Every March, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents awards to the best movies released in the previous year. Year after year, these awards, or the Oscars, come with surprises, records and notable moments— this year was no different.
The ceremony opened with a musical performance with pieces from one of the movies nominated for Best Picture, “Wicked.” Right before the ceremony, the Academy had suddenly announced that the performances of the Best Original Song nominees that normally occur during the ceremony would not take place this year. Instead, the “Wicked” performance, which was planned as one of the backup performances, was displayed, and Oscar nominees Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande performed various songs related to the Wizard of Oz franchise.
After Erivo and Grande’s performances, long anticipated host Conan O’Brien was introduced through a pre-recorded skit poking fun at Best Picture nominee “The Substance.” He then continued with a comedy routine joking about the various movies up for awards consisting of making fun of Adam Sandler’s infamous baggy attire, a jab at a musical number titled “I Won’t Waste Time,” where he jokes about the show’s runtime going smoothly, a bit featuring the sandworm from “Dune: Part Two” playing the piano and Dancing Deadpool joining the stage.
Along with the plethora of jokes during each of Conan O’Brien’s segments, the show took time to pause and reflect on the devastating wildfires that caused massive destruction in Los Angeles, California. Several members of the Los Angeles Fire Department joined O’Brien on stage midway through the ceremony, followed by a standing ovation from the star-studded audience.
After O’Brien’s opening of the show, he passed the ceremony along to Robert Downey Jr. to present the award for the Best Supporting Actor, who complimented all of the nominees before presenting the Oscar to Kieran Culkin for his role as Benji in “A Real Pain.”
Following Culkin’s Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor, Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn took to the stage to present the award for Best Animated Feature. This category was a close race, with the frontrunners being Dreamworks’ “The Wild Robot” and “Flow,” which is the first Latvian movie to be nominated for an Oscar. After telling a heart-warming anecdote about his late mother and her love of Goldie Hawn, Garfield read out the winner, which was “Flow.” This marked the first ever Oscar win for Latvia, and the second consecutive year that the winner of Best Animated Feature was not an American film.
The next major milestone during the ceremony was the giving of the award for Best Costume Design. Non-nominated supporting actors from the films nominated for costume design went on stage to give their compliments to each individual costume designer. After the round of tributes, the award was presented to Paul Tazewell, who was the costume designer for “Wicked.” In his speech, Tazewell reiterated the significance of the moment, as he is the first black man in history to win the award for costume design.
A similar spotlight was put on the award for Best Cinematography, with actors from all the nominated movies coming on stage to congratulate the nominated cinematographers. At the end, the award was presented to Lol Crawley for his work on “The Brutalist.”
The next awards given were both of the screenplay awards, which were “Best Adapted Screenplay” and “Best Original Screenplay.” “Anora” won the award for Best Original Screenplay, bringing director Sean Baker to the stage for the first of four Oscars he would win for the movie. “Conclave,” a film based on Robert Harris’ 2016 book, took home the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Star of “The Substance” Margaret Qualley then took the stage to introduce a song and dance tribute to the James Bond franchise, and honorary awards were presented to long-time series producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. This tribute was given merely weeks after they sold creative control of the franchise to Amazon, of which O’Brien poked fun at.
The Bond tribute was controversial for not featuring performers relevant to the Bond series. The performers were Margaret Qualley, Raye, Lisa and Doja Cat— none of which have ties to the series. This wasn’t due to lack of talent, either. Popular musicians Adele and Billie Eilish have both written and performed Bond themes, but they just were not features. This was not the only part of the Oscars broadcast that inspired some controversy, however.
Each year, the Academy presents an memorial segment during the broadcast, honoring the talents in the film industry who have passed away in the previous year. The most notably spotlighted were director David Lynch and actors James Earl Jones and Gene Hackman. With the yearly tradition, there was no shortage of notable talent that were forgotten from the segment this year. For instance, actor Tony Todd, most well known for his portrayal as Candyman, was left out of the segment amidst others. Other actors such as Chance Perdomo, most well known for his work on “The Boys” spinoff “Gen V,” and Michelle Trachtenberg, most known for her work on “Gossip Girl” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” were left out, which upset fans.
Presenting the award for Best Supporting Actress, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the previous recipient for this award for her performance in “The Holdovers,” took to the stage. Even after the controversies surrounding “Emilia Peréz,” Zoe Saldaña took the award for her performance in the film. Saldaña, who is the first Dominican actress to win an Oscar, dedicated her award to the actors of the Dominican Republic, expressing hope that she will not be the last Dominican actor to win this award.
Saldaña’s win was one of the two awards that “Emilia Peréz” won. The movie made waves before the ceremony for being nominated for 13 Oscars, the most by any non-English film in history. It started as a frontrunner for many of these categories, including Best Picture, but eventually fell out of favor as it began to garner controversy and unfavorable reviews after critics pointed problematic themes portrayed in the film. In the end, however, on top of “Best Supporting Actress,” the film also won an Oscar for “Best Original Song” with “El Mal.”
One of the awards that “Emilia Peréz” was favored for was “Best International Feature,” where it served as the French entry. The award went to the Brazilian nominee “I’m Still Here,” which gave Brazil its first ever Oscar win. This year’s win is only the fourth time a South American country has won Best International feature, and Brazil is the third South American country to do so.
Kicking off the three final awards for the night, Cillian Murphy walked out on stage to present the award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Murphy won this award in 2024 for his performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” Among the nominees for the “Best Actor” category, Brody, who played Lazlo Toth in “The Brutalist,” was up against Timothee Chalamet for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in the biopic “A Complete Unknown.” Chalamet would have been the youngest winner of the Best Actor award, an honor currently held by Brody himself. Ultimately, the award was presented to Adrien Brody, despite some controversy about the usage of AI for his Hungarian accent. Brody went on to give a 5 minute and 40 second long speech, setting the Guinness World Record for the longest Oscar speech in history.
For Best Actress, Emma Stone took center stage to present the award, following her second Academy Award win for her lead performance in the 2023 film “Poor Things.” This category was a race between Demi Moore for her performance as Elisabeth Sparkle in “The Substance,” and Mikey Madison for her performance as Ani in “Anora.” The award ended up going to Madison, who won Best Actress at just 25 years old.
At the end of the night, the awards for “Best Director” and “Best Picture” both went to “Anora.” This gave Sean Baker his third and fourth trophy of the night, the most amount of awards ever won for just one person and one movie. In 1954, Walt Disney won four statues for four different shorts, the only other person to win this many Oscars in one night. Sean Baker’s historical success was the cherry on top of a history-making ceremony.
