Oscars 2019: 13 Biggest Acting Snubs

The #LilyJamesOscarCampaign rages on.

If you had told me a year ago that the Mamma Mia! sequel was going to wind up being one of the biggest and best surprises of 2018, I would have called you a liar. But here we are.

Despite all of the odds being stacked very much against it (the first film having already used all of ABBA's most iconic songs, having to find an actress to replace Meryl Streep as a younger version of her character, the fact that the first film in-and-of-itself is a patchwork of a movie that essentially gets by on charm alone, etc.), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again managed to not only be a more-than-worthy sequel that surpassed the original by leaps and bounds, it was a genuinely great film in its own right.

A huge part of this comes down to the fact that Lily James pulled off the impossible. Twenty-one-time Oscar-nominated actress Meryl Streep does not exactly leave small shoes to fill, yet Lily James' performance as the young Donna Sheridan manages to actually outdo Meryl Streep's own from the first film.

Whereas Streep was essentially a side-character/narrative device in the first film, James' iteration of the character is the tried-and-true lead of the sequel and James is endearing, infectiously joyful, and capable of delivering emotional gut-punches when necessary. Moments like her one-take monologue in the boat to Sam are remarkable in how honest and raw they feel, with James showing off more range in this single shot than the majority of performances did this past year.