Man, what a cataclysmic mess. While not without its moments of joy throughout, the show, which I adore so deeply, only continues to veer further and further off the rails with each subsequent year. So let's try to unpack this historically chaotic car crash.
THE SLAP:
Okay. I have to just get the elephant out of the room right off the bat, because obviously there is literally nothing else people want to talk about right now. When he came out to present Best Documentary, Chris Rock, who was clearly improvising off-the-cuff, made an unfunny and arguably insensitive joke (as is often the case in award show monologues/segments) about Jada Pinkett Smith. Then, in what is undeniably the most deranged thing I have ever seen happen on an award show in my life, Will Smith got out of his seat, walked up onto the stage and slapped Chris Rock across the face. I know that the American broadcast was cut and censored a lot in the moment, but as an international viewer we pretty much got the full thing uncut, including Will Smith then yelling “KEEP MY WIFE’S NAME OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MOUTH” twice after he sat down. I don’t know what I can add to that description or what commentary I can offer, other than to say that you can think that a joke is unacceptable or offensive and have that be a valid point of view without also physically assaulting the presenter?
THE SHOW ITSELF:
It is extremely difficult to attempt to move on from that and to attempt to have any sort of non-slap discussion about the 94th Academy Awards, which I think is honestly lucky for them. It allows them to hide behind the insanity of the slap when, slap not included, this was just an absolutely horrifically produced broadcast. It was, no pun intended, a slap in the face to people who genuinely care in any way about cinema and about the sanctity of the Oscars. It was awfully produced, badly paced, unfunny, condescending and consistently punched down at the movies it was supposed to be celebrating.
The very obvious unspoken theme of the night was an attempt to forcefully make the show more 'mainstream' in a way that just felt so deeply condescending to who and what this show is actually about; which is cinema and the artists behind it, and who the people who care about the show are; which is genuine fans of cinema who just want to see filmmaking be cherished and celebrated. It doesn't have to and shouldn't appeal to everyone. If they don't care about cinema they don't have to watch.
I’m going to try and briefly be positive first:
The production decision I am most thrilled by is the return of the clips!!! I had a major personal axe to grind last year when they got rid of the clips for each acting nominee, which has always been one of my absolute favourite parts of the Oscars. I was so furious at that nonsensical choice. So the rightful reinstalment of the acting clips was extremely pleasing to me personally.
The other thing they did throughout the show that I actually did like, was the throughline of celebrating the anniversaries of famous films of the past and using that to present awards. It was really fun and a smart framework to keep throughout the broadcast. I thought the White Men Can’t Jump segment was a little awkward, but The Juno moment with Jennifer Garner, J.K. Simmons and Elliot Page was lovely, the Pulp Fiction dance moment with John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson was fun. And while it was unfortunately placed very shortly after the slap, getting Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro on stage to honour fifty years of The Godfather was so important to me (although I did think it was odd and a little sad that Al and Bobby didn’t get to say a word).
Also, I know this might seem random, but I actually really liked this new stage/seating design with the more open-plan tabled seating near the front, sort of similar to how the Golden Globes are. It allowed the show to be a lot more dynamic in how it was staged and filmed.
Other than that, it was a pretty consistent trainwreck.
I have spoken many times now about the terrible and cruel decision to have eight awards be not televised on the live broadcast so I won’t reiterate too much how much I hate that decision and how unfair it was to those craftspeople. However, it didn’t even make sense because they then attempted to weave all of the pre-recorded footage of those awards into the telecast anyway in an odd way and try and pass it off as if it was live footage? It just felt tedious, unnecessary and made no sense.
The punchline of the entire thing is that they apparently did this to make the show sorter when 1) they added so much unnecessary bullshit like excessively long, bad comedy sketches and fan-voted awards, which I'll get to and 2) THIS ENDED UP BEING THE LONGEST OSCARS SINCE 2018!! So they undermined all of the crafts categories only for the show to end up longer than ever. What an insult.
While there were a *couple* of funny moments in isolation, I thought generally speaking all three hosts made for a pretty rough and unfunny time. Just an odd trio with some really painful sketches and jokes throughout. I don’t mean to be overly sensitive or “woke” but that extremely long and crude sexual harassment bit with Regina Hall was very uncomfortable. The pre-filmed Wanda Sykes tour of the Academy Museum was so long and not at all amusing. And as a firm member of the Kirsten Dunst hive, I found Amy Schumer’s awkward bit about Kirsten being a seat-filler to be not only cringey, but a little mean-spirited. I know it was all a skit but choosing Kirsten and Jesse as the couple to do that sketch with, whom are well known as being quite shy and humble and are here for their first Oscar nominations, just felt like punching-down. I wasn’t a fan.
