Nolan's The Odyssey will sweep like Oppenheimer — but Matt Damon won't be its Cillian Murphy
Matt Damon has three acting nominations and one Oscar, and it is for writing. The veteran Reddit is backing instead has two nominations, a Volpi Cup and no wins at all.
Early on 15 October, r/oscarrace put the season's favourite theory into a thread title: is John Malkovich this year's Paul Giamatti and Matt Damon this year's Cillian Murphy? The top reply, on 75 upvotes, took the second half apart in one sentence.
"Damon's performance - though generally well-liked - has nowhere near the acclaim that Murphy's did."
— top comment, r/oscarrace
The template is tempting. At the March 2024 ceremony, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer took seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Murphy, who saw off Giamatti, the much-loved veteran of The Holdovers. This year Nolan has The Odyssey, out since 17 July and rated in the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes. The overdue veteran in a smaller comedy is Malkovich in Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine. Except one name doesn't fit.
The sweep nobody is excited about
The same morning, another r/oscarrace thread was already mourning the result before a single critics' prize has been handed out:
"I'm personally dreading 4 months straight of watching the Odyssey win most picture, director, and craft categories, especially after Oppenheimer ran the same track just 3 years ago."
— r/oscarrace, 46 upvotes
Fair enough. The Odyssey will most likely take Picture, Director and a shelf of craft awards, because nothing this year is big enough to stop it. But Best Actor is where the Oppenheimer script breaks, and it breaks on the leading man.
Damon's problem isn't Damon
Nobody calls his Odysseus bad. Variety's Guy Lodge praised the "inspired casting of Matt Damon", and a few critics said career-best. Warm, though, is not Murphy-level. The thread's harsher point is that Damon "might not even be the standout in his own movie": Robert Pattinson's Antinous got some of the loudest reviews. Here is Damon's Oscar record so far:
- 1998: wins Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting with Ben Affleck, loses Best Actor for the same film.
- 2010: Supporting Actor nomination for Invictus, no win.
- 2016: Best Actor nomination for The Martian, no win.
Three acting nominations, one statuette for writing. Voters have never seen Damon as overdue, because he already has a gold man at home.
Read more: Nolan's Cyclops was rushed into a Greek cave in two months and moves better for it
The legend the Academy owes
Malkovich arrives with the opposite story. In September he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, the only prize Wild Horse Nine took home; the Golden Lion went to Woman Unknown. He plays a CIA agent sent with Sam Rockwell to Easter Island just before the 1973 Chilean coup. He accepted by video from a film set in Montreal, which is about as Malkovich as acceptance speeches get.
Damon is leading the biggest film of the year, and that is exactly why nobody thinks the Academy owes him anything.
His Oscar history is two Supporting Actor nominations, for Places in the Heart in 1984 and In the Line of Fire in 1993, and no wins. The man has had an entire film named after him, and the Academy has still never read his name out on the night. Voters rarely refuse an overdue legend.
To be fair, one commenter's whole reply was "It's October", and they're right. Wild Horse Nine opens in UK and US cinemas on 6 November, Santa Barbara hands Malkovich its Outstanding Performer of the Year award in February, and the precursors start in December.
My bet stands. The Odyssey gets the sweep, Nolan gets another speech, and Damon gets a very good seat to watch Malkovich collect the one Oscar that was supposed to be his.
Read more: Thirteen weeks in, Nolan's Odyssey earned more per cinema than the new Sorkin and Cruise films