We had one film release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.

Onward

Only in recent years has Pixar failed to pull in Oscar nominations for all of its films. Onward will face competition from Soul coming out later in the year for a nomination, though both could still make it.

Onward takes Pixar into a medieval-styled modern fantasy world where the legends of yore have settled into the mundanity of normal existence. When two brothers find a way to bring back their late father, they set off on a quest.

The Good Dinosaur became the first original Pixar film to fail to earn an Oscar nomination because the film was poorly reviewed. Onward has solid reviews, but appears to be barely positive according to MetaCritic, hovering right above the “mixed” rating mark. That doesn’t bode well for the film that has also taken a shellacking at the box office where it pulled in an anemic $40 million. Still, there are more sequels entering wide release this year than last and that could bolster the film’s chances some as the Academy really doesn’t care much for sequels (see Frozen II and more).