94th Academy Awards

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94th Academy Awards

A show that's figuratively and literally a slap to the face...

Genre:	Award show Comedy
Running Time:	220 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	March 27th, 2022
Network(s):	ABC
Starring:	Amy Schumer Wanda Sykes Regina Hall

""Now this is the story all about how
Will Smith's life got flipped-turned upside-down
And we'll like to take a moment
Just sit right there
We'll tell you how his slap caused him to ruin his career""
— Some people, making fun of a certain incident

"You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway."
— Yes, the late Walt Disney himself. You heard that right.

"Moonfall? More like Poonfall, because Amy Schumer is talking about her vagina again.
Sex in the City? More like 'Amy, stop having Sex with the Whole City. We're tired of seeing you on stage.
He-Man? More like 'Help me, man; I just had to listen to Amy Schumer tell another f**king joke and now I need medical assistance."
— Charles White Jr.'s (penguinz0) jokes poking fun of Amy's godawful attempt at "victimizing".

The 94th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films released between March 1st and December 31st, 2021, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 27, 2022. The ceremony was hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes. It was the first ceremony since the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011 to feature multiple hosts.

Why It Wins the Oscar for "Worst Academy Award Ever"

While the return of the hosts was welcomed and while Wanda Sykes and, to an extent, Regina Hall did a decent job, Amy Schumer did a horrendous job, since a lot of her material wasn't funny:
- The most notorious case was when she rudely labeled Kirsten Dunst a "seat filler". Keep in mind that Kirsten was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Power of the Dog that night. Even her spouse Jesse Plemons (who was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor alongside Dunst) wasn't pleased by the joke. Even the seat filler joke was done before at the Oscars when Neil Patrick Harris made the same joke regarding Steve Carell.
  - The seat filler joke is unfunny and rude to Kristen Dunst, which is what caused her to receive so many death threats that it literally brought over the Secret Service for investigation.
- Some reports claimed she stole some of her material, such as the joke about Leonardo DiCaprio being taken straight from Twitter user Nicole Conlan practically verbatim. This wasn't the only time Schumer has done this......
- She even had a planned joke about the Rust incident in which Halyana Hutchins was murdered and Joel Souza was injured by Alec Baldwin. Thankfully, the Academy wouldn't let her say the joke, but it's still absolutely disgusting since it's not only insipid since Alec already had his murder charges revoked due to the real cause being incompetent on-set weapon handlers who didn't know the difference between a fake revolver and a real one, but it's also extremely disrespectful toward Hutchins' death and her grieving family. Making fun of a tragedy is never a good idea.
  - It also shows that Amy didn't learn her lesson when she mocked Ryan Dunn's death in front of his friend Steve-O.
- Speaking of Hutchins, Amy hypocritically claimed that "she was traumatized" by the Will Smith-Chris Rock incident, but later admitted she was going to mock Joe Rogan for saying the N-word, and also James Franco for his alleged sexual misconduct. Even Charles White Jr. (penguinz0) scolded her for this and later made jokes poking fun at her that were surprisingly funnier than her "actual humor".
Unfitting Presenters Choices: A lot of the presenters, including Shawn Mendes, Jacob Elordi, Sean Combs, DJ Khaled, Shaun White, and Tony Hawk, don't have a presence in the film industry as to be on the Oscars. You would expect them to be presenting on the Grammys, the MTV VMA awards, or the Kids/Teen Choice Awards, but here?
The "Oscars Fan Favorite" and "Cheer Moment" subcategories were made to give Spider-Man: No Way Home consolation prizes. However, the votes were hijacked and rigged by Zack Snyder's toxic fans, which could explain why Army of the Dead and a scene from the Snyder Cut (which starred Ezra "Criminal'' Miller) won in the final poll. Also, given Ezra's crimes, they did NOT deserve to win the "Cheer Moment". That's like giving Brett Ratner an Oscars Award for Best Directing after his infamous sexual harassment allegations (one of which was following a woman into the ladies restroom without her consent) in 2017 and having Jeffrey Jones win Best Actor after his 2003 arrest for soliciting nudes of an underage boy.
