The Oscars' Major Winner Is 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'

The A24 studio's future film received seven Oscars, including best picture, directing, and three of the four acting categories. Young cineastes shook up a dormant film industry in the late 1960s by delivering distinctive, stunningly creative work. The era came to be known as New Hollywood. The 95th Academy Awards may be remembered by cinema historians as the beginning of a new Hollywood. The Oscar for best picture went to A24's head-twisting, sex toy-brandishing, TikTok-era "Everything Everywhere All at Once," along with six other Oscars, while Netflix's German-language war epic "All Quiet on the Western Front" won four categories, including best international film.

The Daniels, the ethnically diverse filmmaking partnership behind "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once," won Oscars for their original screenplay and directing. (The Daniels is a hip nickname for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. (They are both 35 years old.) The film, which got a field-leading 11 nominations, also won Oscars for film editing, best actress, and best supporting actor and actress, with performances by Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis. "Women, don't ever let someone tell you that you're past your prime," Yeoh, 60, remarked as she accepted the Oscar for best actress. "Never, ever give up." She was the award's first Asian woman recipient.

Quan's victory gave the Academy Awards a hall-of-fame comeback story: Following early success in films such as "The Goonies" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," his acting career cooled to the point where he turned to stunt work. "Dreams are something you have to believe in," Quan remarked as tears poured down his cheeks and A-list guests applauded him. "I was almost done with mine. Please keep your dreams alive for everyone out there." Curtis was also in tears by the time she got to the climactic part of her acceptance speech. "To the thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals who have supported the genre movies that I have done over the years," she continued, "we just won an Oscar together!"

This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated a staggering number of films. "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "Top Gun: Maverick," two blockbuster sequels, made the best picture cut. The art flicks "Triangle of Sorrow," "Ladies Talking," and "Tár" did as well. A musical ("Elvis") and a remembrance piece were also approved by voters ("The Fabelmans"). In some respects, dispersing nominations widely reflected Hollywood's confused situation. No one in Hollywood seems to know which end is up, with streaming services like Netflix unclear whether they are hot or not, and studios unsure how many films to release in theatres and whether anything other than superheroes, sequels, and horror stories can work. "Scream VI" was the #1 film at the North American box office throughout the weekend, grossing an estimated $44.5 million in ticket sales.

New talents such as Austin Butler ("Elvis"), Barry Keoghan ("The Banshees of Inisherin"), Brian Tyree Henry ("Causeway"), Paul Mescal ("Aftersun"), and Stephanie Hsu ("Everything Everywhere All at Once") were awarded for breakthrough roles. Nonetheless, first-time acting nominations went to Hollywood heavyweights such as Curtis, Yeoh, and Brendan Fraser. To some extent, the inclusion of Quan, Curtis, Fraser, and Yeoh was viewed as redemption for Hollywood: all had been thrown off at some point in their careers.

a triumph Ryan Fraser, who won the Oscar for best actor for his role as an obese professor in "The Whale," hailed the film's director, Darren Aronofsky, for "giving me a creative lifeline."

The Academy was also attempting to strike a balance between old and new in the Oscars event itself. To recover from last year's disastrous presentation, when an enraged Will Smith went onstage and smacked Chris Rock, the academy's chief executive promised a return to the polished, glamorous Oscar ceremonies of the past. In contrast to last year, when eight categories were relegated to a nontelevised section, all 23 Oscars were presented live on TV. Jimmy Kimmel landed on the Oscars stage by parachute, minutes after a pair of "Top Gun"-style fighter planes flew at 345 miles per hour over the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. He then sailed through a confident monologue that had the A-listers in the audience roaring. He gently mocked Steven Spielberg's lack of recreational drug use, as well as Fraser and Quan's appearance in "Encino Man." It was the kind of lighthearted sarcasm that once elevated Billy Crystal to the throne of Oscar emcees.

"And if any of you are offended by a joke and decide to come up here and get jiggy with it, please do so. It will not be simple, "Kimmel addressed last year's smack without mentioning Smith explicitly. He then quipped that people like "Creed" star Michael B. Jordan and "The Mandalorian" lead character Pedro Pascal were ready to step in. "Really, the academy has a crisis team," Kimmel remarked. "If anything unexpected or violent occurs during the ceremony, simply do nothing, as you did last year. Give the assailant a hug if possible."

As expected, "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" won best animated feature, and "Navalny" was named best documentary. Ruth Carter's award for her costume design for "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" was less expected. Most award forecasters believed that "Elvis" costume designer Catherine Martin would win. Carter was also nominated for "Black Panther" in 2019.

The #OscarsSoWhite protests of 2015 and 2016, sparked by all-white acting nominee slates, continue to echo at the academy, which has been working to diversify its membership by colour, gender, and nationality. Over half of the academy's most recent cohort of new members came from outside the country. Outside the United States now account for around 25% of the academy's total membership of 10,000. Nonetheless, the Academy was chastised this year for not nominating any women for best director. Women and people of colour were virtually totally barred from the directing race for decades. In 2021, two women were nominated for the first time: Chloé Zhao ("Nomadland") and Emerald Fennell ("Promising Young Woman"), with Zhao winning. Jane Campion ("The Power of the Dog") received the Academy Award for Best Director last year.

Sarah Polley ("Women Talking") was left out this year, despite the fact that her film was nominated for best picture. (Polley won for her script adaptation.) "I give up," Patty Jenkins, whose directorial credentials include "Wonder Woman" and "Monster," said of women being barred from the category on Saturday. "There will still be a long road ahead. It will take a lot more to actually see more diverse prizes." This year's directing nominees demonstrated the academy's globalisation. Ruben Stlund ("Triangle of Sorrow") of Sweden and Martin McDonagh ("The Banshees of Inisherin") of the United Kingdom were both recognised. Todd Field (Tár) and the Daniels joined them. Spielberg, a former member of the New Hollywood crew who is now a Hollywood senior statesman with nine overall nominations for directing, including this one for "The Fabelmans," rounded out the best director category.

The academy stressed that the ceremony will be contemporary, as part of an urgent attempt to make the show more relevant to young people. After the pandemic-affected 2021 transmission, the 2022 programme received 16.6 million viewers, the second-lowest attendance on record. If the Nielsen ratings do not increase, the school will be forced to close its doors because the majority of its funding comes from the sale of television rights to the show. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at risk. (The most-watched Oscars show occurred in 1998, when 57.2 million people tuned in to see "Titanic" win best picture.) 

Rihanna and Lady Gaga performed their nominated songs, and Lenny Kravitz performed during the "In Memoriam" portion. The Oscar for best song awarded to "Naatu Naatu" from the Indian film "RRR." According to box office records, the nomination pool for best film has never contained more than one billion-dollar ticket seller, and this year there were two. "Top Gun: Maverick" made $1.5 billion, while "Avatar: The Way of Water" made $2.3 billion. (When popular films are nominated, viewership tends to rise.)

In another departure from convention, the stars walked a champagne-colored carpet rather than a red carpet. The decision was made as part of a revamp of the preshow spectacular, which was supervised for the first time by Met Gala creative team members.