The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of the 2024 Oscars

 

By Jen Chaney

Vulture 

The Oscars: You can start them an hour early and they’ll still end 25 minutes late. ABC’s big show, led by Jimmy Kimmel, exuded the desperate-to-please energy of, alternatively, “look, we nominated blockbusters you watched this year!” and “please don’t change the channel, whatever it takes.” Is this a show for everyone or just the diehards? Is Hollywood back and better than ever or has it lost its sense of identity? The production shot simultaneously for big crowd-pleasing moments like Ryan Gosling’s rendition of “I’m Just Ken” and tried to appeal to true awards geeks by having former winners present to the nominees. Outside the ceremony, protesters tried to call attention to the genocide in Gaza, a reality that few of the beautiful people on television (in fact, only one) acknowledged in their speeches. Kimmel, playing his usual slickly chummy self as host, kept it all moving, even if the ceremony never found its center. The year in 2023 ended with the bang of Oppenheimer winning best picture, along with the anticlimactic whimper of Al Pacino not seeming to care. The highs were high, the lows very low, and the tonal whiplash constant. We rounded it all up for you.

HIGH THAT BECAME A LOW THEN BECAME A HIGH AGAIN: Messi the dog got to come to the Oscars! But then it seemed like he — or possibly a Messi look-alike — pre-taped, which is much less fun and turned this into a low. But then Vulture confirmed it was the real Messi, and even if he pre-taped, that’s still a win, making this a high again. Wow, what a journey.

LOW: This early-ass start time. I know it sucks to stay up late to watch this thing end, but it’s worse for it to start this early. 7 pm East Coast time is bad enough but 4 pm on the West Coast is even more ridiculous. That’s pre-happy hour timing!

HIGH: Jimmy Kimmel knows what his job is. The thing about letting Kimmel have this gig year after year is that he does understand the assignment. The show started five minutes late and he was unruffled. Sure, there are some clunkers; there was a tired and underwhelming joke about movies being too long, a ridiculous groaner about the future of Yorgos Lanthimos’s career (“Yorgos is as good as mine”), and a milquetoast deflection from commenting on Bradley Cooper’s love life by suggesting that he might be dating his mom. But he got in some weird jokes (“I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gerard Depardieu”), he was comfortable poking at Robert Downey Jr. and Robert De Niro, and he kicked off the whole show by reminding the room that they didn’t vote for Greta Gerwig. Kimmel: It’s not going to be thrilling, but it’ll work.

HIGH: Kimmel ends his monologue with a shout out to the crew members who supported the SAG and WGA strikes. Kimmel likes to adopt a cynical “over it” tone in his hosting, but his thank you to the teamsters, truck drivers, and other crew was powerfully earnest and led to a standing ovation from the audience. Let’s hope they all follow through on Kimmel’s promise of support if the other unions strike, and that Kimmel really did get them overtime for this show.

HIGH: The return of the five presenters during the acting awards. The Oscars has tried this format in the past, where previous winners say some personal words about each nominee. They brought it back this year and it was a welcome return that gave each nominated actor the chance to get their flowers. It also served as an opportunity to confirm that if Nic Cage had played the lead in The Holdovers, he would have worn a contact lens to simulate a lazy eye just like Paul Giamatti. Duly noted!

HIGH: Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s acceptance speech and Giamatti crying during it. As the Best Supporting Actress winner ended her heartfelt speech — “For so long, I’ve always wanted to be different and now I realize, I just need to be myself,” she said through tears, prior to thanking her publicist, which also was somehow moving? — they panned to her Holdovers co-star Giamatti, who had a single, thick tear running down his face. That’s why he’s also an Oscar nominee, folks.

HIGH: Cord Jefferson’s speech. After winning an Oscar for his screenplay for American Fiction, a film he pitched to multiple studios that turned him down, Jefferson took the opportunity to call on those very studios and producers to allow more filmmakers and types of films into the tent. “I understand that this is a risk averse industry,” he told the audience. “But $200 million movies are also a risk. But you take the risk anyway. Instead of making one $200 million movie, make twenty $10 million movies. Or fifty $4 million movies.” Fuck yeah, Cord Jefferson!

LOW: John Cena, nude except for a pair of Birkenstocks, presents the award for Best Costume. Meant as a nod to the famous Oscars streaker, the bit succeeded only in reminding us how much cooler it was when an actual streaker made it onto the stage. Congrats to John Cena, though: Nothing frames an Oscars envelope quite like a set of well-defined cum gutters.

