2026 Oscars Recap!
The 2026 Oscars were last night, which thank god, because this awards season has gone for way too long. So here’s a recap of the event with the biggest winners and losers, as well as my overall thoughts on the show. Let’s do this!
One Battle After Another Wins Big: The big winner of the night was One Battle After Another which wasn’t too surprising. There was a race between One Battle After Another and Sinners in Best Picture. I love Sinners. It's my favorite movie nominated for best picture. I never really thought that it was going to win best picture. One Battle After Another from its win at Critics Choice was my prediction to win Best Picture. I’m happy that One Battle After Another won. It’s a very well made movie that deserves Oscar love. Would I have loved to have seen Sinners win? Of course I would’ve. Paul Thomas Anderson won two more Oscars with Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. With One Battle After Another it meant that Paul Thomas Anderson had 14 Oscar nominations and finally won one. From there, One Battle After Another also won Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Best Casting, and Best Editing for a total of SIX Oscar wins. Very solid night for One Battle After Another. The most surprising one here was the Best Casting Oscar which I felt most people were predicting Sinners to win but no, One Battle After Another won. As soon as that film won in that category I felt like One Battle After Another was kind of locked up for Best Picture.
Sinners Win FOUR Oscars: The other big winners of the night were Sinners with FOUR Oscars. Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Score. That’s a pretty solid lineup, with 16 nominations I thought maybe it would win more. But all of the categories it won, I predicted. My no guts no glory prediction was “I Lied to You” winning Best Original Song. Ultimately, it went to “Golden” which made sense and was the saver prediction to go with. The fun to talk about here is the Best Cinematography category which went to Autumn Durald Arkapaw, who made history as the first woman to ever win the cinematography Oscar. That’s just cool in that regard that Sinners were able to make history like this. What’s exciting about Sinners is that it continues the narrative of it being a huge success. A horror film got 16 Oscar nominations and won four of them, that’s a cool win. I hope that Hollywood is paying attention and sees that more original horror films with a budget needs to be made. It’s incredible that Sinners was able to do all of this.
Amy Madigan wins for Weapons: Just piggy backing off of what I just said, we had two horror performances win Oscars which is awesome. I predicted Amy Madigan would win the Oscar, she won at Critics Choice and SAG. But I had some concerns with her because she’s the lone nominee for her film and that hasn’t happened in 10 years. Leaving Weapons I thought that she was incredible and I said she deserves the Oscar but I was doubtful of a nomination. When she started winning I was very excited because it was incredibly deserving. The fact that she won is incredible, my favorite performance of 2025 won an Oscar and I love that. Going back to what I said about Sinners, I love that horror films are getting the recognition that they deserve.
Michael B. Jordan (Sinners) Beats Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme): This was an interesting one and one that I felt confident in but also knew that it could throw us for a surprise. After SAG and the amount of cheers that Michael B. Jordan got and when Sinners won Best Ensemble, I felt pretty confident that Michael B. Jordan was going to win the Oscar. But Chalamet was the front runner for a while winning Critics Choice and Golden Globe. But he was shown to be vulnerable when he lost at BAFTA and especially at SAG. Some people are saying that Chalamet was snubbed at the Oscar and that he should’ve won. Jordan was always my pick to win the Oscar so I’m happy with the victory. This happens every year with the Oscars where the internet gets upset when the actor they want to win doesn’t. Michael B. Jordan gave a great performance and was totally deserving of the Oscar. I think what ultimately hurt Chalamet was the Oscar campaign he did for Marty Supreme. I think it made sense leading up to the release of the film as it was a good promotion for the film and fit the character. But after the film released and he kept on going and trying to make people vote for him for the Oscar I think it burned people. I think people were annoyed by him and weren’t wanting to reward him for his behavior. His comments about the ballet and opera didn’t affect it at all because those comments surfaced after Oscar voting had ended. Which means that Marty Supreme went home winless with losing all 9 of it’s nominations which is very on brand for that film let’s be honest.
Overall Thoughts
The ceremony as a whole I thought was very good. The show didn’t have very many big surprises for me. The only category that I was shocked by was One Battle After Another winning Best Casting. Everything else made sense as the winner. Even the categories that I didn’t predict right, I wasn’t shocked by who won. The thing that surprised me the most about the ceremony was that it felt like it flew by. I felt like some of the past ceremonies went on for too long, that’s not the case with this ceremony. The moment when this really clicked was when Zendaya and Robert Pattinson came out to present best director, which made me go “oh wow, we’re almost done.” I was legitimately shocked that we were getting the best director category.
The best part of the evening was the Rob Reiner tribute which we knew was happening going into the ceremony. I thought it was just going to be Billy Crystal coming out and talking about his friendship with him, but not it was a full on memorial honoring Rob Reiner. The fact that they got several cast members from his films out there was really cool, that was a really cool thing to do. They did that with John Hughes when he passed away. I like it when they do something like this and don’t just have the montage of the different people that passed but actually honor people. The Rob Reiner tribute was the best part of the ceremony for me by far.
The thing that I thought didn’t work as well were the bits. Conan O’Brien I thought did a great job hosting. The whole bit he did parodying Weapons and Aunt Gladys was hilarious. He had some solid moments all throughout the ceremony, but when the actors came out I didn’t think they worked as well. You guys know that I’m an Avengers and Marvel fanboy, but the Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans bit wasn’t great. It fell a bit flat in my opinion. The Bridesmaids cast reunion was pretty funny but all of the other comedy bits weren’t great.
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