Updated Monday 3/28 with additional reviews of the broadcast
Slapple!
| 1 | Dune | 6 wins |
| 2 | CODA | 3 wins |
| 3 | The Eyes of Tammy Faye | 2 wins |
In a year when the only real surprise was an unscripted slap, Apple's CODA became the first film released by a streaming service to take home the higest honor bestowed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the Best Picture of 2021
But Apple's drama—also the first Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner to take Best Picture at the Oscars (indeed, the first film to even debut at Sundance to win Best Picture)—was merely one of 22 favorites to collect trophies at the 94th Academy Awards held Sunday night at L.A.'s Kodak Theatre. The only upset on the evening came in the animated short film category, one of eight "minor" categories where winners were first announced prior to the broadcast in an unprecedented format change for the telecast. That change certainly didn't result in a speedier show—the ceremony still managed to run 40 minutes over schedule, meaning that the Academy basically offended thousands of craftspeople for no good reason—and the long night's most memorable non-wardrobe-related moment was a completely impromptu (and also unprecedented?) slap of presenter Chris Rock by the soon-to-be-Oscar-winner Will Smith after a joke gone wrong. That resulted in a heavily censored (in America, at least) minute-or-so of wild television that will likely overshadow the ceremony itself.
We'll get to the broadcast in detail in a moment, but first: Let's look at the night's winners, followed by a quick analysis of how they compared to expert predictions—as well as those of our users.
The winners and losers
Listed below are the 2022 Academy Award winners in each of the 23 categories, compared to the consensus predictions of over 100 industry experts (more on that below).
| Category | Predicted Winner | Actual Winner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best Picture |  |
CODA | CODA |
| Director | |
Jane Campion The Power of the Dog |
Jane Campion The Power of the Dog |
| Lead Actress | |
Jessica Chastain The Eyes of Tammy Faye |
Jessica Chastain The Eyes of Tammy Faye |
| Lead Actor | |
Will Smith King Richard |
Will Smith King Richard |
| Supporting Actress | |
Ariana DeBose West Side Story |
Ariana DeBose West Side Story |
| Supporting Actor | |
Troy Kotsur CODA |
Troy Kotsur CODA |
| Original Screenplay | |
Kenneth Branagh Belfast |
Kenneth Branagh Belfast |
| Adapted Screenplay | |
Sian Heder CODA |
Sian Heder CODA |
| Animated Feature | |
Encanto | Encanto |
| Documentary Feature | |
Summer of Soul | Summer of Soul |
| Foreign-Language Feature | |
Drive My Car | Drive My Car |
| Animated Short |  |
The Windshield Wiper | |
| Documentary Short | |
The Queen of Basketball | The Queen of Basketball |
| Live-Action Short | |
The Long Goodbye | The Long Goodbye |
| Original Score | |
Hans Zimmer Dune |
Hans Zimmer Dune |
| Original Song | |
"No Time to Die" from No Time to Die by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell |
"No Time to Die" from No Time to Die by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell |
| Cinematography | |
Greig Fraser Dune |
Greig Fraser Dune |
| Costume Design | |
Cruella | Cruella |
| Film Editing | |
Joe Walker Dune |
Joe Walker Dune |
| Makeup & Hairstyling | |
The Eyes of Tammy Faye | The Eyes of Tammy Faye |
| Production Design | |
Dune | Dune |
| Sound | |
Dune | Dune |
| Visual Effects | |
Dune | Dune |
Some trivia about those winners ...
- CODA is the first Best Picture winner with fewer than four total nominations since 1932. It is also the first Best Picture winner without directing and editing nominations since 1932.
- Meanwhile, this year's nominations leader, The Power of the Dog, won in just one of the 12 categories in which it was nominated.
- Troy Kotsur is the second deaf actor to win an Oscar, following his CODA co-star, Marlee Matlin, who won 35 years ago.
- Jane Campion, the first woman to be nominated twice as a director (following a nomination for The Piano), is now the third woman director to win. (It's also the first time women have won the directing trophy in consecutive years.) But her The Power of the Dog DP Ari Wegner failed in her quest to become the first woman to win the cinematography Oscar, losing to Dune's Greig Fraser.
- CODA is also just third third Best Picture winner directed by a woman, following last year's Nomadland and The Hurt Locker in 2009.
- Ariana DeBose's best actress win comes for the same role that earned Rita Moreno an Oscar six decades ago. Only two other roles have produced such dual Oscar winners: The Godfather franchise's Vito Corleone (with wins for Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro), and The Joker (a winning role for Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix).
