Decoding Everything is a newsletter by David Chen. I’ve been a commentator on movies, TV, tech, and the media for over 15 years. You can support my work by subscribing to this newsletter, sharing about it on social media, or becoming a Patron. Thanks!
The 98th Academy Awards were broadcast on Sunday night and they were mostly fine. Sure, there were massive technical issues throughout the evening, especially around the sound engineering – mics got cut off, audio was missing, the whole thing kind of sounded like crap overall. But there were no Moonlight/La La Land-style trainwrecks. Conan O’Brien did a deft job moving things along and poking fun at the festivities, while also genuinely expressing a heartfelt appreciation for the art of film. The awards went to worthy recipients, with Warner Bros. being the biggest winner and taking home 11 Academy Awards for films like Sinners and One Battle After Another.
But as I watched the telecast, I couldn’t help but feel like there was a funereal undercurrent to these proceedings.
Part of it was the fact that the In Memoriam segment was quite extensive this year – deservedly so. The show took several minutes for actors to eulogize beloved cinema icons like Rob Reiner and Catherine O’Hara. As the video tribute played, it struck me just how many titans of cinema we’d lost in 2025. Robert Duvall. Val Kilmer. Robert Redford. These are people who, at one point, were the biggest stars in the world and helped to define the artform of film itself. There will never ever any like them again. It really felt like a critical and formative time in cinema history had passed us by, and this year was the year we’d start to grapple with that loss.
But there was also the fact this is one of the final years that the Oscars will even be broadcast on television. The concept of a 3.5-hour broadcast where you watch big movie stars accept awards and deliver heartfelt speeches is no longer as desirable or profitable as it once was. Beginning in 2029, YouTube will have exclusive rights to the Oscars. While I think that will actually be a better home for the telecast in many ways, and may even lead to some innovation for the broadcast (a man can dream), it’s also yet another sign of the fading primacy of movies as the center of our culture.
Finally, there’s what’s going on in the movie business itself. Warner Bros. took home the most awards by far and had a massive string of box office successes in 2025. And yet it’s currently in the midst of being acquired by Paramount, a company that didn’t win anything. It seems that when you’ve reached the apex of Hollywood, the best you can hope for these days is being acquired in an $110 billion deal that will likely lead to calamitous business outcomes. This might be one of the last years that the unique assemblage of talent that created films like One Battle After Another and Sinners is allowed to exist.
If so, then at least the broadcast will be good for proving and preserving one thing: They had a great run.
Other observations
- What can I say: I’m a sucker for Conan O’Brien’s style of humor, and I’m a sucker for these bits where the hosts inserts themselves into all the nominated films. Hilarious, and it gets me every time.
- Horror films really cleaned up at this year’s Oscars. Amy Madigan won an extremely well-deserved award for her work in Weapons, but Frankenstein and Sinners also took home multiple prizes.
- This year, the live action short films The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva had a tie victory. Kudos to Kumail Nanjiani for navigating a tricky situation in a calm and straightforward manner!
- I thought all the speeches from the Sinners crew were really emotional and heartfelt. Michael B. Jordan stole the show but Ryan Coogler and Autumn Durald Arkapaw also spoke from the heart and created memorable moments as a result.
- The way that speeches were cut off this year was particularly aggressive, especially when the crew behind the Academy Award-winning song “Golden” accepted their Oscar. I really hope that when this thing moves to YouTube, they’re able to let these speeches breathe a bit more, because whatever they’re doing now isn’t working and is leading to terrible optics.
- Aside from Javier Bardem’s comment of “No to war and free Palestine,” the major political moment of the night went to David Borenstein, one of the filmmakers behind Mr. Nobody Against Putin. In his speech, he drew direct parallels between what happened in Russia in the lead up to the Ukraine war and what’s going on in the United States today.
- My biggest disappointment of the night: Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident getting totally shut out (It was nominated for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay). That was my number 1 film of 2025 and I hope more people have a chance to discover it this year, as it remains shockingly relevant.
What were some of your most/least favorite moments from this year’s Oscars?
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