Via Vulture.com:

Can Star Wars: The Force Awakens shake up the Best Picture race — or any other Oscar races, for that matter? It’s the question that has divided award-season pundits over the last several days, and since The Force Awakens is the only game in town this week (at least, until big contenders like The Revenant and The Hateful Eight arrive on Christmas), I thought I’d devote this week’s Oscar Futures column to a thorough rundown of the film’s chances. The other six Star Wars movies all managed to score nominations, though some of those sequels were better rewarded than others. Given that history, how many nods are possible for The Force Awakens?

Let’s start with the biggest potential nomination, for Best Picture. The very first Star Wars movie managed it, though no Star Wars film since has cracked the category. Still, with the Best Picture race expanded past five nominees, could The Force Awakens squeeze in? This is, after all, a banner year for blockbusters, and populist hits like The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Creed are all in awards contention.

The thing that worries me is that the Screen Actors Guild snubbed all three of those movies when it came to key nominations (Mad Max did manage to score a stunt nod), which suggests that a large swath of voters simply doesn’t see these mainstream hits as awards vehicles. That same kind of limited thinking could cripple the chances of The Force Awakens, which dutifully reestablishes the Star Wars brand but hardly redefines the genre in the way Mad Max attempts to. Gone are the days when a well-made hit like The Fugitive could lay confident claim to a Best Picture nod; now the more indie-leading Academy prefers its blockbusters to have some sort of additional oomph or weighty subtext that allows the movie to be taken more seriously. Force Awakens is fun as a nostalgia blast and formidable as a blockbuster-to-be, but I’m not sure voters will see it as anything more.

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