It’s inevitable. Amid the barrage of Oscar nominations, the Academy ends up overlooking incredible work that – rightly or wrongly – simply missed the cut. This year is no different – while there are delights to be found across the categories, with major love for favourites like Oppenheimer and Poor Things, it’s impossible to ignore the names and titles that didn’t make the list. From filmmakers, to actors, to songs, to entire films being shut out, there are several snubs in the 2024 Oscar nominees that particularly sting – and Team Empire needed to get them off our chests. Read on for the ones that hurt the most:
Barbie – Greta Gerwig (Directing) and Margot Robbie (Leading Actress)
I’m thrilled to see America Ferrera and Ryan Gosling nominated, but Barbie’s big omissions are unfathomable to me – the dual snubbing of Greta Gerwig for Directing and Margot Robbie for Leading Actress in particular. Much attention has (understandably) been lavished on Gosling, but Robbie’s central performance illuminates the film – she sells that journey from plastic doll to freshly-minted human with emotional precision and impeccable comic timing, moving from breezy gags to single-tear-on-cheek chills in seconds. And none of it would be possible without Gerwig’s comprehensive vision for Barbie as a cinematic prospect. The specific nuances of the film’s constructed reality – a completely fabricated world demanding its own internal logic, while still being recognisably an oversized play-set – are communicated on screen with complete clarity. How Gerwig managed to modulate every Barbie and Ken performance in that hyper-specific world is a minor miracle. Maybe it was too good – it looked so effortless, the Academy forgot all the work behind the play.
Ben Travis
Past Lives – Celine Song (Directing)
The list of directors who scored an Oscar nomination with their very first film is an elite one: Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, Sidney Lumet for 12 Angry Men, Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, to name three. Past Lives may not feature a metaphorical sleigh (or much in the way of angry men), but Celine Song deserves to be on that list — few movies in 2023 resonated quite as much with me as her delicately stitched tale of displacement, identity, and roads not travelled. Coming from a background in theatre, it would have been understandable if Song had been cautious with her start behind the camera, finding her bearings and making something more conventional. But Past Lives is audacious not just in its time-hopping structure, but in the way its haunting scenes were constructed — Song kept her lead actors apart to help them get in the right headspace, and even interfered with their communication while they shot video-call scenes. It’s a movie that never strikes a false note, and while it may not have an atomic bomb in it, it hits like emotional TNT. Even though she’s been snubbed in 2024, I am certain that Song’s name will be called out in the category at some point in the future — it’s just inyun.
Nick de Semlyen
May December – Charles Melton (Supporting Actor)
Perhaps he’s too young; perhaps he’s not yet well-known enough among his Hollywood peers; perhaps voters just didn’t see the film. Whatever the reason, the lack of recognition for Charles Melton in May December is almost as shocking as the jaw-dropping revelations in the film itself. This is a role which saw Melton go up against two screen giants – Oscar-winning legends Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman — and not only hold his own, but arguably come away with the film’s most interesting, layered performance. He plays Joe, the patriarch of a family that began when he was just 13 and his now-wife (played by Moore) was 36; Melton sustains in Joe a fascinating state of arrested development, a child in a man’s body who never had the chance to grow up properly. When all around him is melodrama and mischief — Moore and Portman playing gleefully with different dimensions of ‘performance’ — Melton is vulnerable and understated, coming to terms with the shocking reality of his situation in devastating terms. It is, quite simply, an awards-level turn: King Charles, more like!
John Nugent
All Of Us Strangers (Everything)
I don’t really believe in snubs in this context – these things don’t quite work like that. But I do believe in WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD IS WRONG WITH YOU? Nothing at all for Andrew Haigh’s gorgeous All Of Us Strangers? His script is a miracle – inspired by Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel Strangers, Haigh takes a seed and makes it bloom, planting alongside it his own life experiences, his own trauma, his own dreams, showing us how personal an Adapted Screenplay can truly be. His tender, sensual direction, meanwhile, takes things to metaphysical levels. And as the two lonely men who find each other – in the same apartment block, but across the universe – Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are the human embodiment of love and loss and longing. To overlook all of this really is egregious. Still. The Oscars come and go. Film is immortal. Go see this one.
Alex Godfrey
Wonka – ‘You’ve Never Had Chocolate Like This’ (Original Song)
Well, there’s Oscar snubs, and there’s Oscar snubs. But only Wonka’s snub will make you shout, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?” In fairness, I’ve had weeks to come to terms with the fact that Neil Hannon’s wonderfully witty Wonka songs — a mixture of glorious melodies, heartfelt emotion and divine comedy — failed to even make the shortlist. But, just like a wronged Oompa-Loompa, the fires of injustice still burn deep in my belly. Admittedly, Wonka was always unlikely to win against ‘I’m Just Ken’, ‘What Was I Made For?’, and, erm, that song from the Cheetos movie. But to completely overlook the charms of gorgeous ballad ‘For A Moment’, or the joyous villain song ‘Sweet Tooth’, or the triumphant ‘You’ve Never Had Chocolate Like This’ is a disgrace. I detect the foul hand of Slugworth, Prodnose, and Fickelgruber. At a time when the Oscars are struggling to make an impact in the ratings it seems rather shortsighted to deprive viewers of Timothée Chalamet — ol’ Timmy Two-Sweets himself — doing a full-blown song and dance number. You would never have had chocolate like this.
Chris Hewitt
Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget (Animated Feature Film)
Shame on you, Academy. Back in 2001, the original Chicken Run missed out on any Oscar nominations – such a travesty that the Animated Feature award was born for the 2002 ceremony. Fast forward two decades and we’ve been blessed with Dawn Of The Nugget, another stop-motion banger from Aardman, picking up with feathered favourites Ginger (Thandiwe Newton) and Rocky (Zachary Levi) as they make a home on Chicken Island and raise daughter Molly (Bella Ramsey). The sequel is more than six meticulous years in the making, packed with incredible sequences, genius concepts, and all the indelibly British humour that makes the original so beloved. Not to mention, the instant screen icon that is the purple-haired Scouse chicken, and Molly’s companion, Frizzle, voiced by Josie Sedgwick-Davies. And yet, once again, the Academy has failed our poultry pals, leaving them off the shortlist for Best Animated Feature in 2024. We suspect fowl play.
Sophie Butcher
The Iron Claw – Zac Efron (Leading Actor)
For years he’s been written off as a pretty face – or the guy from the High School Musical films. But Zac Efron showed real, painful depth in The Iron Claw. Sean Durkin’s powerful film – which chronicles the occasional highs and seemingly endless lows of the Von Erich wrestling dynasty – deserved multiple nominations, but Efron’s snub is the hardest to grapple with. As Kevin Von Erich (one of the few surviving brothers pushed into the sport by his domineering, dream-chasing father, played by Holt McCallany) he found levels many were not aware he possessed. Kevin contains multitudes; a loving brother (with sterling support from Harris Dickinson, Jeremy Allen White and Stanley Simons), devoted family man (Lily James shines in a supporting role as wife Pam) and driven sportsman, he’s lifted by his triumphs and brought low by his tragedies. Through it all, Efron completely commits, getting swole for the role but not letting the musculature define it. If the idea of “Zac Efron, potential Oscar nominee” was far outside your thinking in the past, The Iron Claw put it firmly back in the ring. It’s a crime he missed out.
James White
Read the full list of Oscar nominees here. The Oscars unfold on 10 March.