- The people who voted also got the infamous Cinderella into the 2nd place of the "Oscars Fan Favorite", despite that movie receiving mixed-to-negative reviews.
- The fact that not even the Academy could've prevented something like this from happening makes them look pathetic.
The "In Memoriam" section not only left out significant actors like the late Bob Saget and the late Ed Asner but it was presented far too upbeat and could easily come across as being somewhat disrespectful.
The infamous performance of "We Don't Talk About Bruno," which was problematic for various reasons:
- The number felt like it was made to be the opener of the show, but placing it in the middle made it feel out of place. Especially when you consider that it wasn't even one of the Best Original Song nominees.
- They had the nerve to cut out most of the song in favor of an overly long rap verse by Megan Thee Stallion about how "great" the Oscars are, making it all the more pointless. If they were going to change the majority of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" in favor of Oscar's rap, why did they even have to perform the song at all?
- Many Colombians, as well as fans of the movie, considered it unfair that the original Colombian cast didn't get their time to shine singing. Not only that, they brought singers like Becky G and Luis Fonsi, both of whom had no business being there, since they weren't part of the original movie and are not even of Colombian descent. It was very disrespectful not only to the fans of Encanto, but to the voice cast as well.
  - This performance proved the academy didn't even understand why "We Don't Talk About Bruno" became a success in the first place.
  - It was the Encanto cast who deserved their moment to shine. They were the ones who got the song to number one, not these other celebrities.
There was a blatant disregard for the medium of animation when presenters Halle Bailey, Lily James, and Naomi Scott called it "a genre kids enjoy and adults endure" before announcing the Best Animated Feature nominees (keep in mind that most of the nominees except for Flee and the Mitchells vs the Machines were made by Disney) which was not only insulting to animation fans but also to the animators that created the films that were previously nominated for Best Animated Feature (as well to the people who passed away during the making of these films and after they were completed), not just the nominees in this ceremony, as they were practically thrown under the bus and labeled creators of kiddie fodder. Even Phil Lord and Christopher Miller called the Academy out for this. Furthermore, the second quote from Walt Disney perfectly summarizes this whole outrage.
- The statement doesn't even make sense when you factor in the notion that the film Flee, which tells a horrific story about a refugee evacuating his country in an event that traumatized him and his family during the Afghanistan war, got nominated for not just Best Animated Feature, but also Best Documentary Feature and International Feature, and it’s also PG-13. This is also the same case for the critically acclaimed Grave of the Fireflies, which talks about an extremely graphic and devastating story about 2 siblings struggling to survive during WWII, despite not being rated or nominated, it also counts due to the shocking nature of the movie. Akira, Princess Mononoke, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, and Waltz with Bashir are more big examples.
- Speaking of Flee being nominated, what’s hypocritical is that the Oscars has also nominated movies like Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis, The Wind Rises, My Life as a Zucchini, The Breadwinner, Loving Vincent, Isle of Dogs and much more recently, The Boy and the Heron for Best Animated Feature, which are all rated PG-13.
  - Despite being unrated, Chico and Rita and I Lost My Body also count as they are also adult animated films. Heck, even Anomalisa was rated R, which is much higher than both the PG and PG-13 animated films that were already mentioned.
- Not only that, but they also have nominated adult animated films outside of the Best Animated Feature category, such as Waltz with Bashir for Best International Film at the 81st Academy Awards, which was also rated R just like Anomalisa, and especially "Blame Canada" for Best Original Song at the 72nd Academy Awards, which came from South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut which is based on the adult-animated sitcom and the late Robin Williams sang it live! Very hypocritical Academy.
