It might seem strange to say that Conclave, a movie nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, is becoming something of a Best Picture long shot but conventional wisdom suggests Conclave is now something of a Best Picture long shot. While the Vatican thriller received a host of nominations, including a Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Peter Straughan and Best Film Editing for Nick Emerson, the films absence was conspicuously noted in the Best Director race where James Mangold got in for A Complete Unknown over Edward Berger. It was also snubbed in Best Cinematography where, to more than a few folks surprise, Emilia Prez was nominated instead.The ascent of Emilia Prez has indeed frightened some corners of social media, which has lashed back hard at the new frontrunner status applied to the Jacques Audiard film. As the horse race narrative emerges, folks are already leaning one way or the other on if they think this will finally be Netflixs year thanks to Emilia Prez, or if the critical esteem previously accumulated by Brady Corbet and A24s The Brutalistwhich received 10 nominations, including for Directing and Cinematographywill carry it through. Meanwhile Conclave falls further into the rearview.And yetyet, dear readerwhile its good to take all this with some healthy skepticism, there is still a path forward for Bergers movie about a papal conclave where progressives and conservatives come to blows, but then in the end do the right thing and elect a forward-looking new leader (you know: wish fulfillment). After all, underdogs have done it before.In the last 25 years, there have been exactly three Best Picture winners that earned that most coveted of Oscar golds without being nominated for Director and/or Cinematography: Argo (2012), Green Book (2018), and CODA (2021). And its the last one that is of special interest to me.Three years ago marked the first awards season after quarantine restrictions were lifted. Nonetheless, it was still an odd and somewhat muted Oscar season due to productions freezing in Hollywood the year before. As a consequence, the Oscar field seemed strangely muted in January 2022 with the initial frontrunner being a critical favorite that was awarded Best Picture by prestigious critics groups like the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as a Netflix release: Jane Campions The Power of the Dog. The critical and media narrative was that it had to win. Campion was the clear frontrunner for Best Director, and what could beat it for Picture? (Personally, we far preferred Steven Spielbergs West Side Story, but that musical flopped, so it was a nonstarter with the Academy).Come Oscar night, the Academy again found a way to deny Netflix a Best Picture Oscar, but only in lieu of giving the top award to another streaming film, Apple and Sian Heders feel-good and easily accessible CODA. It was also a film nominated for only two other awards, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won both.While CODA has arguably gone down as one of the slighter Best Picture winners in recent memory, it also was the antithesis of The Power of the Dog: hopeful, earnest, and ultimately reassuring in a dark moment that things were going to be alright. It also was not a Netflix movie, and while Apple is in the streaming business, only Netflix has seen leadership state more than once that they do not consider theatrical their business model.Cut back to 2025. We again are in a bit of a slow-down year after film production dried up in 2023 due to the writer and actor strikes. The mood is also once more mournful in much of the country, especially California. The general sense in the industry and media is that 2024 was a weaker year for cinema than the past several, and one of the frontrunners which is again a critical darling and NYFCC Best Picture winner is a dark, cynical, and ultimately dispiriting auteur piece: The Brutalist. Furthermore, according to Variety, a not-insignificant number of Academy members are refusing to watch the 3.5-hour epic. Yes, there is another frontrunner which has a more hopeful and optimistic message, the lightning rod musical Emilia Prez, but that film is still a Netflix release. And this one comes with a lot of online controversy and baggage.Admittedly, online backlash didnt thwart Green Books chances in early 2019. However, its biggest competitor was, guess what, another Netflix film in Alfonso Cuarns lyrical Roma. Also it seems online sentiment did play a role in La La Lands stumble two years earlier, a film so securely seen as the frontrunner that when it was incorrectly named Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards, no one at home or in the audience guessed anything was amiss.Lastly, one other major factor to remember is that Best Picture, unlike all other categories at the Oscars, are voted on by way of preferential ballot. This means that instead of just picking their favorite, each voter ranks the nominees in order from their most desirous to their least for taking home the top prize. And it seems likely while Emilia Prez will receive a lot of number one votes, it could end up either number nine or 10 on plenty of other ballots too.Meanwhile that same preferential system could mean a movie that ends up as a lot of folks number two choiceand with a decent amount of number onescould still seize the day and win Best Picture. This brings us back to Conclave, a political thriller that plays exceedingly well with older audiences who remember when such performance and narrative-heavy entertainments were part and parcel of any Oscar season. In fact, the AARP nominated Conclave more than any other film in its annual Movies for Grownups Awards. Another way to put this is that Boomers really like a movie where the cast is uniformly north of 50 and doing exciting things. And while the demographics of current Academy membership is a bit hard to pick out since inclusion initiatives in the late 2010s roughly doubled membership numbers, at least in 2012 the median age of Academy members was 62.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!This is a long way to say that Conclave is a real crowdpleaser for a large portion of Oscar voters, and unlike The Brutalist or even Emilia Prez, it leaves an audience feeling energized instead of wistful or pensive. It could become a consensus pick for a lot of voters who put Brutalist or Prez, or Anora as their number one, but an assortment of the other frontrunners near the bottom.In this vein, well point to one other relatively recent Oscar year. In January 2016, there was once again no clear frontrunner. Many critics groups were lining up behind the artful and reserved Todd Haynes film Carol, but Haynes has always been an acquired taste that the Academy rarely sips from.Other groups were championing Mad Max: Fury Road, a tour de force in action cinema that remains one of the best chase movies ever conceived. It also was a franchise blockbuster and a sequel. Unsurprisingly, it virtually swept the technical categories that year at the Oscars, but was rudely ignored for Picture and Director. Finally, there was a faction lining up behind The Revenant, including the Golden Globes. The Revenant also was another high-concept auteur piece from Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu, this time a Western after he won Best Picture and Director the previous year for Birdman.In the end, Gonzlez triumphed once more in Best Director, but to manys surprise it was neither The Revenant, nor Mad Max, nor Carol that took home the greatest bauble. It was Spotlight, an ensemble piece with excellent performances, a propulsive pacing reflecting our real world, and an unfussy narrative that left grownup audiences satisfied. And it likely got there with a lot of number two and three votes.It could happen again.