The two fan-voted awards they added into the show, which were bad ideas to begin with, both ended up as trainwrecks as they were hijacked by Zack Snyder fans and other insane stan mobs and just turned into an absolute joke. “The flash enters the speed force” apparently being the most cheer-worthy moment IN CINEMA HISTORY is probably the funniest thing to happen all night.
THE RESULTS:
This was quite probably the most predictable Oscar winners line-up in history. Every single year there is always a couple, or at least one, authentically shocking surprise. It’s the exhilaration of the show and even when it’s not a surprise win you particularly support, it makes the broadcast lively and exciting. This year, literally the only surprise win in the entire telecast was in Best Animated Short Film, and the short films are always the most under-the-radar and under-seen categories so it really just felt like there were no surprises. I filled out my full Oscar ballot before the show and correctly predicted 21/23. The only category I missed apart from Animated Short Film was Production Design, and that’s only because that was the one category where I decided to take a risk and go for a longshot that I felt could pull a surprise (Nightmare Alley) and it ended up just going to the frontrunner (Dune).
And not only were the wins all incredibly predictable, they were also largely extremely disappointing and unworthy to me. While there were a number of predictably undeserving/mediocre Oscar-bait films (Belfast, Don’t Look Up, King Richard and even CODA to an extent), we were blessed with one of the greatest and most compelling slates of nominees in recent Oscar history, with a handful of really exquisite and worthy films that I genuinely believe represent the best of the year in cinema (Licorice Pizza, The Power of the Dog, Dune, West Side Story, Drive My Car and even past Best Picture; The Worst Person in the World, The Lost Daughter, Parallel Mothers, Spencer, etc). Then, this exciting line-up ended up birthing an incredibly dull and disappointing slate of winners that saw what I believe to be the worst or at least one of the worst nominees in multiple categories, win those awards.
BEST WINS:
I will first acknowledge that there were at least a very small number of wins of that I wholeheartedly believe are worthy. Ariana DeBose winning Best Supporting Actress, for what I genuinely believe was the best and most dynamic supporting performance from an actress that year in West Side Story is my favourite win. Additionally (while I will spend my entire life campaigning for my guy PTA to one day win), Jane Campion deservedly took Best Director for the absolutely exquisitely directed The Power of the Dog after being the first woman to ever be nominated for the award twice. While I slightly prefer The Worst Person in the World, Drive My Car winning Best International Feature Film was also a joyous and deserving win that I celebrate. There are a couple of technical categories I personally would have rather seen go to The Power of the Dog, like Cinematography and Original Score, but generally speaking the full-on Dune sweep of the below the line categories is also something I greatly celebrate. This sweep of the technical categories and nothing above the line is extremely reminiscent of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), a similarly monumental technical filmmaking achievement. Also Troy Kotsur was not my pick for Best Supporting Actor but I do think that’s still a wonderful win. Additionally, while No Time to Die is not even one of my favourite of her songs, seeing Billie Eilish and Finneas win Best Original Song is something I celebrate.
WORST WINS:
Pretty much every other result, from my personal perspective, was undeserving or at least underwhelming. Our Best Actor and Actress winners, Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Will Smith for King Richard, (if we are attempting to separate the slap from the artist for a second) are both talented and accomplished performers who both won for what I would say are fairly mediocre performances in comparison to others in their respective categories. There are three actresses in the category I consider to have given superior performances to Chastain (Kristen Stewart, Penélope Cruz, Olivia Colman) and also three actors in the category I consider to have given superior performances to Smith (Benedict Cumberbatch, Denzel Washington, Andrew Garfield). I don’t think they’re terrible winners, for example Chastain is definitely not on the same level of baffling disappointment as Renée Zellweger winning Best Actress for Judy in 2020. However, I definitely think they’ll be looked back on as one of the poorer Best Acting duos.
I think the worst wins of the night though, that perfectly encapsulate all of my disappointments in this year of winners, are the pretty atrocious back-to-back screenplay wins. Best Original Screenplay was considered early in the award season as being Paul Thomas Anderson’s for the taking for Licorice Pizza. This would have been monumental not only because Paul Thomas Anderson is now an eleven-time Oscar nominee yet has never won or because I love Licorice Pizza. But also because Paul Thomas Anderson is quite frankly the single greatest filmmaker of the 21st century. Period. As the award season trajectory continued and it became evident that the race wasn’t headed in that direction, I was extremely disappointed. However, I’m not just disappointed because PTA lost. Excluding Don’t Look Up, and even with it being a pretty poor lineup, I would have taken anything over Belfast. I don’t think it’s a terrible film and found it to be moderately entertaining on a surface level. But it’s an empty crowd-pleaser with very little narrative direction and nothing to say. Even out of any category you could have possibly recognized the film in, screenplay makes the least sense. There is just absolutely nothing there in that bare-bones screenplay I can even point to that makes it remotely sensical. Just baffling. I have nothing against Kenneth Branagh who has a long and accomplished career of other work and again I’m not even trying to say that it’s an awful film, but I truly believe this will be looked back on for years to come as an all-time terrible Oscars win.