- Heck, even the ones that are rated G have their dark and sad moments for the adults as well, such as Coral's death in Finding Nemo, Wallace's were-rabbit transformation scene in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, the dead rats in Ratatouille, the scenes in which WALL-E gets electrocuted and crushed by AUTO in WALL-E, the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3, and the Benny jumpscares in Toy Story 4, and yet, those films also won Best Animated Feature Film. Totally just for the kids only? Right...
  - The same can apply to other G-rated animated movies as well, consisting of Dr. Facilier's characterization due to him being a voodoo witch doctor in The Princess and the Frog, Bambi's mother’s death in Bambi (1942), the Scream Extractor from Monsters Inc, Mufasa’s death in The Lion King (1994), Lilo's parents getting killed in a car accident from Lilo and Stitch, the donkey transformation from Pinocchio (1940), Clayton's death in Tarzan (1999), the King's car crash in Cars, and the Kill the Beast scene from Beauty and the Beast (1991).
  - Heck, there is a reason why some family-friendly animated movies are rated PG due to being able to tackle some serious concepts in some way, like Lord Farquaad having an "erection" in Shrek, the Cave Painting scene from Ice Age, Corpse Bride, Coraline, ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, and Monster House being dark horror films, Ellie having a miscarriage in Up, Po's flashback in Kung Fu Panda 2, the How to Train your Dragon Trilogy and Fantastic Mr. Fox having their tones more dark and mature compared to the books they were based on, Riley dealing with her emotions in Inside Out, the Screenslaver from The Incredibles 2, Zootopia talking a bit about corruption in politics, Hector's death in Coco when he was human, Kingpin killing Peter Parker (the Peter from Mile's universe, not to be confused with Peter B. Parker) and then Aaron Davis in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Soul talking about the meaning of life, Tadashi's death in Big Hero 6, the scene in which Mr. Incredible finds out that Syndrome wiped out almost all of the superheroes in The Incredibles, Consuelo's maternal death in Nahuel and the Magic Book, etc. In fact, the entire premise of Encanto revolves around family trauma and conflict.
  - The same can apply to the other PG-rated Best Animated Feature nominees after this ceremony, such as Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish's themes about life and death (funny enough, Pinocchio was a character in both movies, and the latter also had a character named "Death"), the scene where Nimona tries to attempt suicide on Gloreth's sword in Nimona, Gwen Stacy's backstory in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the period refrences and adult humor (like the stripper music joke) in "Turning Red", and the xenophobia issues between fire and the other elements in Elemental.
- Furthermore, this clearly also shows that the Oscars have a long history of treating animated films horribly, especially since how they barely give animated films (even the PG-13 and R-rated animated movies) a chance to be nominated for and win Best Picture most of the time and later shoved them into their own Best Animated Feature category starting with the 2002 ceremony just because they’re “made only for kids” and so that live-action films will continue to win BP as well as the fact that they don’t recognize voice acting; yet, they let Beauty and the Beast, Up, and Toy Story 3 be the only animated films to be nominated for Best Picture and even they don’t treat animated short films being made only for kids, despite being the same thing as animated films, which are treated by the Academy, which is yet another example of hypocrisy the Oscars have when it comes to animated films.
- To get money out of the piggy bank, Logorama won the Best Animated Short Film despite the movie using 3,000 logos of companies without their permission. To add more salt to the wound, They never gave credit to all of the companies in the credits; what's worse is that they didn't get sued.
- To add more salt to the wound, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (A stop motion mockumentary with live-action) wasn’t even disqualified… In the words of the Piano Guy from asdfmovie4: WHO'S IDEA WAS THIS?. What's hypocritical is that the Academy allowed Marcel to be nominated but not The Lego Movie which also used live action for some scenes.
- That description of animation being for kids only is so infamous that some people are even blaming the ceremony and that statement for giving Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery the idea to cancel many of their animated shows, including upcoming ones, and pulling them from their streaming services.
