{"id":270951,"date":"2025-11-08T11:44:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T11:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/270951\/"},"modified":"2025-11-08T11:44:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T11:44:27","slug":"the-first-2025-2026-oscars-villain-has-arrived-in-hamnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/270951\/","title":{"rendered":"The First 2025-2026 Oscars Villain Has Arrived in \u2018Hamnet\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n \"Gold
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Oscar Futures<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Keeping pace with Hollywood\u2019s perpetual awards horserace. Sign up for the newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s Hamnet.
\n Photo: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features\n <\/p>\n

The concept of an \u201cOscars villain\u201d is fraught with contradictions and exaggerations. No movie is actually a villain, of course. (\u201cNot even Bohemian Rhapsody<\/a>?\u201d No. \u201cNot even The Whale<\/a>?\u201d Well \u2026) But Oscars season tells a story, often multiple stories, and stories need villains if only as a point of relief for the main characters. Thus far, those main characters have established themselves as Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another<\/a> and Ryan Coogler\u2019s Sinners<\/a>. They\u2019re both artistically ambitious, have struck a chord with critics and audiences, are seen as socioculturally important, and are directed by men who have been welcomed into the Oscars fold with previous nominations but have never won. Other contenders exist, but their bona fides sit in the negative space surrounding the two front-runners. Sentimental Value<\/a> is small and European and about a famous film director. Marty Supreme<\/a> is nervy and New York\u2013y and based on a famous table-tennis player. Perhaps if either one of those movies picks up additional momentum via precursor awards, they might attain villain status. But neither one of them feels quite so threatening to the top two \u2014 and so likely to elicit groans from the peanut gallery \u2014 as Hamnet.<\/p>\n

Hamnet is Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s adaptation of Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel, a fictionalized telling of William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, dealing with the death of their young son. Over the course of its lauded run through the fall festivals, Hamnet was characterized as the year\u2019s most emotionally devastating film, one whose Oscars ambitions would be boosted by how many voters wept at the film\u2019s conclusion. Delivering on a promise to stir up emotions has indeed been a reliable path to Oscars success in the past. But the better Hamnet looks as an Oscars prospect, the more likely its chances are to play spoiler to heroes One Battle or Sinners and flirt with villainy as a result. A few factors are at play here.<\/p>\n

Sinners and One Battle After Another are overwhelmingly beloved by critics and online tastemakers, but both movies feature elements that could make them less appealing to the imagined average Oscars voter. Sinners is, after all, a vampire movie set in the racist American South, and genre doesn\u2019t have a great track record with the Academy. One Battle is a movie that features a violent, anti-fascist revolution in America, far from the war epics that usually reign successful. Neither is the stuff of conventional \u201cOscars bait\u201d in that they\u2019re not courting the Academy by glorifying its history or the process of making art.<\/p>\n

What most people know about Hamnet \u2014 it doesn\u2019t open in theaters until November 26, though it premiered at the insular Telluride Film Festival \u2014 is that it\u2019s a movie about grieving parents, pastoral England, and William Shakespeare. Superficially, at least, Hamnet fits better in the traditional mold of Oscars-friendly fare. Martin Scorsese fans still haven\u2019t forgiven Ordinary People \u2014 a movie about a family grieving the loss of a child \u2014 for defeating Raging Bull in 1981, and Spielberg fans haven\u2019t forgotten how Shakespeare in Love upset Saving Private Ryan. To PTA\u2019s and Coogler\u2019s fans, and the people on the wrong side of these past Oscars decisions, Hamnet could be looking threatening.<\/p>\n

