When Steven Soderbergh began giving interviews about what he and fellow Oscars producers Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins had planned for this year’s telecast, he said they wanted the show to feel like a movie. And largely, they succeeded. The ceremony kicked off with a full-on opening credits sequence that followed prior winner Regina King as she strutted into the intimate yet socially distanced setup inside Union Station; the presenters and winners looked at the audience instead of the camera; and even the telecast itself was presented in a cinematic framing that made the whole thing look like a movie. But the thing about movies is, if your ending stinks, that’s what people leave the theater talking about. And as Best Picture was handed out before both the Best Actress and Best Actor awards, it was clear the Oscars producers were building towards what they hoped would be an ending as memorable as any great movie. It completely backfired.
For the most part, I thought the changes made for this year’s ceremony worked. Going into this year’s Oscars, the narrative was that absolutely no one cared this year. The Best Picture nominees were little-seen by the general public, and the adjusted calendar led to even movie fans forgetting the Oscars were still happening. The producers leaned into that and created a ceremony only for Oscars diehards – the complete opposite of pandering to the viewers at home with bits like handing out pizza inside the Dolby Theater.
Even down to the choice to have the presenters and winners look at the people inside the room instead of directly into the camera, the ceremony put the focus squarely on the artisans that were being honored. This was pushed to such an extreme that even the clips that traditionally accompany each nominee were scrapped, save for a couple of categories. Completely and fully, the focus of this year’s Oscars was on the nominees and the winners, and the decision to move the Oscar-nominated Best Original Song pre-show it turns out was so that there would be even more time for speeches.
Indeed, the speeches were really the star of this year’s Oscars, and Soderbergh sent a note to all the nominees before the ceremony imploring them to write a speech and create a moment. Some of the most memorable moments from Oscars telecasts in years past have been the speeches – something funny, something emotional, something surprising. Clearly the goal was to recreate that here in this intimate ceremony. Sometimes it paid off, like with Thomas Vinterberg’s emotional acceptance speech for Best International Film that honored his late daughter, or Daniel Kaluuya’s maybe too-honest acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor.
And as Best Picture was announced as the third-to-last category, it was clear the Oscars producers were trying to manifest an ending that would leave both the audience and the viewers at home in tears. Prior to the ceremony, Nomadland was the heavy favorite to win Best Picture. If anything else had won, it would have been a massive surprise. This year did not seem primed for a Parasite or Moonlight-like shocker. Clearly the producers were aware of this, so they decided to put Best Picture third-to-last, with Best Actress next and then finally Best Actor to wrap up the evening.
Best Actress was a bit up in the air. Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman), and Frances McDormand (Nomadland) had all at one point over the last few months been the frontrunner to win, and heading into Oscar night Davis had the momentum. But there was room for surprise there, and indeed it was McDormand who ended up coming away with it.
And then came Best Actor. The frontrunner for this category all season long has been Chadwick Boseman, who gives a raw, gutturally emotional performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom which also happened to be his final performance. Boseman tragically and suddenly passed away last year, and so the common wisdom was that he would win Best Actor not only because he deserved it, but as a sort of tribute to this tremendously talented man. But in the final two weeks leading up to the Oscars, there was already talk of a potential upset.
Anthony Hopkins had earned rave reviews for his role in The Father as a man suffering from dementia, with many calling it the best performance of the 83-year-old actor’s career. In a surprise, Hopkins won the BAFTA Best Actor award, so there was already some indication that there was a possibility – however slight – that he might win Best Actor. But being an 83-year-old man living in a pandemic, Hopkins opted to stay home in Wales for the Oscars ceremony and not risk the long trip to Los Angeles.
So Joaquin Phoenix takes the stage to hand out the final award of the night – an award the Oscar producers clearly believe will likely go to Boseman, resulting in an emotional acceptance speech from the actor’s widow and a standing ovation in the room. But when Phoenix reads the envelope, Hopkins’ name is said out loud. He has won Best Actor. And he’s not there. A photograph of Hopkins appears on the screen behind Phoenix, who notes that Hopkins was unable to claim this award in person and they accept it on his behalf. He leaves the stage, and the show ends.
This was the most abrupt, jarring, and disappointing ending in recent memory. The show told viewers it was building towards a Chadwick Boseman win with this adjusted order of awards, and when that didn’t happen, we felt robbed. This wasn’t Anthony Hopkins’ fault – the guy already has an Oscar, and probably didn’t think he was going to win. The man was probably asleep! This was a complete and utter miscalculation on the part of the producers, and it left a real stink on the entire proceeding despite the fact that a lot of the changes made for a refreshingly intimate ceremony.
But this whiffed ending was not only anticlimactic, it robbed Chloe Zhao and the Nomadland team the moment of triumph that they deserved. With her Best Director win (much earlier in the night), Zhao became only the second woman ever to win the Best Director trophy, and the first woman of color to do so. That’s a big deal! And Nomadland, with its docudrama style, non-professional actors, and intimate storytelling is a somewhat rare beast in the realm of Best Picture Oscar winners. It deserved a spotlight, but instead it got a moment on the way to a contrived ending that didn’t even end up happening.
I’m all for changing up the formula when it comes to the Oscars. It’s a telecast I never miss, but one I frequently feel could be improved. But as the 2021 Oscars showed, when it comes to some things – like putting Best Picture as the last award of the night, for example – they’re traditional for a reason. They work.
Steven Soderbergh did not produce the Oscars alone (he didn’t direct them either, Glenn Weiss did), but you can clearly see his hand in some of the more ambitious swings. The thing I like about Soderbergh’s films is he’s unafraid to take risks. Sometimes those risks pay off, like with his approach to Out of Sight or Traffic or Ocean’s Eleven; sometimes he’s merely too ahead of the curve like with the digital release of Bubble in 2005; and sometimes they don’t pay off at all, like with the unique marketing strategy for Logan Lucky (a very good movie). But when Soderbergh’s gambles don’t work, he simply moves on to the next movie with yet another challenge.
That approach may be fine and even exciting for the movies, but when you’re dealing with real life, you’re playing with live ammo. Had this year’s Oscars actually been a movie, it would have received horrible test audience scores and the ending would have been reshot with Boseman winning, Maybe even the order of events would have been changed, so that Nomadland’s historic Best Director and Picture wins came at the very end of the night.
But it wasn’t a movie. It was the Oscars. And the ending was a real freaking bummer.