Hugo Long Form Prediction and Thoughts

[mishalak]

I wanted Pan's Labyrinth to win a Hugo. It didn't get nominated though. I suspect this is twofold. First off it is in a foreign language and that is a handicap, though not an insurmountable one as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon showed in 2001 by getting nominated and winning. I think the biggest barrier is that it never caught on and became a phenomenon. The Hugo winner cannot be predicted by which book/movie/show has the most sales, but it really does not hurt.

The reason this isn't the only factor (besides fans not making up the majority of the market in the case of movies) is because of the same thing that keeps comedies from winning Best Picture at the Oscars. Something can be deeply enjoyed but viewed as not serious enough.

Going by this and after reviewing past year results my prediction is that V for Vendetta will win out over The Prestige, unless Pirates of the Caribbean 2 can overcome the "Well I enjoyed that, but it is too light" factor that sunk movies like Spiderman 2, Batman Begins, Men in Black, and so on. I will be very surprised if A Scanner Darkly or Children of Men come close to the top prize.

It is possible that Pan's Labyrinth could be declared eligible for the 2008 Hugos, based upon its very limited release in 2006, but though the provision exists I think it has never been exercised. But I think that unless it suddenly catches on when it goes to DVD that there won't be the 3/4 at the business meeting to carry such a motion. Though if there were the 3/4 to carry such a motion I think that it would be very likely to win a Hugo. It only did 36 million in box office business in the US as of last weekend, since 1980 only three movies that won Best Dramatic or Best Dramatic Long Form have taken in so little. Blade Runner, The Princess Bride, and Serenity. Long odds.

I'd make predictions about the other categories, but I don't know where to get market numbers as easily as I can get box office from IMDB.

Addendum: I don't know what I'll be voting for yet. I've not seen all these movies or read all the books. yet. To the library!

Comments

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Of the ones listed, I think Children of Men should win it, followed closely by The Prestige.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Hurm... Children of Men and A Scanner Darkly are the two I've not seen yet. So I can't really comment. I did like The Prestige, but it does not jump out at me as an obvious choice over V for Vendetta. I'm just not deeply in love with any of the choices I've seen so far, but as I've said I've not seen two of them yet.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I couldn't sit all the way thru A Scanner Darkly, tho that may be idiosyncratic to me. Children of Men was a very good portrayal of a dark future London, and the world around it.

I loved The Prestige because it's fiendishly clever, and I'm in love with 'clever'.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

For me it wasn't so much about the clever. I figured out what was going on at a little more than 1/2 the way through. But then I spent the rest of the movie going, "Is that the trick? Is that all there is to it? Nah. It is something else. But..." That was fun, but I'm not in love with it.

Second time through I liked Fallon/Borden better. Finally it made sense his behavior at the start. But I still did not like it as much as I liked the characters in The Illusionist. The main problem there is that they used really good CGI that made it seem like real magic. If one of the central questions of a movie is if the magic is real or not then it has to be done in a way that lets the audience feel more like it could go either way. The Prestige did that very well.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree about the Illusionist's CGI. But I can't agree about the characters - the acting in The Illusionist was nowhere near as nuanced or three-dimensional as that in The Prestige. And I have my own theory about the Tesla machine. It's in my blog:http://mrteufel.livejournal.com/58845.html?nc=1
and
http://mrteufel.livejournal.com/66735.html

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I think you're confusing nuance with drama. Bale and Christian don't do much in the way of acting, they can't. The characters are cyphers. All we know of them is that they are obsessed with being the greatest magician and revenge. That's not character, that's a motivation. And a two dimensional one at that.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Edward Norton's face doesn't change expression once throughout The Illusionist... ok, it gets a little glum in the final act.

Conversely Bale and Jackman each display a large range of emotions. Jackman even plays to obviously different characters. Is that not acting?

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

"...two characters..."
(cursed lj non-editable posts!)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It is possible that Pan's Labyrinth could be declared eligible for the 2008 Hugos, based upon its very limited release in 2006, but though the provision exists I think it has never been exercised.

