The 2025 Academy Award ceremony was a wonderfully fun affair. First-time host Conan O’Brien nailed the job so hard that the Academy invited him back for 2026. One of the only things that held back last year’s ceremony was the relative obscurity of the favorites to win. That’s one of the reasons why the Best Film category was expanded to 10 films in 2009. Even with that, the 97th Academy Awards didn’t have an awful lot going for it in terms of populist fare.
This year was a bit different, though; it had Sinners. The Ryan Coogler-directed movie was the most nominated film in Academy Award history, plus had critical and popular success. Maybe between that and Conan returning, we would have something special tonight. What we got instead was a stilted and often awkward feeling mess.
The Good, The Predictable, and The Awkward
The best thing you could say about this year’s ceremony was that there was nothing truly bad about it. Well, obviously, that depends on your definition of bad, but I’m going to say that the worst moments were just plain awkward. We’ll get to all of that in a bit, but for the most part, nothing was awful. Remember that weird James Bond tribute that came out of nowhere last year? Yeah, that was just bad. There was no specific reason to celebrate James Bond that year, but we still got a medley of singing and dancing that was just simply bad.
Nothing in this ceremony quite rose to that level. Instead, there was an almost eerily consistent level of stilted awkwardness that lingered over the broadcast and seemed to infect nearly every single one of the presenters. So, before I dive into what was good and predictable, I really want to talk about how and why this year seemed so profoundly odd.
The Awkward
What the hell was happening with all the presenters this year? Was there something in the water? Almost every presenter who was on-stage acted like they were reading material for the very first time. Sigourney Weaver and Pedro Pascal had a stilted back-and-forth about aliens, leading up to a joke where Sigourney was telling Kate Hudson off for sitting next to Grogu. The flash of anger was funny but undercut by terrible delivery. And it wasn’t just them. Bill Pullman and Lewis Pullman had an awkward bit about father/son, original/sequels. Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. had a similarly weird exchange about anniversary gifts for the premiere of Marvel’s The Avengers, 14 years ago.
How about that oddly long skit from the cast of Bridesmaids reading “notes” that were passed to them? Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor showed up and had all the chemistry that reading off of cue cards could carry. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson presented and also showed zero chemistry despite having a film coming out this year. Anne Hathaway and Anna Wintour had a bit that was undone by Hathaway also sounding completely unnatural, and if she was reading from a teleprompter she’d never seen before. Then there was Barbara Streisand, holy shit, there was Babs.
In Memoriam
This is the kind of thing that deserves its own paragraph. The celebrity in memoriam segment was tastefully done, and then they got to Robert Redford. To honor him, they brought out his co-star from The Way We Were, the aforementioned Barbara Streisand. She told a touching tribute to the late star, and I said out loud, “It looks like she’s not going to make this about herself for a change.” Streisand got done with her speech and started singing. I don’t even know if the show’s producers gave her a microphone or if she just brought her own and started singing off script.
Perhaps the worst part was how often the orchestra and cameras started cutting people off during their acceptance speeches. There were numerous occasions where people were clearly trying to hand the mic off to another person on stage with them, but the music would silence them. One time, they even cut to Conan, who clearly was not ready to start talking as he was letting the winners accept their awards. All he could do was sheepishly stare into the camera with a look on his face of, “Don’t blame me, I’m not the one that struck up the band.” What the actual hell, guys?
The Good
The legitimately good moments were few and far between. There was an overall “good” quality to things in the sense that there were no awful snubs. There were two pretty big surprises that happened in a way that no one was truly robbed or snubbed of an Oscar. The big example of this was in Best Supporting Actress. The buzz was around Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another and Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners. The former had one at the Golden Globes, and the latter had won at BAFTA. Instead, Amy Madigan took home the trophy for Weapons. She had won at the Actor Awards (formerly Screen Actors Guild Awards), so it wasn’t completely out of left field. Still, it was a bit of an upset, but not one that felt undeserved.
The only other huge surprise for the night was a rarity in that a tie actually happened. The category of Best Live Action Short Film saw the award given to both The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva. And it was handled extremely well by presenter Kumail Nanjiani, one of the best presenters of the night. He was also funny enough to where he had to affirm for the audience a few times that he was not joking, there was a tie in the category. Nanjiani stated he would announce one winner, let them have their time, and then announce the second winner for them to come up. Extremely well done.
Digs & Spoofs
Among the other good moments were Conan’s opening sequence that saw him parodying Weapons and children chasing him through various films. He took a couple of pointed jabs at Donald Trump and included a very cutting remark about how there were no English actors nominated for Best Actor, but at least the English arrest their pedophiles. Similarly, one of the other best presenters of the night had some biting comments, this time coming from Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel has previously hosted the Oscars and made a beautifully sarcastic comment about freedom of speech. He couldn’t say where free speech was being limited besides the countries of North Korea and CBS.
Most of the acceptance speeches were very good this year, too. There was a lot of genuine love, emotion, and appreciation that ran through the stage, and none of it felt performative. Among those accepting awards was Autumn Durald Arkapaw. She made history as the first woman to ever win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for her work on Sinners. Additionally, Paul Thomas Anderson got to speak three times as he picked up awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. It was a huge night for the veteran director who hadn’t won a damn thing in his previous 11 nominations.
The Predictable
But that also leads us into the predictable. Outside of the surprise win for Supporting Actress and the tie in Live Action Short Film, everything else played out as most people would have predicted. Most of the major categories were either going to fall on the side of Sinners or One Battle After Another. People had already predicted where the exceptions were going to be, and they were largely right. Jessie Buckley was predicted to win for Hamnet. She did. “Golden” from K-pop Demon Hunters was going to pick up Original Song. It did. Frankenstein was the odds-on favorite to take home several of the technical awards, and it did just that with Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup, and Hairstyling.
Maybe the only thing that wasn’t “predictable” to some was that Marty Supreme would go home empty-handed despite all of its nominations. In a different year, we could’ve seen it grab something, maybe Adapted Screenplay or Actor in a Leading Role. In this year, though, up against Sinners and One Battle After Another across the board, it just wasn’t going to happen.
Final Thoughts
This was a weird night. The energy felt very off, and it never regained its footing. Did no one rehearse? Perhaps they have to call everyone in last minute to present? Did everyone get super weird about the jabs at Timothée Chalamet? Obviously, this wasn’t just slapped together in a week, but it sure as hell felt like it at times. It was great to see Jordan take home an Oscar. Thomas Anderson finally got his night to shine. Those moments were fantastic. I can’t say this was a good ceremony, though in terms of presentation.
I would love to hear if someone behind the scenes could confirm that there was some kind of production problem. Where did all the nervous, amateur hour energy come from? One person having a bad night is understandable, but a whole slew of people is bizarre. Congratulations to the winners, at least, and let’s see what the Academy decides to do next year.