- All four acting winners are first-time Oscar recipients.
- Despite CODA's historic Best Picture win, streaming services in total collected just four Oscars on the night, down from last year's record high of nine.
- Dune is just the fifth film in Oscar history to win six Oscars without winning Best Picture (and is the only such film not to receive a directing nomination). The most recent previous film to do so was La La Land, and the non-Best-Picture-winner with the most Oscar wins is 1972's Cabaret (which won eight categories).
How accurate were the predictions?
Experts
It's hard to do much better. As you can see above, our panel of 109 industry experts correctly forecast 22 of the 23 categories, good for a spectacular 96% success rate—the highest that we can remember. Individually, no single expert bettered that mark (i.e., no one had a perfect night), but four matched the group's 22 of 23 success rate: Filmotomy's Doug Jamieson, veteran film critic Peter Travers (now of ABC News), Film Pulse's Ken Bakely, and the Toronto Star's Peter Howell. Out of the experts who made guesses in all 23 categories, the least accurate were the Consequence team of Aurora Amidon and Liz Shannon Miller, who were correct in just 10 of the 23 categories.
Metacritic users
As a group, Metacritic users performed relatively poorly on the night (especially compared to the pros), scoring correct guesses in just 14 of the 23 categories for a 61% success rate. That's down from last year's nearly 74% accuracy rate. But our best user matched the best experts with 22 of 23 correct picks (missing only the Animated Short winner, much like the experts):
- Vincent N.
Four other users had 21 of 23 picks correct:
- Faiz Aziz
- Adrien Marie
- James Staub
- Andrew W.
How was the telecast?
How was this Oscar night different from all other Oscar nights? One thing that separated it from the three previous ceremonies was the presence of a host (or, in this case, three: Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall). Another big difference: Winners in eight of the 23 categories were announced prior to the start of the televised portion of the ceremony in an attempt to make the ABC broadcast shorter than in past years while also allowing time to add back live performances—including an opening remote performance by Beyoncé—of the nominated songs, which were eliminated last year. (It even allowed time for a non-nominated song performance.) Did the changes work? Below are some of the comments coming in from TV critics (in no particular order); click any link to read each full review.
TVLine Dave Nemetz
No, these Oscars weren’t perfect, but let’s be honest: The Oscars are never perfect. At their best, they entertain us enough to make up for the inevitable groaners and give us a few timeless moments while reminding us why we love the movies in the first place. This year’s wild, freewheeling ceremony hit all those marks… and made it fun to watch the Oscars again. [Grade: B]
Deadline Dominic Patten
The riddle remains how the most talented and adroit storytellers in the world can’t seem to pull off 180-minutes of compelling entertainment with some of the most famous people on rhe planet in the room.
The New York Times James Poniewozik
The program often felt the strain of trying to offer something for everyone — though it could sometimes still surprise you like, well, a blow out of the blue. ... In the end, the movies’ biggest advertisement for themselves will have people talking less about Smith’s acting than about his fisticuffs. The biggest moment on a broadcast aiming to restore the glory of mass TV will probably be rewatched the next day largely as the unbleeped video that the TV audience couldn’t see on air.
The Atlantic David Sims
Though [the Smith/Rock altercation] might also be presented as a low point for the Academy Awards, it was also a completely compelling one, a particularly violent reminder of the strange possibilities of live television. After a year where the Oscars have dreamed up new gimmicks to draw in more viewers, this ceremony will now be defined by a moment nobody could have planned.
Variety Caroline Framke
More than any other televised Oscars ceremony in recent memory, this one was absolutely insistent on efficiency. Occasionally, it even was. In the process, however, the telecast cut corners, seriously pissed off several technical branches of the Academy, and mocked the very films it was honoring. And then, in its last hour, the ceremony collapsed into chaos. ... ABC might get the buzz it so craved, but at what cost?
Vanity Fair Richard Lawson
Still, the vibe of it all was amiss. The live awards were dealt out at a clip, and the producers tried to trick home viewers into thinking the omitted eight categories were actually being presented live—which of course wasn’t the case. This little lie lent the broadcast’s jankiness a sinister air, as if something weirdly malevolent, or at least deceptive, was guiding the proceedings. If this was ABC proving how to do the show the way they wanted, they were seriously failing.