Despite the best efforts of ABC over the years to forcibly recognize blockbuster movies at the Oscars, the Academy Awards are not a populist endeavor. Handing out trophies for artistic excellence is an inherently elitist activity. But within that elitist framework, popularity matters a lot! And One Battle After Another and Sinners are both very popular movies. Sinners is currently ranked fifth in domestic box office for 2025 with $278 million; One Battle After Another didn\u2019t do nearly as well but still resides inside the top 25 movies of the year with $68 million and counting. Hamnet isn\u2019t going to make a fraction of that for reasons that have nothing to do with how good of a movie it is. Leonardo DiCaprio scampering around in a bathrobe is a better hook for selling tickets than exquisitely performed grief.<\/p>\n

One popularity contest that Hamnet did win was the People\u2019s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. But even that honor comes with a history of backlash. An abridged list of some recent winners: The Life of Chuck; Belfast; Jojo Rabbit<\/a>; Green Book; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri<\/a>; The Imitation Game; The King\u2019s Speech. Belfast and Jojo Rabbit were scorned as overly sentimental, with the latter joining Three Billboards as being politically problematic. The Imitation Game is best remembered for Harvey Weinstein\u2019s obnoxious \u201cHonor the movie, honor the man\u201d campaign. The King Speech\u2019s and Green Book were the mediocre movies that bested The Social Network and Black Panther, respectively. Oscars villains everywhere you turn!<\/p>\n

Chlo\u00e9 Zhao is a critically acclaimed director whose films Songs My Brother Taught Me and The Rider are among the most respected indie movies of the last ten years. But she\u2019s also attracted the kind of criticism that can often feel petty. En route to becoming the second woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Director in 2021, Zhao faced criticism<\/a> for Nomadland not taking a harsher stance on Amazon. (Frances McDormand\u2019s character spends part of the film working at an Amazon fulfillment center \u2014 the film\u2019s producers including McDormand secured the participation of Amazon to allow them to film on site.) A lot of that criticism brought up Zhao\u2019s biographical history as the daughter of a wealthy Chinese industrialist in order to paint her as no true friend of the working class. Following Nomadland, Zhao faced a more pedestrian \u2014 though likely more vehement \u2014 kind of backlash from fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe when her film Eternals faced howls of \u201cworst MCU movie ever.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that contradiction in Zhao \u2014 between the daughter of privilege and the filmmaker who went to school in the United States, made some incredible and empathetic films about the American West, and comes across more than a little bit like a hippie \u2014 that seems to throw people off. It\u2019s a persona that has drawn in collaborators including Frances McDormand and admirers such as Steven Spielberg (who introduced Zhao when Hamnet played the London Film Festival a few weeks ago) while leading others to anonymously roll their eyes when Zhao does something like lead her festival audiences in a guided meditation<\/a> before Hamnet screenings. When I asked one insider closely following the Oscars race about Hamnet\u2019s position behind Sinners and One Battle After Another as Oscars front-runners, this person noted with no small amount of dismay, \u201cWe\u2019re near guaranteed a toxic dynamic when you have a polarizing female director who already has an Oscar pushing up against two beloved, overdue male filmmakers with more popular movies, PTA especially.\u201d<\/p>\n

How much stock do I put in these arguments? When I saw Hamnet I walked away thinking it was an incredible movie with dynamite performances, so to reduce it to a piece of Oscars bait mugging voters for their tears feels both ungenerous and inaccurate. As for the idea that a movie like Hamnet has some kind of built-in advantage because it\u2019s dressed in period clothing and features William Shakespeare? That reads to me like PTSD from Saving Private Ryan fans who can\u2019t accept that Shakespeare in Love was a good movie. It\u2019s been 27 years since that Best Picture decision, which is exactly how long it\u2019s been since a movie that has anything to do with Shakespeare or could credibly be called a costume drama has won Oscar\u2019s big prize.<\/p>\n

