Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | March 2, 2025
The red carpet is being rolled up. The after-parties are in full swing. Adrien Brody’s speech is still ongoing. The 2025 Oscars decided to keep things fairly predictable but in a way where the majority of viewers were happy with the results. Anora had a big night with Sean Baker taking home no fewer than FIVE awards, while The Brutalist received three. It was a solid night of wins, bolstered by a great host whose team worked overtime to make this happen.
Opening with a montage of Los Angeles’ cinematic glory, followed by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo singing together was an admittedly beautiful way to open the ceremony in what must have been difficult circumstances (the L.A. fire chiefs also received a standing ovation.) There had been much furore over whether or not the Oscars should even take place this year given the devastation of the wildfires across the region. If this show was any indication, going forward with the show was a good choice.
Frankly, it’s surprising that Conan O’Brien hadn’t hosted the Oscars until this year. He seemed so tailor-made for the experience, both as an amiable and approachable talk-show host and a comedian whose jokes skew surreal but never needlessly cruel. And he was great. The opening riffing on The Substance was the kind of gross-out moment that he would have done on Late Night. The one-liners were great but it was in the very Conan-esque asides where he really shone as the whip-smart and self-deprecating tall king that he is. His Conclave joke was especially sharp, and he smartly got in two jabs at Karla Sofia Gascon before moving on. Hosting the Oscars is the most thankless gig in the business and Conan was great at it. He got the tone right, took it just seriously enough, didn’t let himself off the hook, and he was funny. Whenever the energy lagged, he knew how to boost it. Honestly, it might be my favourite Oscars opening in years? ABC, if you have to add an extra couple of zeros to his cheque next year, do it.
During his opening speech, Conan talked about the importance of the Oscars as that one night a year where the craft of cinema is given its rightful dues. It was good to see that reflected in moments like the costume designers being shown on-camera as they were addressed by the actors they dressed during their category. The songwriters got to explain their inspirations and techniques. There seemed to be real love for the work here, which made more sense (and was more entertaining) than sponsor-mandated Bond tributes. We had one of these about a decade ago, and it made more sense given that a Bond movie was about to be released? This time felt so obviously like a paid ad. At least the choreography was good?
The surprises were a-plenty. Flow won Best Animated Feature, becoming the first-ever Latvian film to win an Oscar. No Other Land won for documentary feature, a choice that was the right one but also seemed so unlikely to many of us. This is a stridently pro-Palestinian film that had to be self-distributed in America because no company would pick it up. It became the highest-grossing documentary among this year’s nominees in spite of that. People wanted to hear its message, and apparently enough people within the typically conservative Academy agreed. It wasn’t a hugely political night, which felt like a missed opportunity, but you felt the potency of those moments when it happened. While her win wasn’t a huge shock, Mikey Madison’s Best Actress victory over Demi Moore did elicit a few gasps. The Anora sweep just felt undeniable, but damn if it didn’t sting to see Moore lose.
Other predictable moments went as expected. Kieran Culkin was shambolic and charming in his speech and once again badgered his wife for more kids. Zoe Saldana was highly emotional and spoke lovingly of her family. Adrien Brody was highly self-serious and talked a lot without really saying much (although he did seem to reveal that Harvey Weinstein’s kids now call him dad?!) Sean Baker managed to be funny with a slew of different acceptance speeches. There were no upsets that seemed doomed to inspire a slew of think-pieces (look, let’s be happy that Emilia Perez only won the two awards it was expected to. It could have been so much worse.)
I feel like this was a surprisingly odd awards season. The Emilia Perez drama was genuinely unprecedented in its messiness and cruelty. One actress was revealed to have done blackface. More than one film got mired in AI-related drama. This felt, to me, to be the first Oscar season where social media and online fandom fervour made a tangible impact. Most of the above stuff was only uncovered because of people on Twitter and Bluesky doing the digging. Many argued that stuff like the Karla Sofia Gascon tweets and Fernanda Torres blackface video were only pushed into the conversation as a way to disrupt their chances at winning the Oscar. Certainly, a lot of self-avowed stans were getting their hands dirty online with fights over their faves. But even if the racism was only revealed because of fans (which I question), it made its mark and it revealed how ill-equipped the ever-traditional entertainment industry is for the current era.
It was argued by some that this was the first truly nasty Oscar season of the post-Weinstein era. We all wondered after his arrest if the days of the underhanded smear campaign and costly barrages of Narrative were over. Certainly, in the immediate aftermath of #MeToo, the races seemed to be kinder. People throughout the business didn’t stop fighting for the Oscar but, smarmy “honest ballot” clickbait aside, the camaraderie felt more earnest. Now, we have social media, AI, bots, stans, and a Trumpian cultural shift where the masks are thoroughly off. Maybe the studios weren’t the ones rolling around in the mud this year, but the gate to the sty is open and it won’t be closing any time soon. They’ll have seen how easy this stuff goes viral, and how it can be wielded in their favour (or against it.) I feel like we’re only a couple of years away from a scandal involving paid bots and a paper trail leading to a PR manager and overeager candidate.
None of that was reflected in the show itself, which was overall positive and jovial in tone and largely avoided getting too political. Aside from the exceptional speech by the team behind No Other Land and Daryl Hannah’s shout-out to Ukraine, it felt as though the industry wanted to avoid some of the orange elephants in the room. Yeah, we got a couple of good Conan jokes but was this the best the industry could do to meet the moment? Adrien Brody’s rambling word salad of a speech where he talked a lot but said nothing summed things up.
Frankly, any Oscars ceremony where I end the night thinking, ‘hey, it could have been a lot worse’ is a solid one. When you survived the Crash and Green Book catastrophes, being reasonably satisfied with the end results is all you can ask for. So, congratulations to Anora, an indie film about sex work that won over a notoriously old-school institution. Let’s not discuss 2026 possibilities until the Summer’s here, okay?
