Will ‘Air’ finally win Ben Affleck or Matt Damon that elusive Oscar for acting?

Jacob Sarkisian
·4 min read
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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won Best Original Screenplay together in 1998 for “Good Will Hunting,” which also earned Damon a Best Actor bid. Since then, they’ve had a separate Oscars history. Damon was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2010 for “Invictus,” then reaped another Best Actor bid in 2016 for “The Martian.” And, in 2017, he scored a Best Picture nomination for “Manchester by the Sea.” Affleck, meanwhile, has scored only one other Oscar nomination since his “Good Will Hunting” writing win. That was for Best Picture for “Argo” in 2013. He did win that award, though. Neither has taken home an Oscar for acting but that could this year.

The duo reunited on-screen in “Air,” which tells the story of how Nike marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) signed Michael Jordan and made the iconic shoe the Air Jordan. Affleck, who also directed this Amazon Prime Video release, plays Damon’s on-screen boss, Phil Knight.The film was well-received by both critics and audiences, earning 93% at Rotten Tomatoes and taking in almost $100 million at the box office.

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Damon is in the hunt for a third Best Actor nomination with his lead role in “Air.” He is currently outside of our predicted five nominees for Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”), Cooper (“Maestro”), Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), and Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), and. There are also several contenders also outside of the predicted five who are ahead of Damon, including Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”), Joaquin Phoenix (“Napoleon”), and Kingsley Ben-Adir (“Bob Marley: One Love”).

There is some hope, however. He’s an A-lister and the academy likes big names in this category, such as recent nominees Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Will Smith (“King Richard”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick… Boom!”), and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Plus Damon portrays a real person, which we know the academy likes in this category — six out of the last 10 winners in Best Actor have played real people. Plus, recent nominees included Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Garfield (“Tick, Tick… Boom!”), Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), and Gary Oldman (“Mank”).

Affleck is in the mix for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, although he is also outside of our predicted five nominees in this category: Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe (both “Poor Things”). Affleck is another big name and, again, the academy like to see stars in the Best Supporting Actor roster. Brad Pitt won this award for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and both Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”) contended. The academy embraces colorful performances in this category: Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan (both “The Banshees of Inisherin”), JK Simmons (“Being the Ricardos”), Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”), and last year’s winner Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”).

Affleck could actually be competing against his best pal who turned in a memorable supporting role in Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer,” which tells the story of how J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb. Damon portrayed General Leslie Groves, the fierce and cutting military man who recruited Oppenheimer to the Manhattan Project. Damon’s performance is certainly colorful enough and he is one of the more memorable figures in a stacked cast. He’s on the bubble of breaking into our predicted five nominees for Best Supporting Actor along with several other hopeful contenders including Charles Melton (“May December”), and Jesse Plemons (“Killers of the Flower Moon”).

However, he will have to compete against his own co-star for a nomination here. But that isn’t necessarily a bad omen for Damon — the academy has shown a willingness to nominate multiple actors from the same film in this category if they like the movie enough. We’ve now had four years in a row where two actors from the same film have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Last year, Keoghan and Gleeson were nominated for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and, the year before that, Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee were nominated for “The Power of the Dog.” Before that, Daniel Kaluuya won for “Judas and the Black Messiah” while his co-star, LaKeith Stanfield, was nominated. And, in 2020, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino were both nominated for “The Irishman.”

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