Everybody loves Michael

We end with a wonderful surprise from Back To The Future star Michael J Fox, who took to the stage in a wheelchair to present the Best Film Bafta, getting to his feet as the adoring audience did the same. The star, who has lived with Parkinson’s Disease for decades, said: “There’s a reason why they say movies are magic. Movies can change your day, they can change your outlook. Sometimes they can change your life”.

The star, in failing health owing to his condition, contributed a lot of magic to the movies over the years. After years of controversy, the Oscars should aspire to feelgood moments such as these. 

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