LOW: Truly uninspired writing for the presenters. After Bad Bunny noted, in Spanish, that excellent cinema is a universal language, Dwayne Johnson’s response was “See? He’s not such a Bad Bunny.” Was that line a placeholder and someone forgot to write the real thing?

HIGH: An ode to stunt performers. Oscars, are you listening to us? In our second year of the Stunt Awards, the Academy put together a package that included the history of cinema’s stunt professionals and a montage of scenes from films like RRR, John Wick, the Mission: Impossible franchise, and The Matrix. (All films we included in our 100 Fights That Shaped Action Cinema list!) Hopefully this is a sign that an Oscar for the stunt industry is being considered; our very own Bilge Ebiri has been leading the charge for a while now, if the Academy needs a consultant.

HIGH: “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy. In that order.” Robert Downey Jr., who won for his role in Oppenheimer, is good at acceptance speeches.

WHOA: As a pro-Palestine protest shuts down traffic outside the theater, the conflict only briefly appears inside the room. In his acceptance speech for The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer explicitly framed his comments about Israel and Gaza as the Jewish director of a film about the Holocaust: “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present,” he said. “Not to say, ‘Look what they did then.’ Rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst.” He continued, “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” A few winners and presenters, including Billie Eilish and Ramy Youssef, appeared on the red carpet and onstage wearing red buttons to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. For the most part, though, the ceremony attempted to dodge explicit, potentially unpopular political commentary of any sort. Kimmel voiced support for unions and read aloud a TruthSocial post from Donald Trump; the winners for documentary feature 20 Days in Mariupol spoke movingly about Ukraine.

LOW: Transitioning from a heartfelt speech about the war in Ukraine straight to an “I’m Just Ken” music cue. The Oscars contain tonal multitudes, as demonstrated by the switch from Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech into a Barbenheimer bit. Sometimes they’re unavoidable, especially in a live show! But sometimes it’d be nice to anticipate that “I’m Just Ken” might not be the best music option.

HIGH: The utter nonsense of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito presenting together. The Twins reunion no one asked for got a standing O and led to a whole bit where DeVito and Schwarzenegger talked about both being Batman villains and ragged on Michael Keaton. (Arnold said “son of a bitch” twice.) In an especially meandering, self-obsessed Oscars, what more could you ask for!

HIGH: First-time Oscar winner Godzilla! Godzilla Minus One winning for Best Visual Effects was the cutest and most sincere triumph of the night, with Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima all appearing onstage clutching Godzilla figures and wearing shoes with Godzilla claws as the heels. The speech comparing themselves to Rocky Balboa was heartfelt, and the film’s win against way-bigger-budget rivals The Creator, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, and Napoleon proved the point of Cord Jefferson’s earlier speech. As to how Godzilla Minus One looked that good on less than $15 million, we’ve got your answer.

HIGH: Steven Spielberg, playing along with the bits. Whether in Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue or the awards presentation by America Ferrara and Kate McKinnon — a moment in which McKinnon said she accidentally sent “tasteful nudes” intended for Jeff Goldblum to “Dr. Spielberg” — the director was very game to mug for the camera. I don’t know, maybe this guy has potential as an actor?

HIGH: The Original Song performance stage designs. For weeks, we wondered: Would Ryan Gosling perform “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars? The ceremony really drew out our anticipation by scheduling every other performance before Gosling’s, but they were all distinct: Jon Batiste with just a piano; Billie Eilish and Finneas at the bottom half of a hot-pink circle that slid open to reveal an orchestra above them; the Osage Tribal Singers shot from above, as they are at the end of Killers of the Flower Moon, to show their percussive drum work. (Becky G and a children’s choir performed what felt like 10 seconds of “The Fire Inside” in front of some leftover CGI from Game of Thrones and deserved better.) Meanwhile, Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” was a reminder that this man has charisma you would not believe — I am begging Dead Man’s Bones to tour again — and can do anything this performance asked of him: an homage to Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” crowd surfing amid a sea of Barbie faces, and sharing the limelight with fellow Kens Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Scott Evans, and Ncuti Gatwa. Of course, that performance had to be its own …