Adapted Screenplay is in one way less egregious as I much prefer CODA to Belfast and I do enjoy that film. However, again, the screenplay is definitely the weakest aspect of CODA which is very conventional and is what greatly held the film back for me. And in its own way this is perhaps more egregious than Belfast, because all of the other films in this category are so exceptional, and apart from CODA I thought it was a pretty incredible line-up. Seeing Sian Heder win for that fairly mediocre screenplay over the astonishing adapted screenplays for Drive My Car, Dune, The Lost Daughter and The Power of the Dog, is again just completely absurd to me.
And of course, let’s talk about Best Picture. I really don’t want it to seem like I am just continuously taking shots at CODA or like I hate the movie because, again, I really enjoyed it!! It’s a lovely film!! HOWEVER, do I think it’s the best film of 2021? No. Do I think it’s one of the five best films of 2021? No. Do I think it’s one of the TEN best films of 2021? No. I don’t. While I am no fool and I obviously am more aware than anyone that the Oscars often don’t accurately represent the true best of a year of cinema, I still believe that they should and I will always want one of the actual best films of the year to win. As I mentioned previously, there is a really strong group of five Best Picture nominees which I believe are all infinitely superior to CODA. I do prefer CODA to King Richard, Belfast, Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley. But every time I think of it being hailed as the ‘best picture’ of the year over Licorice Pizza, Dune, West Side Story, The Power of the Dog or Drive My Car, I have to laugh. While I believe it’s certainly better than something like Green Book (2018), I do believe that it will be looked back on as one of the most historically baffling Best Picture wins.
BEST SPEECHES:
Yet another disappointment is that I feel like we ran extremely short on good acceptance speeches this year, which is a performance art in its own right. I guess mostly boring speeches only reflects the mostly boring wins. Our supporting performance winners really carried this one on their backs this year. Ariana DeBose and Troy Kotsur both gave really authentic, touching speeches which were highly emotionally impactful. Just great moments. I also unfortunately think it’s import to take a moment to recognize how disrespectfully Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s speech was undermined. I have no idea why, because this didn’t happen to anyone else all night, but when he won Best International Feature Film for Drive My Car, they attempted to play him off after literally about thirty seconds? He had to ask to be allowed to keep speaking and then they tried to play him off a second time only about a minute later until he was awkwardly ushered off stage. It just felt incredibly disrespectful and awkward and I feel really sorry for him that his moment was ruined like that, especially because he seemingly took the time to pre-translate his speech into English in advance to save the extra time of using an interpreter. It was really unfortunate.
WORST SPEECHES:
There is no way to avoid the Will Smith speech here for obvious reasons. Simply one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever sat through on an awards show as he fumbled his way through a series of bizarre, I guess... justifications(?) for having slapped a presenter across the face less than an hour earlier. Comparing Richard Williams’ training of his daughters into tennis stars to what he did to Chris Rock and then calling himself a vessel for love – it's just one of the most indescribably weird things I’ve ever seen from start to finish. That aside, I thought it was strange and notable that a group made up of entirely white people (I know that Lin Manuel Miranda would have been there had his wife not got covid) accepted Best Animated Feature Film for Encanto, championing the film’s celebration of Columbian heritage, seemingly unaware of the very obvious irony apparent. And it was not a bad speech by any means, but I also just felt so sorry for Questlove and the whole Summer of Soul team who had to accept their Oscar for Best Documentary literally about a minute after slap-gate with Chris Rock still on the stage. Just a really unfortunate position for them to be put in and to have their moment over-shadowed.
BEST PERFORMANCES:
Finally, I want to quickly shoutout some good performances because at the very least, while some of them were dull, this trainwreck of a broadcast luckily didn't have any terrible performances. I thought it was a little strange to open the show with a pre-recorded remote performance just because it doesn’t allow for the same atmosphere and energy to be built as an actual live performance in the theatre. However, that Beyoncé performance was undeniably killer. I love Billie Eilish and Finneas and they gave a similarly fantastic performance which was my favourite of the night. This might be controversial because I saw a lot of people say they hated it, and I also made fun of the idea a lot when it was announced. However, in the most bizarre way, ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ featuring a verse from Megan Thee Stallion, was kind of a serve? It was a fun moment.
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