Despite all of these newsworthy breakthroughs, and despite the fact that people were happy to be back at the Dolby Theater after a two-year hiatus due to Covid, the most memorable moment was Will Smith’s bizarre physical and verbal assault on host Chris Rock after Rock at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett, told Smith a joke. The on-stage ambush, which at first felt like a staged gag, left live and home audiences in stunned disbelief at what just happened. Moments later, when a simultaneously defiant and contrite Smith won an Oscar for his leading role in “King Richard,” he tearfully remarked on how life imitated art, referring to his real-life character Richard Williams, father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, whom Smith described as “a fierce defender of his family”.
What will inevitably be remembered as “the slap in the face” immediately gave the Oscars the kind of viral moment the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been tracking for years as ratings have plummeted, particularly among younger viewers. The disconnect between Hollywood films and audiences has only widened over the past two years as the coronavirus pandemic halted many releases, closed cinemas and sent people to their couches with remotes in hand.
Although CODA won Best Picture, Best Actor winner Will Smith, who slapped host Chris Rock for a joke, dominated the 94th Academy Awards on March 27. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post)
Did you watch movies? Or television? The distinction has become increasingly blurred as feature films have been absorbed by the great tide of visual storytelling that has poured onto our home screens at a dizzying speed and increasingly unmanageable volume. To engage young viewers, the academy took to social media to poll fans about their “most cheerable” movie moments of 2021, as well as their favorite films. The results were staggering, with two unforgettable Zack Snyder productions – Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Army of the Dead – taking top honors in what looked suspiciously like a massive trolling operation.
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‘CODA’, which overtook Campion’s Netflix film ‘The Power of the Dog’ as the top-picture leader in recent weeks, was undeniably popular with people who watched it; but according to a recent report in Deadline, fewer than a million people have watched it on Apple TV Plus since it premiered on the streaming service in August. Power of the Dog was considered a hit for Netflix, but only about 3 million people watched it on the service. (“Don’t Look Up,” the climate satire, which was also nominated for Best Picture, has been seen by more than 10 million Netflix subscribers.)
Meanwhile, the movies that managed to get people into theaters in 2021 — movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and the James Bond installment No Time to Die — followed suit Sunday practically empty-handed home, though Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell won for their Bond theme song. A nod to old-fashioned screen entertainment, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel, Dune, won six Academy Awards, primarily in artisanal categories such as sound, editing, production design and musical score.
That year, the Academy announced that these awards would be presented prior to broadcast. The recorded speeches ended up being inserted into the live show, which amounted to clumsily edited afterthoughts. The result was a painfully obvious mixed message: The stated reason for the Academy’s slap in the technical categories was to cut back on the still-bloated program. But throughout the show, they kept bringing out actors and filmmakers to pay tribute to the classic films of yore, resulting in odd bedfellows like White Men Can’t Jump and Juno.
Ovations for “Pulp Fiction” and “The Godfather,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, arguably made more sense. But when the Hollywood elite rose to honor “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola and his stars Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, the sound was less like applause than whistling past a graveyard. If Coppola were to introduce The Godfather today, it would no doubt be a series on Hulu, with the requisite number of spin-offs and prequels included as benefits in the contract.
Then there was the inescapable connection between the violence and male tribal aggression celebrated in these films, and the bizarre moment between Smith and Rock – a moment perhaps made in light of American cinema’s long love affair with violence and rituals of honor and revenge should have been shocking shouldn’t have been surprising. (“The Academy does not condone violence of any kind,” the organization said in a statement after the ceremony. Well, unless it’s in movies.) The Oscars have a long history of accidents and unscripted stunts — the infamous 1974 Streaker incident; Marlon Brando’s refusal to accept his award in person; the confusion with “La La Land” announced when “Moonlight” won in 2017. But Smith’s outburst was of a different magnitude, both in the fury of his execution and the strained emotions and story that propelled him.
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Smith, who seemed to have most of the room on his side, came back to give a five-minute acceptance speech in which he apologized to the Academy and his fellow candidates and explained his actions in a way that made them understandable, albeit profound made regrettable. He’d made the Oscars relevant when the films themselves couldn’t, in a way that will forever haunt this year’s ceremony and no doubt bring viewers back next year to see the second act.