You know it's coming. On February 27, a well dressed movie star will walk to the stage of the Kodak Theater, cradle a shiny golden statue, step to the microphone with a huge grin, and start to talk.
And around the world, millions of people will think to themselves, haven't I heard this before?
After all, we've already seen Natalie Portman thank her parents on the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Colin Firth make self-deprecating comments on those same shows, and Aaron Sorkin say nice things about Mark Zuckerberg at the Globes and the Writers Guild and the Scripters and others.
By the time of the Oscars – particularly in a year in which the same people seem to be winning one precursor award after another – we've all heard the acceptance speeches before. It happened last year (though Christoph Waltz did find a new metaphor to torture every time he stepped to the microphone), and it’s happening again this year.
Just as "The Social Network" won all the critics awards, so the same folks keep coming to the stage show after show. Colin Firth. Natalie Portman. Christian Bale. Melissa Leo. Aaron Sorkin. "The King's Speech."
Will any of them find new things to say on Oscar night? And if they don't, will the overpowering air of déjà vu be enough to make viewers change the channel?
And will the parade of similar shows finally force the Academy to bring back the idea of moving its show earlier? It might just do that, AMPAS president Tom Sherak told TheWrap this week.
One of the themes of Monday's nominees luncheon was a push for more creative, memorable speeches – but similar pitches are made almost every year, usually without much effect.
"I don’t know that you can ever do enough to create the way it used to be, before all these other things," Sherak said in a conversation on Tuesday. "I know that the stars and other people get burnt out from all these things."
And the bigger problem is that if the stars get burnt out, the audience can be burnt out before the Oscars arrive as well.
Last year's Oscars saw the viewership increase by more than four million over the previous year, to 41.6 million. But the three smallest Oscar audiences ever have all been for shows over the past eight years, including the record low of 31.8 million viewers in 2008, when "No Country for Old Men" was named Best Picture.
The Golden Globes have also seen a ratings increase over the past two years, though its audience is less than half the size of the Oscar viewership.
The largest Oscar audience ever came in 1998, when 57.2
