Project Hail Mary Is Pushing Rocky for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar Nomination
The best part of Project Hail Mary is a creature made of foam and servos, and the campaign to get that creature a Best Supporting Actor nomination is exactly the kind of chaos the Oscars need. James Ortiz is the puppeteer and voice behind Rocky, and the bid treats his work as a real performance rather than a technical effect. That's a meaningful distinction, because Rocky is the emotional core of the film, and the way Ortiz gives him physicality and warmth is what makes the friendship between him and Ryland land.
The Academy has never been comfortable with this kind of work. Andy Serkis spent years being ignored for Gollum and Caesar, and the usual argument is that the actor's performance gets filtered through too much technology. But puppetry is older than film, and Ortiz is doing something closer to theater than to CGI. I'd want to know how the campaign plans to frame the case, because the rules about what counts as a "performance" are murky. It's a long shot, but even having the conversation changes how we think about who deserves credit when a character feels alive.