Two years ago, the Oscars broadcast had the lowest ratings ever. Last year, the ratings dropped to half of the year before. This is despite many efforts to improve the broadcast, including nominating ten movies for Best Picture instead of just five like the other categories. The idea behind that was that if they nominated more movies, more people would be engaged, rooting for their favorite. But instead the Academy just nominated 5 more movies that nobody watched. The biggest blockbuster nominated for Best Picture this year was Dune, which was the 13th highest grossing movie of 2021. Second was the acknowledged box office disaster, West Side Story at No. 38. Some of the movies barely had a box office because really they were intended for a streaming service. That was okay during Covid when nobody could go to theaters, but in 2021 things started opening up. These highly artistic movies that nobody sees should probably be in a separate awards show. Likewise, movies meant for streaming shouldn’t qualify for Oscars at all: they are television, see you at the Emmys. I don’t think Spider-Man: No Way Home really deserved a Best Picture nomination just because it dominated the box office, but neither did a movie like Drive My Car which was in Japanese and had a US box office total of $310,000. And Netflix’s Power of the Dog had barely more than that (the Academy only requires an extremely limited run in L.A. and New York). Maybe set the bar a little higher for the release and add in a metric for ticket sales. And if you can’t sell more tickets than that, you just don’t qualify for consideration. This year the field of nominations was dominated by movies almost nobody saw. I saw 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, but hadn’t even heard of The Lost Daughter, which had 3 nominations. Too often studios are counting on an Oscar nomination to sell tickets instead of the other way around. Instead they introduced a Fan Favorite idea to pick a movie and a best scene, which were both pointless. A scene I had never seen or heard of was named the best scene and I had never heard of the favorite movie. Stay in your lane and let other awards shows do a better job of recognizing popularity. As much as I don’t care for the Academy focusing too much on unpopular movies, at least that gives them some integrity as one of the few awards that comes closest to recognizing merit. Ultimately nobody needs to feel sorry for Spider-Man, which made billions of dollars.
Previously they got rid of a host to save time. This year they brought hosts back to make it more entertaining. Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall did fine, with a few wry lines and more than a few groans. Years into the Me Too movement, how is it not cringeworthy for Regina Hall to call up men on stage for a backstage physical examination? Or frisking Jason Mamoa? Kind of funny, but now Me Too means women can sexually harass men too? Respect is respect and everybody deserves it and should practice it.
The musical numbers are kind of interesting and I’m not going to complain about Beyonce’s tennis ball colored opener, but the five songs generally aren’t that good and this year it was the same. And they added “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” since Disney submitted a different song for an Oscar. I did enjoy the gospel singing of the In Memoriam segment with a few special callouts of people who died. The moment of silence for Ukraine, not mentioned by name, but introduced by Mila Kunis, who was born there, seemed like a lost opportunity. Either come out and say it or leave it out entirely.
There was a lot of controversy about pre-taping some of the technical awards. They still included those in the big show, but in edited form that kept speeches short and didn’t waste time while the winners work their way towards the stage. That worked out fine and was actually a good compromise. In fact, it has always been that the little guys get played off of the stage, but the big guys can go on and on endlessly. So set a time limit for the speeches, play the music for 10 seconds, and cut the mike. For everybody. Of course there has never been equality, blatantly on display as the big players got giant armchairs in the front while the orchestra played in the basement. That said, I still mostly skip the speeches of the people I don’t know or for movies I don’t know anything about.
I am glad they got rid of the love letters to the Best Actors that they did for a few years. That was just over the top self-congratulation. Which brings me to the night’s biggest moment, when Will Smith got out of his giant armchair, walked onstage, and slapped Chris Rock for an ad-libbed insult of Smith’s wife, the actress Jada Pinkett Smith. It was completely unacceptable for that to happen and the fact that Smith was allowed to stay shows the lengths Hollywood continues to go to allow the powerful to make problems go away and act like nothing is wrong. Tough call to make on the fly, but it was hard to watch Smith laughing and having a good time after assaulting (and battering) another actor who was doing his job. And then he won Best Actor and tried to justify his actions and say he was just protecting people and that people were mean to him and he just wanted to love people. Give me a break. And his speech went on for like 10 minutes because he is a big shot, and those people are indulged. Ultimately Smith ruined his moment and a great moment for his movie and the family portrayed in that movie. He won’t get that back. While I don’t like it when people thank a long list of people, at least those people use their big moment to think of others.
There were still some nice moments. Not a lot of surprises, but a nice acceptance speech by Troy Kotsur via sign language. Ariana DeBose had a nice speech. Youn Yuh-jing, who won Best Supporting Actress last year and barely speaks any English, was again really funny, pointing out that last year she complained people couldn’t pronounce her name and this year she had to try not to mispronounce the five names of the nominees for Best Supporting Actor. Instead of reading winner Troy Kotsur’s name aloud, she signed it first, which was a nice touch. The Oscars try very hard to be inclusive and you can argue that inclusivity sometimes pushes merit aside, but I was happy to see a diverse slate of nominees as well as winners.
I read a review of the ceremony by the New York Times‘ critics, who I generally like. It was also self-important fluff, saying it was inappropriate for the hosts to joke about how hard it was to get through The Power of the Dog, but as a person who spent over a month trying to get through that movie which finished near the bottom of my yearly list, that joke was funny because it is true. They said the Academy maybe doesn’t have great taste in movies. Instead maybe critics need to feel a little guilt for pushing so many people to watch such an unenjoyable movie.
The ratings for the show this year were up a little off the historic low of last year, but still second lowest. The show itself actually ran okay, despite some glitches. The usual bad jokes. Too often putting really famous old stars up on stage before they die. They sometimes celebrate movies for no real reason, like bringing back three cast members of White Men Can’t Jump to present an award. I don’t think the president of the Academy did a speech, which was good. So it was mostly an average telecast for a below average year in movies.