While The Oscars' Best Picture Race Is A Hot Topic, I Need To Talk About Why I'm More Invested In Another Category's Competition

The race to see which of the 2025 Oscar nominees take home gold has officially begun, and it’s a dramatic one all around. While it seemed like Netflix’s Emilia Pérez was the favorite after winning at The Golden Globes, the controversy surrounding the film may have swayed voters' minds, and Anora seems to be benefiting, racking in a handful of awards, including the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture. However, as tight as the race is for Best Picture, something even more interesting is happening in the Best Animated Film category, where no clear front-runner has emerged.

There are many awards shows in the lead-up to the Oscars that usually give viewers and voters a hint as to who is going to take home the coveted prizes. For animated movies, specifically, The Golden Globes can be a big indicator, but the Academy voters tend to also vote in line with the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Producer’s Guild Awards, and the Annie Awards — the major animation-centric prize.

Looking at the 2020s alone, the various award shows seemed to vote in line with each other. In 2020 and 2022, all six major competitions voted the same — with Pixar’s Soul and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio taking home the top prize. In 2021, Disney’s Encanto won four out of the six awards, including the Golden Globe and Oscar. 2023 is the only outlier year, with two films, The Boy and the Heron and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, duking it out for the top spot. The Boy and the Heron won the Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA, while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse took home the Critics Choice, PGA, and Annie Awards.

Unlike last year, where two films were battling for the Oscar title, this year’s race is way more open.

The Latvian-produced Flow (which not all families might enjoy) won the Golden Globe back in January, but it hasn’t had much success in the other competitions. Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot is having quite the run, winning the Critics Choice, PGA, and Annie Awards this year. However, the same happened with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse last year, and it didn’t take home the golden statue.

The BAFTAs have only added more confusion with the voting panel, choosing to give the top prize to Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

And those are just the three that are winning. Also nominated in the category are the R-rated stop-motion film Memoir of a Snail and Disney/Pixar’s box office success Inside Out 2 — the latter of which the first film earned all six major awards back in 2015.

It’s the most uncertain the category has been since 2019 when Pixar’s Toy Story 4 ended up taking home the Golden Statue, leaving many animation fans wondering who is going to come out victorious. Personally, as much as I love and relate to Anxiety in Inside Out 2, I’m rooting for the emotional and beautiful The Wild Robot.

Overall, the competition this year is stiff and there's no clear frontrunner. That makes for a fascinating race, and it's easily the one I'll be paying the most attention to in the weeks leading up to the Oscars.

The good news is the wait is almost over. The 97th Academy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, March 2nd. For the first time ever, audiences can stream the broadcast live with an active Hulu subscription, or you can watch it traditionally on ABC to see who takes home the gold.