This year, the mission of the Academy Awards was, more than anything, to avoid catastrophe. The most-discussed ceremonies in the last decade have been marked by jaw-dropping viral moments—none of which had much to do with the movies supposedly being celebrated. The wrong Best Picture was announced. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, then gave a rambling acceptance speech for the Best Actor award. The first Oscars after the start of COVID-19 gambled on ending with one Best Actor win and ended up with another—someone who was at home, and already in bed. Tonight, with multiple giant box office successes like Oppenheimer and Barbie up for a slew of awards, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had a prime opportunity to stage a great ceremony—and this time, basically nothing went wrong.
Of course, that means that many of the winners were unsurprising—a symptom of a long and ever-growing awards season that anoints favorites months in advance, and is particularly susceptible to a juggernaut like Oppenheimer. And the night’s one big surprise was a little awkward, with Emma Stone collecting her second Best Actress trophy for Poor Things, spoiling the chance of a groundbreaking victory for the Native American actress Lily Gladstone in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. But by and large, the folks at the Academy will be cheering a night that moved at a decent clip, ended at a reasonable hour, and featured plenty of recognizable winners while managing to spotlight some of the most beloved losers.
For instance, Ryan Gosling’s performance of Barbie’s “I’m Just Ken” might have been the highlight of the evening from a production standpoint, overflowing with visual humor and built around the actor’s perfect peacocking abilities. But then it didn’t even win—Best Song went to the other, slower Barbie number, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s “What Was I Made For?” That was Barbie’s only trophy of the night, a song voters clearly decided was serious enough to be worthy of an Oscar. That’s often how it goes at the Academy Awards, with the big drama usually triumphing over the fun comedy, but this year’s voters had the advantage of being able to support a very good “serious” film in Oppenheimer for Best Picture.
Christopher Nolan’s wartime biopic ended up with seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, and Supporting Actor—a solid take, though not the giant haul some expected. Many of the technical categories ended up going to Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, an epic comedy about a Frankenstein lady (Emma Stone) going on a journey of sexual self-discovery and learning some Marxist theory on the way. Poor Things is the kind of gonzo work that past Oscar voters might have dismissed as too extreme, but the Academy’s major drive to diversify membership over the last few years has internationalized the voting body and given it a slightly more youthful edge. Lanthimos also smartly gave his movie a happy ending, sending audiences out of the theater with a bounce in their step.
I don’t know how else to explain Stone’s victory. Her performance is an impressive comic feat, especially from a physical perspective, but she won the category for 2016’s La La Land, and Oscar voters are usually shy about giving actors two wins at a young age. Stone’s competition included the veteran Annette Bening (now a five-time loser) for Nyad, and the dazzling Sandra Hüller, who gave excellent performances in two Best Picture nominees (Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, winning her nomination for the former). But it was Gladstone who was seen as the favorite for her stunning work in Killers of the Flower Moon—and whose loss felt most conspicuous. Stone seemed genuinely flabbergasted as she took the stage (partly because her dress was malfunctioning), but the win appeared to be warmly received in the room—no profound weirdness abounded.
Apart from that, the night largely bounced between trophies for Oppenheimer and Poor Things. For Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. sounded the most triumphant note of his decades-long comeback when he won Best Supporting Actor; Cillian Murphy was his usual understated self after taking Best Actor over a crowded field. Down the ballot, voters often leaned towards the artier choice, giving Best Animated Film to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron over Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Best Visual Effects to the Japanese film Godzilla Minus One over four Hollywood blockbusters. The Zone of Interest got deserved attention for its sound, alongside an expected International Film award. Wes Anderson, an eight-time nominee and titan of the cinematic form, quietly won his first Oscar for the short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, though he wasn’t there to accept it.
Oppenheimer’s success was measured enough that other well-liked films got to slip in for a win or two, with The Holdovers taking Best Supporting Actress, Anatomy of a Fall grabbing Original Screenplay, and American Fiction scoring Adapted Screenplay. But two of the biggest Best Picture nominees were basically ignored: Killers of the Flower Moon scored 10 nominations and zero wins (the same goose egg that befell Scorsese’s last film, The Irishman), and Barbie won only for song (after host Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at its nomination snubs for Best Director and Best Actress earlier). The Academy never entirely succeeds at spreading the wealth around, but given that there were obvious places for Flower Moon and Barbie to get more recognition (Actress and Adapted Screenplay, respectively), the misses will be better-remembered than some.
In his fourth go-round as host, Kimmel was his reliable self, keeping the trains on time and sticking to a punchy monologue that was light on big laughs but largely professional. (The recent crash-and-burn work of Jo Koy at the Golden Globes served as a reminder of just how badly this gig can go). I am vastly in favor of a seasoned hand such as Kimmel over some of the terrible hosting experiments the Oscars have tried lately, including having no host at all, having three hosts, and letting Seth MacFarlane sing a song about boobs. With the ceremony feeling on steadier ground (and ratings likely to rise), it’s probably time to try someone new in the role next year. The comedian John Mulaney, who had fun presenting the award for Best Sound tonight, seems the most obvious choice. But there’ll always be the fear that the Academy will ruin a good thing by trying to repeat it, and force Gosling back onstage in a rhinestone jacket to kick off next year’s show—or worse, a nude John Cena.
