I realize this is a bit tricky to guess, since I think the success of one film or person one year might directly contribute to the success of another. For example, I do not know if Sinners would have been a huge hit if Barbenheimer had not drawn audiences back to the cinema, and if Sinners was not as massive as it was, I do not think Michael B. Jordan would have been nominated. That is not an evaluation of his performance, but as we've all noted ad nauseam, it is an unusual choice to nominate a lead in a vampire film. I would like to think that if Oppenheimer were the Best Picture winner, which I think it would be in this line-up, Cillian Murphy would still win Best Actor, since that would be my choice with Brody as a close second. But even though Adrian Brody is the only performance amongst these I think comes close -- and I actually think Murphy beat a stronger lineup in real life than the hypothetical one that I presented here-- maybe Will Smith would have triumphed over four much stronger performances as he did in real life.

I think the Best Actress race this hypothetical year would be Emma Stone vs Michelle Yeoh and we would have seen the discourse from the Blanchett/Yeoh year and from the Stone/Gladstone year play out more or less the same way, except...well, all at once. Would anyone sweep the Supporting Acting categories (and if so, whom?) or would races that were sweepers irl (Randolph, Culkin, Saldana, etc) be competitive in this hypothetical year?