2018 Oscars: The Snubs, the Surprises, the Facts and the Stats

Erik Anderson January 23, 2018

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The nominees for the 90th Academy Awards have been announced and what, did you not expect some shocking snubs and surprise nominations? Well, this is the fun part. Breaking down the nominations to find the breakthroughs, the firsts, the records and the cause for celebration. Plus, we can get rid of some of the pesky stats that plague Oscar predicting!

The Shape of Water led the way with 13 nominations, just one shy of the record. Dunkirk was next with 8, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri with 7, Phantom Thread with 6 and Lady Bird with 5.

The Snubs

The biggest and most obvious snub (which I called) was Martin McDonagh missing out on a Director nomination despite earning Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe, DGA and BAFTA nominations for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – the perceived Best Picture frontrunner.

Germany’s In the Fade won the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe for Foreign Language Film but was not nominated for the Oscar.

Jane is the most rewarded Documentary Feature of 2017 but was denied an Oscar nomination.

James Franco (The Disaster Artist) ends a 6-year streak of Golden Globe winners for Best Actor – Musical/Comedy being nominated at the Oscars (the longest ever). Sexual harassment allegations hit right in the middle of Oscar nomination voting.

The Florida Project only managed a single nomination, Supporting Actor for Willem Dafoe.

Hong Chau (Downsizing) was snubbed in Supporting Actress after earning Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations, robbing us of the first Asian actress nominee in over 10 years (since Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi).

NYFCC winner Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip) was snubbed in Supporting Actress despite being asked to announce the nominations, which she did hilariously.

Both Michael Stuhlbarg and Armie Hammer missed out on Supporting Actor nominations for Call Me By Your Name. Director Luca Guadagnino also misses after earning BAFTA and Independent Spirit nominations.

The heavily lauded and award-winning Animated Short In a Heartbeat was snubbed in that category this morning.

Films left off the Best Picture lineup after PGA nominations: The Big Sick, Molly’s Game, Wonder Woman and I, Tonya. All except Wonder Woman earned nominations elsewhere.

The Surprises

The very late-breaking Phantom Thread found itself with three major nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson) and Supporting Actress (Lesley Manville). Darkest Hour earned a Best Picture nomination with just a BAFTA in hand.

Speaking of Phantom Thread, every Best Actor nomination Daniel Day-Lewis has earned (and won) also came with Best Picture and Best Director nominations. Four of his six nominations he brought a Supporting Actress nominee with him.

Another high-profile late-breaker, The Post, earned only two nominations: Best Picture and Best Actress (Meryl Streep). It’s director Steven Spielberg’s lowest-tally for a Best Picture-directed nominee ever.

New Records

Supporting Actor nominee Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World) is now the oldest acting nominee in Oscar history. He also earns the distinction of being the fastest from cast to shooting to release in history. Adapted Screenplay nominee James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name) is the oldest nominee overall.

Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water) ties Viola Davis as the most-nominated black actress in Oscar history (3) but earns the distinction of being nominated exclusively for Best Picture nominees and all for roles that take place in the 1960s. She also extends her own record of nominations after winning (2).

Roman J. Israel, Esq. is Denzel Washington 8th nomination, expanding his own record as the most-nominated black actor in Oscar history and tying with Al Pacino and Peter O’Toole, among others.

Octavia Spencer and Denzel Washington become the first black actor to earn consecutive Oscar nominations.

Michael Stuhlbarg is the first actor to appear in three Best Picture nominees in the same year (The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, The Post) since John C. Reilly, 15 years ago.

Stat Breakers

The lack of dual Supporting Actor nominations from the same film streak has finally been broken. Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson were nominated together for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The last pair were Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel for 1991’s Bugsy.

This is the first time in Oscar history that two Lead Actor nominees are in their 20s (Timothée Chalamet for Call Me By Your Name and Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out) since Kenneth Branagh and Tom Cruise in 1989.

Firsts

Rachel Morrison (Mudbound) is the first woman nominated for Best Cinematography in the Academy’s 90-year history.

Mary J. Blige became the first person to be nominated for a performance and original song in the same year, for the same film. She is nominated in Supporting Actress for Mudbound and in Original Song for “Mighty River.”

With the three nominations above, plus Adapted Screenplay for Virgil Williams and director Dee Rees, Netflix broke through the top categories at Oscar for the first time. It had previously earned Documentary Feature nominations (it got two more of those today) but had never been able to hit out of there.

More Mudbound – Dee Rees is the first black woman to be nominated for Adapted Screenplay and only the second black woman overall to be nominated for writing (Suzanne de Passe nominated for Original Screenplay for Lady Sings The Blues’ in 1972).

Logan is the first superhero/comic book film nominated for Adapted Screenplay.

Both Sound categories (Editing and Mixing) matched 5/5 for the first time ever

Get Out is the first Best Picture nominee released in February since The Silence of the Lambs.

Agnès Varda is the first filmmaker to receive an Honorary Oscar and then be nominated for a competitive Oscar in the same season. She is nominated for Documentary Feature (Faces Places).

Dunkirk is Christopher Nolan’s first Director nomination after five DGA noms.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.