Photo provided by Sayana Settipalli
Many claim that this past year has been amazing in terms of cinema, with standout films such as Weapons, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Materialists, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. But before people can stand back, reminisce, and make way for the films coming out this year —The Odyssey, Hail Mary, Avengers: Doomsday— viewers will take into account the Oscar winners of this year to influence their final opinions.
The 98th Annual Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, will take place on March 15th, 2026. Suffice to say, audiences and critics alike are waiting in anticipation and as the date approaches, people are becoming more and more vocal about the movies they would like to see win—and even louder about what they would not like to see win.
Movies that were fan favorites at the time of their release, such as Ryan Coogler’s original screenplay Sinners and James Gunn’s film adaptation of Superman, were later criticized for being “overhyped” or “worse in hindsight.” “I think generally this has always been a thing with the media, where you get this sort of curse where the ball gets rolling too hard and then people want to zag,” explains WHS Digital Video Arts Production teacher Mr. McGrath on the topic of online movie discussion. Sinners became the highest-grossing original horror film, earning $48 million in its opening weekend. It now also has the honor of breaking the all-time record for Academy Award nominations, earning 16 nods; this broke the previous record of 14 nominations held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land.
However, the admirable number of nominations certainly doesn’t mean there’s a sense of security when it comes to the period-horror winning big. The Academy Awards are infamous for snubbing films through intentionally or unintentionally ignoring worthy films, performances, and directors. These losses are common to see due to subjective voting, genre bias (specifically against horror/comedy), and embedded issues regarding diversity, highlighted by movements like #OscarsSoWhite and historical underrepresentation of women and marginalized creators.
“As soon as the idea of the most prestigious award comes into mind, then it becomes all about how, even if [the film is] really good, it doesn’t mean anything and it’s not the movie of the year unless it gets this one award,” says Anoushka Gupta about the value of the Oscars as it pertains to how people regard films that win or lose.
All of this only works to call attention to the validity and importance of the Oscars and award shows as a whole. Marty Supreme serves as an example of a film that came out at the tail end of the year and stole the spotlight through intense promotion and social media presence, causing many to push for the movie to be more awarded at the Oscars, a result of possible recency bias.
Time will only tell, it seems, as the results of the upcoming Oscars will either confirm what audiences think of the harmful culture surrounding the establishment or surprise with presenting well-earned recognition.
Sayana Settipalli, a junior at Washington High School, was born and raised in India before moving to Fremont in 2015. This is her first year at The Hatchet and she plans on writing about various topics, ranging from political science to digital media literacy. In school, she’s currently acting as Assistant Speech Captain in WHS Speech and Debate. Outside of school, she’s a committed member of both the Tri-City Action Team in Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action and Fremont Debate Academy. In her free time, Sayana enjoys reading and writing poetry, hanging out with her friends, creating graphic designs, practicing screenwriting, and watching movies - especially thrillers. After graduating high school, she hopes to major in a combination of English and education.