As mentioned in the pointer above, The Mitchells vs. the Machines' loss to Encanto is considered by many to be among the worst ever snubs in the history of the Best Animated Feature category, even more so than Cars' loss to Happy Feet in the 2007 ceremony or Wreck it Ralph's loss to Brave in the 2012 one.
The uncomfortable skit in which Regina Hall called up a bunch of actors to do "PCR tests", instead implying she was going to stick her finger in their mouths and even patting the actors down to their "bathing suit areas", which is considered sexual harassment.
The Academy didn't even invite Rachel Zegler into the ceremony, despite the fact she was the main star in the Best Picture-nominated remake of West Side Story. Luckily, people made a big fuss about it to the Academy and they later gave her the invitation. She would later joke about it in front of the other attendees as well.
To cut time and have the show be under three hours, they decided to present eight categories before the broadcast, which ended up backfiring immensely, since not only did this create a massive controversy, but the show ended up being longer than the last show, clocking in at 3 hours and 40 minutes.
- This was also seen as grossly disrespectful to both the nominees in those categories and people who work in those particular fields. Even prominent figures like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, and John Williams criticized this decision.
- As pointed out by Schaffrillas Productions, they removed the "Best Editing" category from their ceremony, which made no sense since editing is "what makes a film an actual film".
- Further extending on #6, they also removed the Award for Best Animated Short Film from their roster, which made the disgusting statement even more hypocritical and insulting, since most of the nominees in that category (except for the Netflix short, Robin Robin) were (you guessed it) mostly adult-oriented, further emphasizing the Oscars' godawful bias towards animation.
- It ultimately showed that the Academy learned nothing from the 2019 controversy in which they intended to present awards during the commercials.
- As for what was featured in place of the categories presented before the broadcast, the handling of some of the anniversary pieces can come off as inefficient, as they were just their own individual parts of the ceremony that only added more time to the telecast when they could have easily segue into key aspects of the event (the Bond 60th Anniversary segment serving as a lead-in to the performance of "No Time to Die"; the people involved in the segment celebrating 50 years of The Godfather presenting an award).
They blatantly included a Lightyear commercial with Chris Evans in the middle of the ceremony, which was wrong since awards shows are supposed to be neutral and not promote particular movies from a particular brand and/or company. This gets worse when you realize that ABC, the network that broadcasts the Academy Awards, is owned by Disney.
- To make things worse, the promotion stated that it was going to show exclusive footage during that time when it didn't as the Academy still used one of the trailers to promote it which comes off as lazy.
- It also didn't help that the movie received mixed audience reviews.
This ceremony also happened to be sponsored by Crypto.com, a company known for cryptocurrency, which is extremely harmful to the environment. Schaffrillas himself expressed disbelief over this.
The show felt like a 3-and-a-1/2-hour-long Disney circle-jerking due to ABC broadcasting the show. This wasn't just because of the Lightyear commercial, but also how Best Costume Design and Best Animated Feature were kept in while other categories were cut just so that Cruella and Encanto's wins were shown and Jenny Beavan could gush about how great the former was. Wow, that's very subtle Academy.
And of course, we can't talk about the 2022 ceremony without bringing up one of, if not, to keep the name out the mouth, the one infamous scene where Will Smith himself straight-up slaps Chris Rock in the face after he joked about Jada Pinkett-Smith's alopecia (about a sequel of G.I. Jane), and yelled "Keep my wife's name out your FUCKIN' MOUTH!!" Not only were both Smith and Rock morally in the wrong, but it made the moment where Smith won for Best Actor even more awkward. Speaking of which, it's very hypocritical for Will to be angry at Chris for mocking his wife's baldness because, if you look closely at him after Chris made that joke, he was laughing at it.
- To make things worse, the incident also ruined his career; not only did this cause Will Smith to get banned from the Oscars for a decade, but it also led to his upcoming films being canceled.
- This is also disrespectful to Demi Moore and Ridley Scott.
- It also ruined the victory moment for Summer of Soul winning Best Documentary Feature.

