With the Oscars shortlists unveiled in late December, we now know the final 10 films in official contention for the five nomination spots for Best Sound. No major snubs to speak of and we’re left with 10 contenders comprised of bombastic blockbusters, a couple of music-based extravaganzas, and two options that skew slightly left-field in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and Moonage Daydream.
While Avatar: The Way of Water may have Best Visual Effects sewn up, it’s Top Gun: Maverick that feels like the untouchable frontrunner in the sound race. The film is probably what we’d consider the “loudest” contender this year and the bone-rattling sound design delighted audiences for months on end this year. That being said, Avatar lost both sound categories to The Hurt Locker back in 2009, so perhaps that helps the campaign of its sequel.
That leaves the other three slots relatively wide open for anyone to grab. While neither Elvis nor Babylon are musicals in the purest sense, music is integral to their plot and construction, and the Academy loves to honour films of that nature. Keep an eye on All Quiet on the Western Front. The fact that it landed on the shortlists for five categories is hard to ignore. And war films tend to do particularly well with the sound branch of the Academy.
BEST SOUND PREDICTIONS:
1. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)
2. Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)
3. Babylon (Paramount Pictures)
4. Elvis (Warner Bros.)
5. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24)
IN CONTENTION
All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)
The Batman (Warner Bros.)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Walt Disney Studios)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)
Moonage Daydream (NEON)