HIGH: EVERYTHING ABOUT “I’M JUST KEN.” MY EXPECTATIONS FOR THIS NUMBER WERE HIGH, AND SOMEHOW THEY WERE EXCEEDED. GOSLING STARTING FROM THE AUDIENCE, HIS FACE OBSCURED BY A COWBOY HAT WHILE BILLIE EILISH DIES LAUGHING BEHIND HIM? ART. FISTBUMPING WITH HIS MOJO DOJO CASA HOUSE BOYS WHILE CARRYING THE TUNE PERFECTLY? SENSATIONAL. THAT OVERHEAD SHOT OF HIM SPINNING WHILE BEING PHYSICALLY LIFTED, THEN SHARING THE MIC WITH HIS BARBIE COLLEAGUES, AND THEN FUCKING SLASH SHOWED UP?? AND YOU DIDN’T GIVE THIS MAN AN OSCAR??? IF I COULD TYPE IN ALL-CAPS ALL-CAPS RIGHT NOW, I WOULD!!!

LOW: Billie Eilish has more Oscars than Martin Scorsese. She has two wins from two nominations. He has one win in 44 years. It’s absurd, folks.

HIGH: John Mulaney retelling the story of Field of Dreams for no apparent reason. “Then Busfield pushes little Gaby Hoffmann off the bleachers and she’s unconscious and then Burt Lancaster pats her on the back, and then he can’t go back into the game because I guess there’s a rule in ghost baseball that if you leave the field at any point to become an elderly ghost and do the Heimlich maneuver, you can’t return to the field. I love Field of Dreams.”

LOW: If you can’t clearly see who’s being honored for the “In Memoriam,” the “In Memoriam” is failing. String quartet and full orchestra and Andrea Boccelli and interpretive dancers? But then we’re supposed to be able to focus on the images of the many beloved artists who died over the last year? Even worse, the sequence ended with a list of more names. But in a wide shot, it was impossible to read any of the names or even be certain it was, in fact, a list of names!

WHOA: Emma Stone wins over Lily Gladstone. An Oscars ceremony in which every favorite wins isn’t exactly fun. But the only real surprise this ceremony came when Emma Stone won her second Best Actress Oscar in less than a decade for Poor Things, edging out Most Likely to Win an Oscar Lily Gladstone, who was the heart and soul of Killers of the Flower Moon and would have (and should have) made history with her win. It’s a much-repeated cliché that showier performances win Oscars over more subtle ones, but the reality is that reading the anonymous voters’ testimonials this awards season indicated troubling backlash to the sense that Gladstone was a shoo-in. People seemed to interpret Stone’s nudity, cursing, and sexual-liberation-as-feminism turn in Poor Things as the braver performance, while disregarding how Gladstone’s steeliness and vulnerability bent KOTFM entirely around her. When the only thing Kimmel could find to say about the movie was that it was too long, perhaps Gladstone losing here wasn’t that much of a surprise — the voters simply refused to engage with KOTFM, and it showed in its unjust and utter blanking. Has Jennifer Lawrence ever been more wooden than when blandly describing Gladstone’s performance? Yikes. (For a specific comparison of Stone and Gladstone’s work, you can read our Angelica Jade Bastién on the failings of Poor Things and the racial dynamics of KOTFM.)

LOW: All those easily predictable wins. Many of them were well deserved, but a competent, color-by-numbers award show can always benefit from a few unexpected votes. Surprises allow a ceremony to feel like a show instead of the inevitable coronation of a carefully designed monthslong marketing campaign. This Oscars, for better and for worse, checked all those boxes: competent; color-by-numbers; many deserving winners; not enough interesting, weird results.

WHOA: Al Pacino seems surprised to discover himself presenting Best Picture. The approach was roughly the same energy as a parent reading aloud a toddler’s picture book with lots of flaps in it. “Ten wonderful films are nominated for Best Picture, but only one will take the award for Best Picture. And I have the envelope for that. And I will. And here it comes. And my eyes see Oppenheimer.”

WHOA: The Oscars ended before 11??? Maybe that 7 pm start gave people the energy — Kenergy? — to power through at a faster pace. Having more presenters double up on their awards certainly helped and so did the trimming of (most) unnecessary comedy bits. Bottom line, to bring this back around to the stale joke about movies being too long this year: The Oscars ceremony was shorter than Killers of the Flower Moon. That’s a whoa and a win.