Redeeming Qualities

There were some well-deserved wins:
- Hans Zimmer's win for Best Original Score (Dune).
- Jessica Chastain's win for Best Actress.
- Ariana DeBose's win for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first openly queer actress of color to win in any acting category.
- No Time to Die's win for Best Original Song.
During his acceptance speech, Will Smith at least apologized for his crass behavior. He later gave a full apology to Chris Rock on his Instagram and resigned from the Academy because of his actions.
Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall (to an extent) were fun co-hosts and Sykes had some of the better skits of the night, particularly when she toured the Academy Museum.
We got to see the iconic "Matrix" scene in which Neo (Keanu Reeves' character) dodges the bullets, which was nominated for 5th place in the "Cheer Moment", so that's something great, to say the least.
The segments during the "In Memoriam" section, in which certain actors like Bill Murray and Jamie Lee Curtis gave speeches regarding a certain loss, was quite nice.
The performances of "Be Alive", "No Time to Die", and "Dos Oruguitas" were brilliant.
Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro coming out on stage to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Godfather was pretty great.
The ceremony returned to the Dolby Theater after the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony did not take place there due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although morally wrong, depending on who you ask, the scene where Will Smith slaps Chris Rock can come off as unintentionally hilarious for some.
Alberto Mielgo's acceptance speech for his short, "The Windshield Wiper", in which he explained how animation "is cinema", and "a fad for adults", was extremely brilliant and powerful, and was a massive stand-out against the horrible, biased speech by the 3 live-action Disney princesses.
- A year later, at the 95th Academy Awards, Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio, says the same thing.
Speaking of which, the 95th Academy Awards could be considered a huge improvement.

Reception

Critical reviews

The telecast received overwhelmingly negative reviews, with criticism directed at the show's pacing and focus. There was also agreement from both positive and negative reviews that coverage of the Will Smith–Chris Rock slapping incident would overwhelm discussion of the ceremony itself. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 19% of 31 reviews were judged to be positive, with an average rating of 4.2/10 on IMDb. The critics' consensus reads: "A shocking outburst overshadows a sour Oscar night marred by ill-conceived gimmicks and time-saving changes that fail to tighten up another bloated ceremony."

Richard Brody of The New Yorker called the show "a disaster" and wrote that "the televised broadcast, with its self-defeating efforts to reach audiences that aren't, in the first place, interested in the kinds of movies that the Academy chooses to honor [...] is doing the world of movies, the image of Hollywood, and the artists it celebrates no good whatsoever". In The New York Times, James Poniewozik praised some of the show's musical performances, but said that in an effort "to offer something for every market quadrant", the show was a "grab-bag frenzy". Kelly Lawler of USA Today called the show "sloppily managed and poorly paced, with bad comedy in all the wrong places and a nearly four-hour running time [...] a careening roller coaster with nowhere to go but down".

Conversely, Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times praised the ceremony as "much tighter and brighter than in recent years, thanks in large part to powerful music numbers, a diverse mixture of guests, and the bitingly funny trio of hosts".

Ratings

ABC's broadcast of the ceremony drew an average of 16.62 million viewers and scored a 3.8 Nielsen rating among viewers aged 18 to 49. This represented a 63% increase in viewership from the previous year's ceremony, the least-watched since television viewership of the show began measurement, but still had the second-lowest ratings of any Oscars telecast.

Videos

Trivia

The infamous scene where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for joking about his wife's name has ironically spawned into a massive internet meme. In fact, it was so notorious that it even convinced Dhar Mann of all people to make a video about the incident. Yes, really.
According to Schumer herself, she received a lot of backlash and death threats for her seat filler joke on Kristen Dunst, and it got so bad that Oscars had to call the Secret Service on her just for making the joke. And no, this is not a joke..

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