As everyone predicted, this year’s Academy Awards were dominated by one of last year’s biggest hits. Oppenheimer scored the biggest prize of the night, Best Picture, with Christopher Nolan nabbing his first Oscar for Best Director and Cillian Murphy taking Best Actor in a Leading Role for his first nomination ever. Robert Downey Jr. took home Best Actor in a Supporting Role. This is also his first-ever Oscar win.
Oppenheimer padded these wins with victories for Music (Score) for Ludwig Göransson, Cinematography for Hoyte van Hoytema, and Film Editing for Jennifer Lame, bringing the film’s total number of statuettes to seven. Oppenheimer went into the evening with 13 nominations.
While Oppenheimer made close to a billion dollars, as everyone knows, 2023’s biggest film was Barbie, which grossed $1.446 billion at the box office, making it Warner Bros.’ top film of all time.
However, the only prize that went to Barbie at the Oscars was Best Song for “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish. Eilish wrote the song with her brother Finneas O’Connell and the duo performed the song on the telecast. However, their subdued performance was outshined on the show by Ryan Gosling’s power ballad “I’m Just Ken” which brought the house down, featuring fellow Kens Simu Liu, Kinglsey Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, and Scott Evans, as well as guitarists Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen, the latter of whom played on the original track.
Many were eyeing Barbie to at least do well in the technical categories, but in an upset, another highly stylized film, Poor Things snatched those trophies away, landing back-to-back-to-back awards for Hair and Makeup, Production Design, and Costume Design.
In what some may also consider an upset, Emma Stone took home her second Oscar for Poor Things, after Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lilly Gladstone had been dominating a lot of the other award ceremonies leading up to this.
Some might also consider the Best Animated Feature contest to be an upset as Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron took the win from the more financially successful (and some would say more innovative) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Taking home Best Visual Effects was the surprise hit Japanese import Godzilla Minus One.
Did your favorites win any prizes? Were there any upsets?
You can see all of the winners below:
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, and Christopher Nolan, Producers
Actress in a Leading Role
Emma Stone
Poor Things
Directing
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan
Actor in a Leading Role
Cillian Murphy
Oppenheimer
Music (Original Song)
“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie
Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell
Music (Original Score)
Oppenheimer
Ludwig Göransson
Sound
The Zone of Interest
Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn
Live Action Short Film
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson and Steven Rales
Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Hoyte van Hoytema
Documentary Feature Film
20 Days in Mariupol
Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath
Documentary Short Film
The Last Repair Shop
Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers
Film Editing
Oppenheimer
Jennifer Lame
Visual Effects
Godzilla Minus One
Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima
Actor in a Supporting Role
Robert Downey Jr.
Oppenheimer
International Feature Film
The Zone of Interest (UK)
Costume Design
Poor Things
Holly Waddington
Production Design
Poor Things
Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek
Makeup and Hairstyling
Poor Things
Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
American Fiction
Written for the screen by Cord Jefferson
Writing (Original Screenplay)
Anatomy of a Fall
Screenplay – Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
Animated Feature Film
The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki
Animated Short Film
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Dave Mullins and Brad Booker
Actress in a Supporting Role
Da’Vine Joy Randolph
The Holdovers
