A new decade of gold and glam: A recap of the 2020 Academy Awards

This past Sunday, Feb. 9, Hollywood got dolled up once again for one of entertainment’s most important evenings: the 2020 Academy Awards. This was certainly a show with plenty to talk about, so let’s not waste any time and see how our predictions came out.

Best Leading Actor – Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”)

Best Leading Actress – Renée Zellweger (“Judy”)

Best Director – Bong Joon-ho (“Parasite”)

Best Picture – “Parasite”

While most of the our choices for the big prizes came out as expected, what was easily the biggest and most pleasant surprise of the evening was seeing “Parasite” take home awards for four of its six nominations, including Best Original Screenplay, Best International Film, Best Director and Best Picture, which we predicted but were on the fence about given the Academy’s manner of voting. The latter award is especially significant, making “Parasite” the first ever foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars, a milestone that will hopefully spell a bright future for the the success of foreign films in the U.S. as well as giving more notoriety to the works of Bong Joon-ho. This especially makes up for last year’s disappointing turnout with the far safer “Green Book” winning the big prize, so hopefully this gives the Academy the surge of energy it needs in making bolder and more diverse choices.

Other Winners

While there weren’t any major surprises in the winners this year, some nominees received less accolades than expected. “Joker,” only won two awards out of its 11 nominations, predictably winning for Best Actor and Original Score. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” also left home light, winning only for Brad Pitt’s supporting performance and Barbara Ling’s Production Design, despite some believing that the film would win bigger because of its more sentimental view of classic Hollywood. “The Irishman” walked away with no awards whatsoever despite its 10 nominations, putting it up there alongside movies such as “The Color Purple” and “The Turning Point” as one of most-nominated films to not win an award.

As predicted, “1917” swiped many of the technical awards, with the film winning for Best Visual Effects, Cinematography and Sound Mixing. “Ford v. Ferrari” took the rest of these accolades, taking home the gold for Film Editing and Sound Editing. In the music categories, Elton John nabbed his second Oscar for Best Original Song for his bombastic tune, “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from “Rocketman” and Hildur Guðnadóttir became only the fourth woman in history to get the award for Best Original Score for her haunting work in “Joker.”

One of the biggest disappointments of the evening, however, was the Best Animated Feature category. As predicted, “Toy Story 4” got the award. “Toy Story 4,” while far from being a bad movie, was an ultimately uninspired choice. “Missing Link” or “Klaus,” while not masterpieces by any means, would have had a bigger industry impact much like last year’s winner “Into the Spiderverse” did. Fortunately, the winner for the Best Animated Short category, “Hair Love” felt to be a far more deserving winner in contrast.

The Show

For the second year in a row, the Oscars have decided to go without a host, with more or less the same effect. Thanks to this, the show had a relatively smoother pace throughout, although some moments felt a bit too cut-and-dry. This mainly applied to the montages, which left little impact compared to years previous. The Best Original Song montage and Billie Eilish’s In Memoriam performance were notable, but lacked much presence, especially with the former due to some off-kilter editing. The other performances were all solid in their execution, particularly the “Frozen II” performance of “Into the Unknown.” The show used both Idina Menzel and a cast of international voice actresses who played Elsa to perform, creating a dazzling and impressive showcase. Similarly, Eminem’s performance came as a bombastic surprise, but one that brought plenty of energy regardless.

While most of the speeches and presenters failed to offer much more than your typical mix of bogged down political messages and painfully cringey humor, there were some entertaining ones that made it into the mix. Rebel Wilson and James Corden’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek jab at “Cats” while presenting Best Visual Effects was a hilarious highlight, even if the joke was stretched a bit thin by the end. On the other end of the spectrum, Joaquin Phoenix’s acceptance speech for Best Actor was easily the most meaningful of the evening. Rather than taking a one-sided political and worldview stance on a subject, Phoenix treated the stage with maturity and took the time to assess everyone as human beings, an ideal that hopefully future award winners can take into mind when giving speeches.

At the end, while this won’t be the Oscars that changes things forever, there were certainly enough surprises and a good enough energy to propel this year’s show into standing out. Overall, the future looks bright and hopefully we can see more daring choices be made as things continue on. But until then, see you at the movies.