The latter, directed by Peter Farrelly, is an old-fashioned paean to brotherhood and racial harmony based on the so-called true friendship between the musician Don Shirley and the bouncer Tony Vallelonga. Green Book had been tipped for awards-season success since it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. But the movie weathered numerous scandals after its release, including complaints from Shirley’s family about its accuracy, resurfaced stories of Farrelly’s earlier predilection for flashing people, and an anti-Muslim tweet from one of the film’s writers. If anything, the rocky campaign might have bolstered Green Book’s status for some passionate Oscar voters: One informed The New York Times that he was tired of being told which movies to like and not to like.

Read: How the middling ‘Green Book’ became an Oscars front-runner

Despite complaints from many cultural critics about its retrograde approach to race relations and its ignorance of actual history, Green Book appealed to voters with its breezy style; its broad, joke-heavy screenplay; and its reliance on two great lead performances, from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. The Academy uses a complex, preferential-voting ballot for the Best Picture category (and only that category) that often favors the “least disliked” film. Recent winners—including Spotlight, Moonlight, The Shape of Water, 12 Years a Slave, and Birdman—weren’t major commercial successes, each grossing between $27 million and $63 million at the domestic box office. But they were all small or mid-budgeted films reliant on excellent performances that proved less polarizing to voters than hits such as Gravity, La La Land, and The Revenant.

This year, the smash hits included Black Panther, which took three technical awards overall; A Star Is Born, an early favorite that ended up winning only for its original song “Shallow”; and Bohemian Rhapsody, a genuine sensation that was dogged by the controversy surrounding its director, Bryan Singer. Bohemian was one of the worst-reviewed Best Picture nominees in the history of the Oscars, but it was an unabashed crowd-pleaser that picked up four trophies (including Lead Actor and Film Editing) and might have won Best Picture were it not for Singer.

The director was fired during production for allegedly not reporting to the set; Singer said his absence had been for health reasons. In a subsequent January article published by The Atlantic, several men accused Singer of prior sexual misconduct and coercion, often involving underage subjects. The investigation documented a pattern of alleged behavior by the director that went back more than 20 years. Singer has vehemently denied the allegations, and his lawyer has noted that Singer has never been charged with a crime. The director’s BAFTA nomination for Bohemian Rhapsody was suspended because of the allegations, while GLAAD disqualified the film from awards contention entirely. Compared with that publicity storm, the stories about Green Book might have seemed less scandalous to the Academy’s voters.