The 2025 Academy Awards, streamed live on Sunday, March 2 at 7 p.m. EST, was initiated by an opening number performed by Wicked’s two co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, singing classic Wizard of Oz songs such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Home” (from the original musical spinoff The Wiz) and, of course, “Defying Gravity.” Similar to Wicked, it was a touching tribute to the lasting legacy of The Wizard of Oz, but also an ironic choice for those who know Oscars history. When the Wizard of Oz was nominated for five Academy Awards back in 1940, it only won two — Best Original Score and Best Original Song — missing out on Best Picture.
It’s hard to imagine anyone giving a better opening monologue than the brilliant Conan O’Brien. His introductory video showed him riffing on a scene from The Substance, climbing out of Demi Moore’s lifeless shell before waltzing onto the grand stage. His jokes took jabs at The Brutalist’s long run time, Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweeting habits and the Catholic Church, but being who he is, he didn’t avoid the elephant in the room: the disastrous wildfires which decimated whole districts of Los Angeles this past January. His speech was touching and showed the proper humility required for a host of a black tie event such as the Academy Awards.
“In moments such as this, any awards show can seem self-indulgent and superfluous,“ O’Brien said. “But the Oscars also shines a light on an incredible community of people you will never see: craftspeople, artisans, technicians, costumers...hardworking men and women behind the camera who have devoted their lives to making film...Many people we celebrate tonight are not famous. They are not wealthy. But, they are devoted to a craft that can, in moments, bring us all a little closer together.”
Back when the nominees for the Oscars were announced back in late January, one film caught the public’s attention. Emilia Pérez, a musical film about an ex-cartel leader who changed their gender and identity to escape their past life in Mexico, received an outstanding 13 nominations: just one behind films such as All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land. The film also received the same number of nominations as Forrest Gump and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and one more than Schindler’s List.
Despite the Academy’s praise and the long list of awards the film has won, this high number of Oscar nominations caused many to scrutinize the film’s message and score. The gulf between the Academy and the public’s opinion is quite obvious after one glance at the film’s critical ratings, both on Rotten Tomatoes and user-driven rating systems such as Letterboxd and IMDb.
The voters clearly wisened up, though: Emilia Pérez won only two Oscars: Best Original Song, won by Clement Ducol and Camille for “El Mal,” and Best Supporting Actress, won by Zoe Saldaña. Considering the criticism against Emilia Pérez’s musical numbers, the award for Best Original Song is a bit suspect. But regardless, the film received the fewest awards with 13 nominations in the Academy’s history, making the initial praise feel half-hearted.
When all was said and done, Anora was the biggest winner of the night. It won five awards including Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. Mikey Madison left the venue winning Best Actress, and Sean Baker took home the award for Best Director. Sean Baker himself won four out of these five awards, making him the first person in Academy history to win four Oscars for the same film.
Perhaps the most controversial of Anora’s wins was Mikey Madison winning Best Actress over The Substance star Demi Moore, with some claiming that this decision proves the messaging behind The Substance: that Moore had no chance of winning the award at her age over the far younger and more conventionally attractive Madison. This claim lacks some historical basis: just two years ago, the 60-year-old Michelle Yeoh won over then 34-year-old Ana de Armas. While it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to speculate on Hollywood’s biases, recent ceremonies show that there is never a singular standard.
The next biggest winner was The Brutalist, which won Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Actor. When Adrien Brody went up to accept his award for Best Actor, he went into a record-breaking five-minute-and-36-second speech, during which he directly defied the musical cue to get off stage, saying “I’ve done this before.” This echoed his only other Oscar for Best Actor back in 2003 as Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist, in which he also went against the ceremony’s strict 45-second speech time.
Before I close, I feel that I have to mention another interesting trend which continued during this year’s ceremony: though there are certainly a limited number of categories available for animated films, it’s still notable that Disney has now lost the Best Animated Feature category three years in a row, following their last win for Encanto in 2022. The winner this year — Flow — is the first Oscar-winning film produced in Latvia, showing another positive trend for the Academy as they consider more international films for general categories, and a negative trend for Disney, which has struggled with its historical reputation as an animation studio in recent years.
It is tough to say how this year’s Academy Awards will be remembered. It may very well be seen as a return to prominence for Brody, who experienced a 22-year gap between his Best Actor Oscars. It may also be seen as a massive day for Baker, who has always gained critical acclaim but never won it at the Oscars. Above all, though, as O’Brien’s monologue correctly indicated, the 2025 Academy Awards was a much needed reprieve from the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles — the home of Hollywood — and a relatively clean ceremony that avoided drama in a time calling for peace.