Actually, a few works have received "Section 3.4" extensions in the past, although it's rare, and I don't recall whether any such works have acutally then been nominated the following year.

(I'm not counting the times when section 3.4 was stretched to cover blanket eligibility, a move that left enough WSFS mavens uneasy that we eventually adopted Section 3.2.3 to treat blanket extensions differently than "specific work" extensions.)

It would require someone to propose the extension to this year's WSFS BM, and it would require a 3/4 vote.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Really? I'm surprised. I would think unless a work was beloved by a fair number of people at the meeting the tendency would be to vote such moves down. Plus I read a quote on the Chicon website (http://chicon.org/onsite/html/restofworld.html), "The Business Meeting has never actually extended the eligibility of any work or group of works, although the 1998 Business Meeting did consider an advisory resolution worded in similar terms regarding a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author."

Were they since 2000?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Were they since 2000?

Yes, and one of them was in 2000 itself; however, the one that passed that year was technically meaningless IMO because the work in question was already eligible in the desired year. (It was for a fanzine, not a single-work category.)

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I will be very surprised if A Scanner Darkly or Children of Men come close to the top prize.

Really? From everything I've read, I would expect Children Of Men to do quite well in the voting. Mind you, I haven't seen it - I haven't been to a movie in at least two years.

You may be right about it not winning, but I don't think it's likely to be one of the first two to be dropped when the votes are tabulated.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Okay, the rules just changed. Without Pirates I think the field is a little more open, though I suspect after I've done more analysis I'll find that V for Vendetta is still most likely to win. So far I've got box office totals, as of the Hugo ballot deadline, for Hugo nominees since 1999. I hope to extend this as far back as 1985 or 1980. Then with voting in the mix I'll have a decent prediction.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I've just reworked my predictions based upon the new situation. Under the previous situation with Pirates in the mix I would have predicted it to be eliminated in one of the first two rounds. Now... It has a bit better than 15% chance of winning the Hugo. I think. Previously... Something under 5%.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I'm curious - what algorithm did you use to determine the probabilities? Just the box office numbers? I'd think those are kind of unreliable for predicting the results of the Hugos - what Worldcon attendees like doesn't necessarily track with what the general public likes.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I've since been extending my math further back and I've found mixed results. Box offices emphatically does not predict which movie will win by itself.

Of the 23 times since 1979 that a movie has won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation the Box Office Leader has won 10 times (24/11 if you count 1981, but I don't since that is a particularly poor comparison as it was up against 3 non-movies and one stinker). The Box Office laggard has won twice, Serenity last year and The Princess Bride in 1988. And neither took in less than 8% of the box office of the leader as did A Scanner Darkly this year.

In examining all cases there a movie other than the Leader or Second Up among the Hugo nominees won, out of 23 cases there are 6 movies (more or less 1/4 of the time rather than something closer to 3/5); Blade Runner, "2010", The Princess Bride, Edward Scissorhands, Galaxy Quest, and Serenity.

Of these three are adaptations of beloved SF works, two are by directors that have a following in fandom, and one is Galaxy Quest. So in looking at the three movies trailing in the box office among the nominees this year I had to decide if any of them had this sort of thing going for them. Guillermo Del Toro might have a bit of it. But not enough to put him over the top, I think (as much as I wish it would). A Scanner Darkly is and adaptation of a beloved work, but it is way far behind and the buzz is negative. I think it won't get past the first round. I had not heard of Children of Men by P.D. James until the movie came out. It does have a sci-fi quality that could pull and upset, but no more than both V for Vendetta (adaptation of beloved cult work) and The Prestige have.

I've also looked at cases where the leader did not win the Hugo. They seem to have a "laugh factor" in common. Men in Black or Ghost Busters for example. Movies we had fun watching, but maybe not enough to vote for it at Hugo time.

So my method was to look at percentage of the winner's box office each movie had. I used this as a rough guide to each movies chances and then put it my estimates (very little this year because I'm not seeing much other than V for Vendetta's cult status that could interfere, and its already the leader) and that's how I came up with this.