The Academy Awards have a long and proud history of ignoring performances that don’t fit neatly into their predetermined categories. Andy Serkis spent three Lord of the Rings movies redefining motion capture acting and got a grand total of zero nominations. Scarlett Johansson voiced an entire operating system in Her and the Oscars shrugged. Robin Williams turned a blue genie into a cultural icon and the best the Golden Globes could do was a one-time special achievement award. But this year, the Academy might finally have to confront its own prejudices—because a spider puppet named Rocky is eligible for Best Supporting Actor, and the performance is apparently undeniable.
James Ortiz, a stage performer and master puppeteer, is the man behind the alien arachnid at the heart of Project Hail Mary, Amazon MGM’s blockbuster sci-fi epic. Rocky is a spider-like extraterrestrial with no face, no conventional means of expression, and the emotional range to make grown adults weep in theaters. Ortiz didn’t just operate the puppet; he voiced the character, rehearsed every scene with Ryan Gosling before the puppet ever came out of its case, and built a performance so tactile and expressive that audiences have forgotten they’re watching latex and wire.
Amazon MGM Studios is already mapping out the awards campaign, and Ortiz will be submitted for Best Supporting Actor. The studio is also pushing for Best Picture and Best Director for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, but it’s the puppeteer’s potential nomination that has the industry buzzing with a mixture of excitement and existential dread. Can a nontraditional acting role compete with human performances? Should it? And if not, what exactly are we saying acting is?
The Academy’s current rules make Ortiz eligible, which is surprising given how resistant the institution has historically been to this conversation. The Critics Choice Awards have no explicit guidelines that would exclude him. The BAFTAs would also accept him, given they once nominated Eddie Murphy for Shrek. But the Golden Globes have already ruled him out under their existing regulations, because apparently the Hollywood Foreign Press Association believes puppets should know their place.
This debate has been simmering for decades. Ben Burtt received a Special Achievement Award for creating the voice of R2-D2 in Star Wars—a contribution that functions as a performance in every meaningful sense. Richard Williams got the same honor for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But the Academy largely abandoned the Special Achievement Award after Toy Story in 1995, and with it went the industry’s most flexible tool for recognizing work that doesn’t fit into tidy boxes.
Ortiz himself speaks about his craft like an actor, because that’s exactly what he is. “Typically, we talk about puppetry as a technical achievement, and it is,” he told Variety. “It’s a spectacle. For me as a performer, however, that’s never my entry point. I’m interested in the heart of the character—what they’re trying to communicate, what they’re feeling underneath all of it.” This is not a technician talking about mechanics. This is an artist talking about motivation, subtext, and emotional truth—the exact language of acting.
The question the Academy now faces is whether they’re brave enough to expand their definition of performance. Rocky is not a visual effect. He’s not a disembodied voice. His physicality, precision, and comedic timing are rooted in Ortiz’s body and breath, mediated through puppetry in the same way a motion-capture performance is mediated through technology. If Andy Serkis wasn’t acting when he played Gollum, if Zoe Saldaña wasn’t acting in Avatar, if James Ortiz isn’t acting now—then what word are we supposed to use?
The industry has spent years grappling with the threat of artificial intelligence replacing performers. But it has yet to formally answer the more foundational question sitting directly in front of it: if Ortiz is not acting, then what exactly is he doing? The Special Achievement Award still exists. The Academy knows how to use it. And if they’re not willing to nominate him in a competitive category, they could at least revive an honor specifically designed for moments when the rulebook fails.
Fist Rocky’s bump. Amaze, amaze, amaze.
See the performance everyone’s talking about—catch Project Hail Mary in theaters and decide for yourself whether Rocky deserves a seat at the Oscars table.
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