Countdown to the Oscars: Best Sound

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Sound

The nominees are:

All Quiet on the Western Front

Avatar: The Way of Water

The Batman

Elvis

Top Gun: Maverick

Here we are in year three of the experiment in combining the formerly two sound awards (Editing and Mixing) into a single award for Best Sound. Last year, I outlined the ways in which the Sound Editing award often favored action/war pictures while Sound Mixing had more room for musicals and movies about music. I also suggested the future of the award would look a lot more like the old Sound Editing Oscar than Sound Mixing. The predicted triumph of Dune last year lent credence to this theory. The five nominees in the category this year point even further in that direction.

What we have are four action/war films and one quasi-musical. Unless the action films split the vote, I don’t see the musical winning. As this trend develops in the coming years, one would hope the takeaway will be that we need to split these categories once more and recognize the fact that Editing and Mixing are, in fact, two distinct disciplines. Alas, that seems unlikely, so get used to the slate of nominees looking quite similar to this year after year.

Top Gun: Maverick – In 1986, Top Gun was nominated for both sound awards (Sound, which meant mixing, and Sound Effects Editing, which meant Editing). It lost Sound to Platoon and Sound Effects Editing to James Cameron’s very own Aliens. The difference then: That Top Gun movie was not a Best Picture nominee that saved movie theaters. This one is. The sound, of course, is awesome, tailor-made for the big screen and the booming speakers of an IMAX or Dolby theater. I bought my dad a surround sound system for Christmas this year, and the first movie he wanted to watch: Top Gun: Maverick. Can’t say I blame him.

All Quiet on the Western Front – The other half of the action/war picture dominance: a great war movie. Just in the past decade alone, 1917, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, and American Sniper have won sound awards at the Oscars. The movie this most closely resembles is probably Saving Private Ryan, which won both sound awards in 1998. Appropriately, the sound here is entirely immersive. The bullets fly by, the bombs explode as if right next to you, and the score blares over it all in a disturbing, perfectly painful way. It’s great stuff.

Elvis – This is the musical in the bunch, and as mentioned up top, it is more a feat of mixing than editing, but the feat is truly admirable. The way the diegetic sound comes in and out, alternately highlighting and underplaying the emotions on the screen is pitch perfect. I have written a lot in this series about how overblown a lot of this movie’s crafts are – and laid most of the blame at the feet of the director – but the sound is one area that feels carefully attuned to the picture that is being made.

Avatar: The Way of Water – Leaving aside anything else, this film has some of the most impressive foley work – that’s the creation of the sound effects – of any film in recent memory. There is little as difficult as getting accurate-to-life water effects in film, both visually and sonically, and this movie covers both in spades, each aided by the other. Interestingly, the original film lost both sound awards in 2009 to eventual Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker (another recent war film winning in this category for those keeping score at home).

The Batman – Sound engineer Andy Nelson is a double nominee this year for Elvis and The Batman, bringing his lifetime nomination total to 24 and putting him in a tie with Woody Allen for 10th most nominations of all time. He has been Steven Spielgerg’s go-to re-recording mixer since Hook in 1991, winning an Oscar for Saving Private Ryan. He also won a statue for Les Miserables, and in addition to working on Elvis and The Batman this year, he also did The Fabelmans (of course) and Babylon. Just a cool dude all around.

The final analysis

For me, this is a toss-up. It all depends on whether this Academy is as enamored of All Quiet on the Western Front as the British Academy was. Considering the Brits gave All Quiet their best film award, I’m guessing not. I’m also guessing the Americans will want to reward all that money Top Gun: Maverick made with something, and this is the most likely place for it. So, flip a coin if you like and you’ll probably have just as good a shot at predicting this as I do, but I’m going with Maverick.

Will win: Top Gun: Maverick

Should win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Should have been here: TÁR

A note about my favorite snub: Every nominee in the category this year, in one way or another, is big and loud and bombastic, and that’s par for the course. But, TÁR is so much about sound that it surprises me the Sound Branch didn’t go for it. All the subtle little touches that went into Todd Field’s film create a truly haunting sonic landscape.

Next time: Original Score