The biggest winners and losers of the 98th Academy Awards

After what has felt like the most volatile awards race in recent memory, the 98th Academy Awards finally arrived last Sunday, capping off the season with some predictable winners, and a few upsets.

“One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” were the big winners of the night, taking home six and four prizes respectively. “Weapons” also took home best supporting actress thanks to Amy Madigan’s chilling performance as the instantly iconic villain Aunt Gladys. Ultimately, Warner Bros Discovery ended the night as the real winner, taking home 11 Oscars, tying the record for the most of any studio.

The wins for “One Battle After Another” mark the first ever at the ceremony for director Paul Thomas Anderson, who managed to win Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and the grand prize, Best Picture. Anderson spoke of his family in his acceptance speeches and his optimism for future generations, echoing some of the film’s themes.

Cassandra Kulukundus won the first Oscar for the newest category, Best Casting, for her work on “One Battle After Another.” This award category feels like it’s been a long time coming, as casting directors are some of the most integral aspects to getting a feature film made. Also Sean Penn won his third Oscar, but seeing as he couldn’t care less, let’s move along!

On the topic of historic wins, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman to win the award for Best Cinematography for her work on “Sinners.” Arkapaw is of African-American and Filipino decent which also means the first woman to win is a person of color.

The wins for “Sinners” were some of the most inspiring of the night, as so many young, but long-time collaborators took home major awards. Ryan Coogler has worked with Michael B. Jordan and Ludwig Göransson on nearly all of his projects, and was even college roommates with Göransson. While Göransson is no stranger to that particular stage, it was special seeing all three win on the same night. Coogler won Best Original Screenplay, Göransson for his original score, and of course, Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor in a Leading Role.

While these two films I’ve discussed extensively seemed to be the rivals of the night, “Sinners” was in competition with another musically centered, supernatural film in “K-Pop Demon Hunters. Unfortunately for “Sinners,” this one wasn’t much of a contest as “Golden” was the obvious winner for Best Original Song. K-Pop Demon Hunters also took home the award for Best Animated Feature, further cementing its place as a cultural milestone.

These weren’t the only awards for Netflix for the night, as “Frankenstein” won Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Achievement in Costume Design, and Best Achievement in Production Design. None of these were surprising, and almost felt obligatory for a Guillermo del Toro film. If there’s one thing to expect from him, it’s an intricate attention to detail.

While “Frankenstein’s” wins weren’t surprising in the least, the same can’t be said for the winner(s) of Best Live Action Short Film, where the Oscars had its first tie since 2013. “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” both took home the prize. A category that few people were familiar with, was making headlines.

Flipping back to unsurprising, Jessie Buckley obviously won Best Actress in a Leading Role for “Hamnet.” Yes, yes, congratulations Jessie Buckley, we all knew you were gonna win, you have a successful career ahead of you—but Rose Byrne gave one of the best performances of all time!

In all seriousness, Jessie Buckley truly did deserve her win with her devastating performance and will now hopefully have her pick of any role she wants and I will gladly go see them. (Except for “The Bride!” Sorry Jessie.)

“Hamnet” was projected by many to be a major contender for Best Picture, but only managed to snag one award for the night. Meanwhile, Marty Mauser would’ve thrown a temper tantrum at seeing “Marty Supreme” come away with ZERO awards. Initially another front-runner, that was eventually turned into the villain by the media following lead actor Timothee Chalamet’s general attitude during the promotion of the film and awards campaign.

While these elements may not have affected the actual outcome for “Marty Supreme's” goose egg night, it feels like a tradition at this point to single out a film each awards season as the villain of the race. While last year’s villain, “Emilia Perez” was generally poorly received by critics and audiences, and had a genuinely bigoted lead actress in Karla Sofia Gascon, this year’s villain feels somewhat more manufactured.

The negative attention Timothee Chalamet has received felt more like people were looking for any reason to villainize him, and he gave them one in the form of a poorly phrased comment derisive of ballet and opera. In such an unpredictable race, it’s odd that rather than focusing on the many interesting films and artists nominated, people and media outlets felt the need to manufacture an artificial controversy where people could be performatively defensive about ballet and opera. Yeah, I’m sure you go to the opera and ballet all the time buddy. Oh man, did you catch the local performance of “Nutcracker?” Of course you did, everyone was there!

“Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie was at the center of his own controversy after details came out about certain actions he committed while working on a previous film. The contents of this controversy are too disturbing and triggering to go into detail here so I will include a link for anyone curious right here. Suffice it to say, this seemed more worthy of discussion than some throwaway comments that hurt no one.

Conan O’Brien hosted again, and while he didn’t do anything extraordinary, his affable personality is refreshing when surrounded by so many artists and celebrities taking themselves as seriously as possible.

Overall, the show chugged along at about the same pace it normally does, and no matter how many speeches or live performances they cut for time, it still managed to be over three and a half hours long. It feels like every time they cut a segment or category from the official ceremony, they sell more ad time and cancel out the time they saved. Maybe they shouldn’t have included the surprise sequel to “Bridesmaids” performed live in its entirety. Hopefully when Mr. Beast takes his place as the future eternal host once this show hits Youtube, he’ll figure out how to fix things. Goodnight Hollywood!