Rolling Stone Rob Sheffield
The whole night was a buffet of Hollywood crazy. I thought this Oscars had already set an all-time record for mind-blowingly tasteless decisions until they had a cheerleading squad sing “Spirit in the Sky” for the In Memoriam montage. Right, what better way to honor Lina Wertmüller or Stephen Sondheim or Jean-Paul Belmondo than jazz dancers chirping about Jesus?
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Until [the slap], it had been a boring Oscar ceremony, one of the most boring ever, and that’s saying something, considering the fierce competition.
The Wrap William Bibbiani
This was easily the weirdest Oscars ceremony in years, and not, sadly, in a way anyone would ever want repeated. ... Instead of a celebration of film, this year’s show delivered a panicked lunge at ratings, and the only part of the evening that actually made those viral waves wasn’t fun to watch. It was strange and sad and violent and brought down everybody’s night. But even before that point, the Oscars had already lost their luster.
AV Club Joel Meares
Against all expectations, for a large chunk of their running time, the 94th Academy Awards were lively, frequently hilarious, and often moving. [Grade: B]
Consequence LIz Shannon Miller
What was striking was how the Oscars managed to make the handing out of actual Oscars feel like an afterthought.
The Oregonian Kristi Turnquist
We’ll have to wait and see if more people tuned in because of some of this year’s changes, but it’s easy to say right now that they were duds.
Time Judy Berman
Snoozy and promotional ... Although the ceremony [Smith] interrupted was far from an Oscars for the ages, the spectacle that began with his outburst and continued, not long after, with his best actor acceptance speech was no improvement.
IndieWire Ben Travers
This year’s Oscars actively sought to destroy each of those foundational elements. They pared down the winners, they zapped the energy by pre-taping key segments (not even Beyoncé was live! Beyoncé!), and they reaffirmed many fans’ worst fears: that the people putting on the Oscars appeared to hate the Oscars. Hate won when producers cut categories, hosts mocked the nominees, and the powers that be placated to popular opinion over the voice of actual Academy voters. Hate won when Smith slapped Chris Rock. Hate should have no place at the Oscars, but here we are, looking right at it. And as much as we may like to, we can’t forget the 2022 Oscar telecast was a catastrophe outside of its defining moment. [Grade: D]
The Hollywood Reporter Dan Fienberg
After a fairly promising first hour, the show had begun to flag in basically the same ways Oscar telecasts always flag, proving conclusively that producer Will Packer’s attempt to fix the event was barely a Band-Aid.
Gold Derby Tony Ruiz
After a promising start, viewers were rewarded with one bad decision after another, resulting in a disappointing ceremony lifted only by the winners’ speeches. ... There seemed to be no hands at the helm of this year’s Oscar ceremony.
Los Angeles Times Lorraine Ali
Overall, the production was much tighter and brighter than in recent years, thanks in large part to powerful music numbers, a diverse mixture of guests, and the bitingly funny trio of hosts, Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer and Regina Hall.
Los Angeles Magazine Jeff Sneider
The Oscars were building, building, building momentum towards Best Actress and Best Picture, and then it’s like — screech!!! — and here’s the award for Best Production Design that we gave out three hours ago. Who’s idea was this? And don’t even get me started on the gospel choir singing and dancing through the In Memoriam, which seemed fairly disrespectful to me.
USA Today Kelly Lawler
It was equal parts boring and terrifying, cringe-worthy and interminable.
The Telegraph Ed Power
Suddenly a snoozy, inessential Oscars had turned into a riveting train-wreck. ... An evening of clunking cliché, lumpen jokes and awkward set pieces [Grade: 3/5]
TV Insider Matt Roush
While zero hosts is too few, three is too many, even when used sparingly.
The New Yorker Richard Brody
By the time Chris Rock came out to present Best Documentary, around ten-thirty, it was depressingly clear that the Academy and ABC, the network broadcasting the show, had ruined the evening in advance: the overcrammed, overrushed, frenetic, panicky, and joyless proceedings had already become the news that would overshadow the movies and the artists who’d be honored there. ... Even without the smack, the broadcast would have been a disaster. Unless the Academy takes the lead in taking back control of the Oscars and putting the emphasis back on the human, personal, celebratory core of the event, it will continue to drive itself into irrelevance and ridicule.
What do you think?
Were you happy with the Academy's choices? What did you think of the broadcast? Let us know in the comments section below. And be sure to check out our updated 2021-22 Film Awards Scorecard to get our updated tally of the big winners from throughout the entire awards season.
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