Last night, the 94th Oscars took place, signalling the end of another Award Season. Dune took home the most awards, whilst Apple became the first streamer to win Best Picture, for indie feelgood CODA. However, in such a disjointed and painful ceremony, the winners were overlooked after nearly four hours of chaos.
Poor Hosts
After two years without a host, the Academy decided to bring them back in the shape of comedians Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall. All three didn’t seem to click, and not a single joke worked. Maybe they thought they could get away with joking about sexual assault, but groping men on television is just as uncomfortable as when a male host makes sex jokes about women. Another disrespectful moment included nominated Kirsten Dunst named a seat filler, husband and fellow nominee Jesse Plemmons rightly so had none of it. Oddly enough, we never saw that much of Schumer, Sykes and Hall throughout the never-ending ceremony; so it felt there was no host at all.
The Oscars this year tried to make it more fan-friendly and separate itself from decades of elitism. It didn’t work. Everything about this ceremony felt thrown together at the last minute; From the odd anniversaries – since when do we celebrate the 28th anniversary of a film? To a wildly inappropriate In Memoriam section, which had you focusing on the guest choir rather than those who died last year.
The Flash enters the Speed Force
Perhaps the largest controversy in the build-up to the ceremony was the decision to cut eight awards from the live runtime. Instead, many of the technical categories were presented to an arriving audience, giving no respect to the winners. It was here where Dune won most of its awards and for such a film that was both critically and fan acclaimed, now had no airtime.
The eight awards were replaced by an audience-voted “fan favourite” moment that felt utterly pointless. The problem with fan voting is fans manipulating systems, leading to utterly ridiculous winners. It is funny that two pointless awards (receiving no prize), clearly made for Spiderman: No Way Home, lost to two Zack Synder films, names I can’t remember. Very memorable moments indeed.
The Elephant in the Room
Chris Rock’s jokes about Jada Pinkett Smith clearly didn’t land, as Will Smith slapping Rock and stating “keep my wife’s name out of your f*cking mouth” left audiences in the auditorium and at home, stunned. Pinkett Smith recently shaved her head after announcing she has alopecia. Smith won Best Actor less than an hour later. A decent host may have sorted this swiftly, but none of them were present during this segment. The slap definitely woke me up, and Smith’s acceptance speech was remorseful and uncomfortable to watch as he rambled through. Smith fell short in apologising to Rock, which speaks many words.
The Oscars are notorious for their lengthy runtime, snobbery and elitism. Any try of changing this and the ceremony completely falls apart and has no way of putting itself back together. Take out awards to shorten the time, yet the number of excruciating skits made it longer than last year’s show. The 93rd ceremony managed to run smoothly and show all 23 awards.
A hyped-up first live performance of ‘We don’t talk about Bruno’ from Encanto, and ruin it by remixing and including Megan Thee Stallion. An edited homage to James Bond would’ve worked great with Billie Eilish and Finneas’s rendition of ‘No time to Die.’
The more I think about the Oscars, the more it just didn’t work. I hope next year; the Academy learns from its costly mistake.
Featured image courtesy of Analogicus via Pixabay. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
sarahstorer
Sarah has recently graduated from Newcastle University with an MA in International Multimedia Journalism. When she’s not editing the Opinions Section, you can find her at the cinema or on the beach with her dog.