The Disastrous, Lost Gambit of the 2021 Oscars

A primer For What Went Wrong at the 2021 Oscars

I’ve spent the past week reeling from the events of Sunday, the 93rd Academy Awards. What started as a refreshing break from tradition turned into unmitigated disaster with one of the most egregious miscalculations in Oscars history. What went wrong? And why was it so bad? Here’s a recap of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad evening.

By their very nature, awards shows are unpredictable. On February 27th, 2017, at the 89th Academy Awards, Best Picture presenter Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope. Instead of opening the card meant for actual Best Picture winner Moonlight, he opened an unused backup envelope for Best Actress winner Emma Stone, for La La Land. Beatty confusedly - and hesitantly - handed the card over to his co-presenter, Faye Dunaway, who then crowned La La Land the winner. It was the candid flub heard around the world, a shocking moment - one borne of circumstance and plain bad luck - that reverberated throughout the entire industry, and it was a mistake that wouldn’t be remedied until after the La La Land crew had already come onstage to collect the statue. Flash forward to last Sunday, and it seems that the 93rd Academy Awards has done the impossible by handily producing a debacle multitudes worse than the Best Picture mixup of 2017.

Whereas the Moonlight and La La Land snafu was an honest error - a blunder that only highlighted the unpredictability and fickle temperament of live awards shows - last Sunday’s ceremony was a miscalculated risk, and a blatant attempt at manipulation that exploded in the producers’ faces. From the ghoulish commoditization of Chadwick Boseman’s death to the failed Best Actor gambit that sucked the air from not only the room, but from all the winners of the evening, the 93rd Academy Awards was riddled with more than mistakes, it was characterized by ignorant and incompetent acts of self-sabotage.

“…the 93rd Academy Awards was riddled with more than mistakes, it was characterized by ignorant and incompetent acts of self-sabotage.”

From the start, this Oscars presentation was different. Helmed by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, the production treated its stars as “cast members,” and the repurposed Union Station in Los Angeles served as a colorful backdrop to a pared-down ceremony. Following a calendar year devoid of wide releases and decimated by a pandemic, the 93rd Academy Awards opted for a new approach, and it started doing so quite auspiciously. Sure, the telecast was still over three hours long, but at many points, this particular Oscars seemed nimble, fleet, and fresh; from Soderbergh’s more cinematic frame rate to a renewed focus on winners’ speeches - giving rise to a few particularly heartfelt and moving statue acceptances - there was a surprising, pleasant rhythm to the awards. The entire program seemed dedicated to transform ceremony into cinema, and what’s cinema without a firework ending?

Little did anyone know - within the audience and those watching from home - that the producers of this year’s Oscars had only one conclusion in mind: to “honor” the late Chadwick Boseman. Telegraphed by a grotesque NFT of Boseman’s head in the swag bags and a rushed “In Memoriam” segment that landed on Boseman’s face, things would only get worse from there. Much, much worse. Breaking a 92-year tradition, the producers decided to swap the customary final award of the evening - Best Picture - for the lead acting awards, closing with Best Actor. The rationale was two-fold; one, Nomadland’s sweeping dominance ending with its Best Picture win was all but preordained, and two, what better way to end the ceremony than a posthumous Chadwick Boseman win for Best Actor? What could go wrong?

“Telegraphed by a grotesque NFT of Boseman’s head in the swag bags and a rushed “In Memoriam” segment that landed on Boseman’s face, things would only get worse from there.”

In the cruelest twist of Murphy’s Law, almost anyone could have guessed what would happen next: Chadwick Boseman lost Best Actor. Instead, Anthony Hopkins won the award for his wrenching performance in The Father. And to make matters worse, Hopkins, at 83 years old and at-risk for COVID, wasn’t even in attendance. Once again breaking tradition, in which last year’s Best Actress would present the award to this year’s Best Actor, Joaquin Phoenix awkwardly read off the winner, with the Academy accepting the statue on Hopkins’ behalf while the credits rolled on one of the biggest messes in Oscars history.

An inconceivable, ugly gambit that effectively robbed attention from every winner at a landmark Academy Awards, this hubris demonstrated a remarkable shortsightedness and a desperation for clout. A ceremony that saw wins for a historic number of people of color - from Daniel Kaluuya in Judas and the Black Messiah to Youn Yuh-jung in Minari - there were strides being made (even if the Academy continues to shut diversity out of its lead categories). Worst of all, this catastrophic moment overshadowed the achievements of Chloé Zhao and her film, Nomadland. Only the second woman to ever win Best Director and the only woman of color to do so, Zhao - along with her hardworking crew - should have been the spotlight of the evening, instead focus was shifted to an award that was never won and a tugging of heartstrings that never materialized.

Quite ironically, Chadwick Boseman deserved better, too. A performer known for his modesty and magnanimity, one would imagine that Boseman would be gracious in his loss to Hopkins, who gave another career-defining performance in a storied life full of career-defining performances. For the producers of the show to manipulate everything in anticipation of a far-from-sure outcome - especially with Boseman’s widow and family in attendance - seems particularly heartless.