But nature abhors a vacuum, and the existence of Oscars-race heroes necessitates Oscars villains. Anderson\u2019s Oscar win is long overdue. Coogler deserves to be recognized as one of the brightest talents in the industry. Hamnet \u2014 emotional, feminine, directed-by-an-Oscar-winner Hamnet \u2014 could still be the movie that thwarts them both. How dare it!<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros.\n <\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t here last week to adjust my predictions to get in line with the 2025 Gotham Awards nominations, but suffice it to say that if the Gothams went that hard for the allegedly $175 million budgeted Warner Bros. film \u2014 to the tune of six nominations for Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another \u2014 its front-runner status is secured.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Jason McDonald\/Searchlight Pictures\n <\/p>\n

Call it a hunch. Bradley Cooper\u2019s movie exceeded my expectations, and almost everybody I talk to who has seen it feels similarly. Plus this lineup needs some jostling.<\/p>\n

Frankenstein, Hamnet, Is This Thing On?, It Was Just an Accident, Jay Kelly, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value, Sinners, Train Dreams<\/p>\n

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Photo: Logan White\/A24\n <\/p>\n

A Best Director nomination at the Gotham Awards is a step in the right direction, even if If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You director Mary Bronstein is currently more of a long shot than I would like her to be.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Christian Belgaux\n <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed a bit of an enthusiasm gap for this movie as it\u2019s run through the North American film festivals. People like it. Do enough people love it?<\/p>\n

Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, Hamnet; Jafar Panahi, It Was Just an Accident; Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme; Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another; Ryan Coogler, Sinners\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Photo: 20th Century Studios via YouTube\n <\/p>\n

A \u201cCultural Icon Tribute\u201d award from the Gotham Awards after they declined to nominate Jeremy Allen White for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere does feel like a makeup nomination. But it\u2019s probably the sign of a motivated Oscars campaign that the award is happening to begin with.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Train Dreams\n <\/p>\n

Overall good news for Train Dreams at the Gothams with Best Feature and Best Screenplay nominations, but Edgerton not being able to get on to the list of ten lead performances isn\u2019t a great sign.<\/p>\n

Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, Marty Supreme; Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another; Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon; Michael B. Jordan, Sinners; Jeremy Allen White, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/p>\n

\"Hedda\" <\/p>\n

Photo: Amazon MGM Studios\n <\/p>\n

Getting a Best Lead Performance nomination from the Gotham Awards and a Spotlight Tribute award from the same organization on top of that? Tessa Thompson is officially in the game now with her performance as the titular Hedda.<\/p>\n

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Photo: MUBI\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

The film is proving to be less divisive among the critics than I expected, and Lawrence\u2019s appearance on Las Culturistas this week (announcing the Miss Piggy movie she and Emma Stone are making with Cole Escola!) was a hit.<\/p>\n

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet; Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You; Cynthia Erivo, Wicked: For Good; Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value; Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee<\/p>\n

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Photo: Warner Bros.\n <\/p>\n

Seeing both Sinners\u2019 Jack O\u2019Connell and Wake Up Dead Man\u2019s Josh O\u2019Connor on various pundits\u2019 longlists makes me nervous that more than a few people will intend to vote for one and actually vote for the other.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Universal Pictures\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n

Only once in history has the People Sexiest Man Alive been nominated at the subsequent Academy Awards. (Johnny Depp for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Nick Nolte was already an Oscar nominee when he was named Sexiest Man Alive in 1992.) He\u2019s sexy, that\u2019s probably enough for now.<\/p>\n

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another;\u00a0Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein; Paul Mescal, Hamnet; Sean Penn, One Battle After Another; Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd, Sentimental Value<\/p>\n

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Photo: Universal Pictures\n <\/p>\n

The press narrative that Ariana Grande is even better \u2014 and with surprising dramatic chops \u2014 in the Wicked sequel has me thinking she could win the dang statue.<\/p>\n

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Photo: A24\n <\/p>\n

The more I hear Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Marty Supreme co-star Odessa A\u2019zion mentioned as a contender (boosted by her currently being one of the stars of HBO\u2019s I Love LA), the more I worry that the Marty vote will get split.<\/p>\n

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value; Amy Madigan, Weapons; Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners; Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good; Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another<\/p>\n


\n See All<\/p>\n

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