Like it or not, Hollywood continues to be one of the most influential cultural forces in America and the world. The North American film industry generated 8.6 billion US dollars in 2024, far ahead of other film industries across Asia and Europe, such as China and the United Kingdom. Movies have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, but they have an impact. 

　　This is also why the Oscars continue to matter. While ratings for the Oscars are not what they used to be (although last year’s actually went up from the previous five), they still show us what the people making movies think are the most important movies they made. This gives us a glimpse of what the culture makers truly believe, and of the vision of reality that guides their work.

　　Based on the 2026 crop of Oscar Best Picture nominees, there are reasons to be concerned. These films, particularly frontrunners like Sinners, One Battle After Another, and Marty Supreme, betray a vision of America that is largely dystopian and absent any plausible solutions to fix it. Where it does offer hope, its clearly false hope or hope that would make the world even worse than it already is. 

　　Sinners is the most Oscar-nominated film in history. Set in the Jim Crow South, it uses ancient monsters as a lens for exploring the price of belonging, ultimately offering a deeply pessimistic view of American race relations and culture. The protagonists, twin brothers Smoke and Stack, try to purchase a juke joint from Klansmen, hoping to use the economic venture to secure a space and protect themselves from the racist white majority culture. A vampire named Remmick reveals to the brothers that the men who sold it to them were not acting in good faith, and in fact already have plans to kill them in the morning. He proposes an alternative strategy: assimilation. That is, he is willing to make them into vampires. If everyone becomes a vampire, then racism will disappear, because distinctions between people disappear.

　　It’s not a coincidence that Remmick is Irish. Assimilation was the preferred solution of many white immigrant groups who experienced racism when they arrived in America. But the black protagonists reject this because they don’t want to lose the distinctiveness of their own souls—Sammie’s magical music, their ability to see their ancestors in heaven when they die. In other words, assimilation means losing cultural distinctiveness and, therefore, losing your soul. 

　　The war between the two brothers and the vampires who would take their souls can be seen as a war between two characteristic American perspectives on race: antiracism vs colorblindness. As sociologist George Yancey lays out in “Who is Antiracist?”, conservatives tend to argue for colorblindness: the idea that if we ignore race in society, racism will go away. Antiracists believe that ignoring race doesn’t get rid of racism, but rather blinds us to its effects. Sinners critique of colorblindness is somewhat different and goes deeper: it suggests that even if colorblindness did work, it would harm those who embraced it. The brothers’ souls can’t be separated from their distinctive culture.

　　One Battle After Another paints America as a dystopian fascist state run by a white supremacist Illuminati known as the “Christmas Adventurers,” who have successfully destroyed all left-wing groups that tried to resist them.

　　But Sinners doesn’t find any hope elsewhere either. When Sammie tries to use The Lord’s Prayer as a weapon against the vampires, it fails, because the vampires also identify with Christianity. Christianity isn’t a weapon against assimilation because white people are also Christians. Unfortunately, antiracist cultural distinctiveness offers no sanctuary. The hoodoo spirituality of the matriarch Annie is more effective against vampires than Christianity, but that ultimately doesn’t save them either. Everyone but Sammie ends up dead or turned. He is left to live life alone playing his music until he’s so tired of life that he’s ready to die. He hasn’t found an answer to making the world better; he’s just carved out his own spot in the world where people will leave him alone.

　　This is a surprisingly common solution presented in the Oscar nominees this year. In F1: The Movie, Sonny leaves his new community and goes off on his own. In Train Dreams, Robert ends life as a hermit. In Frankenstein, the creature finds peace by leaving mankind to go off on his own, once he’s forgiven his creator.

　　This makes sense. Choosing a life of independence over community is increasingly common in modern society. Many recent works in the social sciences have noted that, instead of fixing our families, our communities, our friendships, or our marriages, it’s becoming more and more normal to simply leave for a new job, a new city, or new relationships. Ultimately, we retreat online into even more hyper-specific communities. But this hasn’t worked out very well. The result has been an epidemic of depression, a rise in suicide, and a rise in partisanship.

　　One Battle After Another gives an equally demoralizing picture of America, this time from the perspective of the white liberal. It paints America as a dystopian fascist state run by a white supremacist Illuminati known as the “Christmas Adventurers,” who have successfully destroyed all left-wing groups that tried to resist them. These groups now hide underground in fear, finding small ways to resist: smuggling illegal immigrants and providing sanctuary to them, raising progressive children, and forming supportive networks with one another. The film ends with hope: Bob Ferguson’s daughter, Willa Ferguson, is shown carrying on the activism of her parents. Based on her achievements in the film, we are clearly meant to have some hope that she and the others will be able to succeed. 

　　But there are lots of reasons to see this as a false hope, too. Certainly, conservatives will think so because they disagree with progressive activists’ goals. But even those less ideologically opposed might be skeptical about whether the world needs more hyper-partisan political activists. There is even more reason to be wary of causes driven by young people—especially on the left—who are increasingly supporting and engaging in political violence. But even if you’re convinced that radical political change is what we need, there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic that you’ll get it. Recent progressive political movements have had mixed results at best. And with fewer people having kids—particularly on the left—there are fewer people than ever to take up the political mantle. 

　　The hope of One Battle is also not equally hopeful for everyone. It’s hoped that some groups will be replaced by other groups. The film’s bad guys are all white men trying to retain power for themselves against a rapidly diversifying America. Bob Ferguson is the primary “good white guy” in the story. And one of the things that makes him so is that he does not pursue his own ambitions. Rather, he supports and follows the lead of the women in his life—first his lover and then his daughter. But he’s treated more as a joke than a hero. He tries to rescue his daughter, but contributes little or nothing to that rescue. Instead, he spends the movie’s runtime screwing up while the smarter, more competent people roll their eyes at him. 

　　This reflects the rise of diversity movements that filtered through cultural institutions like film and journalism in the 2010s, channeling an outcry against the perceived over-prevalence of white men at the expense of other groups. Men were called on—on an individual and institutional level—to “pass the mic” to women and minorities. Of course, white men already in positions of power didn’t want to give that power up. So the result was a generation of young men who never got to exercise their ambitions.

　　But what about ambitious men? What about those who want more out of life than to be a lifelong sidekick like Bob? Another Oscar frontrunner, Marty Supreme, gives a vivid picture of what it thinks that kind of man looks like. This is one of the only films that focuses on men of ambition fighting to achieve their goals and winning. But the film’s protagonist does this by lying, cheating, manipulating, conning, stealing, and just generally being an awful person. The very beginning of the film gives a vivid—if gross—metaphor for this: it shows Marty’s sperm competing to be the one to fertilize the egg of his lover, and then transitions to Marty’s ping pong ball. As culture critic Paul Anteleitner says, in this film’s ruthless universe, amoral competition is the rule of life all the way down to the very foundations of reality.

　　Some have expressed horror or concern at the number of men who’ve openly admired Marty after seeing the film. After all, he’s clearly not meant to be admired. But is it really a surprise? If the two choices you give men are to be a good man who self-marginalizes or a bad man who wins at life, you can’t be surprised that many will prefer the latter. If “Bob Ferguson” is the image of a good man, some will simply choose not to be a good man.

　　A culture needs a positive vision to live out a positive future. Today, Hollywood’s moral vision offers no plausible hope for such a future. Yet its influence is so powerful that many are unable to imagine a future outside of it. Whatever hope the country has, it will come from those who can see beyond the Hollywood sign.