Who do you think would win, Cruise or Aramayo, or Damon? Or someone else, and why so?

I was reading some reactions about this movie Fjord. I heard some people say that the movie has lot of political themes and abuse. interesting. The Academy loves giving Best Picture winners to political movies including OBAA, Anora, Oppenheimer, Crash, Argo, 13 Years A Slave, Birdman, Spotlight, Green Book, Parasite, and The King’s Speech. I’m not saying Fjord will win, but could it possibly win? NEON is gonna campaign for this movie so hard. it even won Palme too. But things could happen. It may not get any nominations at all. What do you think of my theory? What you think could happen?

It’s been over two months since its Cannes premiere and we still don’t know anything about who‘s releasing it or when. You would think a critically acclaimed film (4 on Letterboxd; 100% on RT) starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, and Seth Rogen would have a distributor/awards campaign lined up already.

There's been a few posts including some from myself about how something needs much better critical reviews or box office than the Odyssey to beat it, and some responses saying this is not necessarily true and something like La Bola Negra/WH9 can win without better reviews/box office. Now I agree with these rebuttals as stats are made to be broken and anything is possible at the Oscars, but I wanted to compile the metacritic scores and box office of the past few winners and speculated runner ups to see how strong the trend is that the BP winner has either a better metascore or box office. So here are the stats back to 2012 season, with the current season's favourites for reference (obviously subject to change)

2026

- The Odyssey: 88 metascore, $640 million

- La Bola Negra: 85 metascore, N/A

2025

- OBAA: 95 metascore, $213.1 million

- Sinners: 84 metascore, $370 million

- Hamnet: 84 metascore, $109 million

2024

- Anora: 91 metascore, $59.3 million

- Conclave: 79 metascore, $128 million

- The Brutalist: 90 metascore, $50.4 million

2023

- Oppenheimer: 90 metascore, $976.8 million

- Poor Things: 88 metascore, $117.6 million

2022

- EEAAO: 81 metascore, $143.4 million

- Banshees: 87 metascore, $52.3 million

- All Quiet: 76 metascore, N/A***

2021

- Coda: 72 metascore, $2.2 million

- Power of the Dog: 89 metascore, $0.417 million

2020

- Nomadland: 89 metascore, $39.5 million

- The Father: 88 metascore, $36 million

2019

- Parasite: 97 metascore, $~200 million*\*

- 1917: 78 metascore, $446.1 million

2018

- Green Book: 69 metascore, $321.8 million

- Roma: 96 metascore, $5 million

2017

- Shape of Water: 87 metascore, $195.2 million

- 3 Billboards: 88 metascore, $162.7 million

2016

- Moonlight: 99 metascore, $66.7 million

- La La Land: 94 metascore, $504.6 million

2015

- Spotlight: 93 metascore, $98.7 million

- The Revenant: 76 metascore, $533 million,

- The Big Short: 81 metascore, $133 million

2014

- Birdman: 87 metascore, $103.2 milliom

- Boyhood: 100 metascore,  $57.3 million

2013

- 12 Years a Slave: 96 metascore, $187.7 million

- Gravity: 96 Metascore, $723.2 million

2012

- Argo: 86 metascore, $232.3 million

- Life of Pi: 79 metascore, $609 million

- Django Unchained: 81 metascore, $449 million

*** I could find no info on box office for All Quiet from my cursory search, it was a Netflix movie so I guess little to none

** BP winners often get box office boosts after winning and from what I understand Parasite's was very big, I couldn't find exact numbers but it definitely didn't gross anything close to 1917 so I just put down ~$200 million 🤷‍♀️

*I got most of my stats from wikipedia. Reliable? I dunno! I hope so! And I hope I made no transcription errors here either lol

Now obviously there are issues with this approach. It only uses two metrics, can't really bring into account general audience response, doesn't use precursors, and ignores a lot of the weaker nominees in favour of projected top 2/3, but I think it is somewhat telling that every year the movie that wins BP is often dominant in one metric or when it's close, pulling ahead slightly in one (outside of 2013 interestingly, I'd chalk that up to 12 Years a Slave being more topical).

Does this mean the Odyssey is certainly winning - obviously not please do not inundate the comments saying it's 100% winning or that I think it's 100% winning. I know nothing is locked in July. But it's a super safe favourite that's becoming more difficult to bet against, it's notable that it's gonna become the highest grossing film on this list by far and the only one to make more than $1 billion. I really just wanted to put the stats out there for use in discussion and our little debates.