by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
The 91st annual Academy Awards were held last night. With this the first show in 30 years without a host, things went about as expected.
Still, here’s my look at how the animation-related Oscar nominees fared. A full list of all the Oscar winners is available here.
Animated Feature Film
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Incredibles 2
- Isle of Dogs
- Mirai
- Ralph Breaks the Internet
Animated Short Film
- Bao
- Animal Behaviour
- Late Afternoon
- One Small Step
- Weekends
Music (Original Score)
- Black Panther
- Isle of Dogs
- BlacKkKlansman
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Mary Poppins Returns
Comments
“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” won for Best Animated Feature, to the delight and applause of everyone. A deserved win, in my opinion. Meanwhile, Pixar’s “Bao” won for Best Animated Short.
This means this year’s animated films both featured/starred non-White characters. Additionally, this also marks the first time a Black director (Peter Ramsey) won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature category.
Live action: good news and bad news
In other good news, Spike Lee received his first creative Oscar, winning best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman.” “Black Panther” also won several Oscars, including costume design, production design, and original score.
Surprisingly, the lack of a host this year (the first time in 30 years) didn’t hurt things at all.
On the bad news side, there’s the multiple Oscar wins for the problematic films “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Green Book.” The latter was this year’s best picture win (over entries like “Black Panther,” “Roma,” and “BlacKkKlansman”), despite multiple reasons it shouldn’t have won. But as I predicted in my Oscar nominees posts, “Green Book” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” both are the type of films that’d appeal to Oscar judges, who aren’t the most diverse group.
Metacritic scores and reviews
Looking at Metacritic, the best animated feature scores are as follows:
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: 87
- Isle of Dogs: 82
- Mirai: 81
- Incredibles 2: 80
- Ralph Breaks the Internet: 71
And here’s the best feature film scores:
- Roma: 96
- The Favourite: 90
- Black Panther: 88
- A Star is Born: 88
- BlacKkKlansman: 83
- Green Book: 69
- Vice: 61
- Bohemian Rhapsody: 49
While reviews for “Green Book” were technically positive, there were plenty of better choices available. Though the fact “Bohemian Rhapsody” even got nominated for best picture is also problematic.
Meanwhile, Twitter’s erupted in a lot of negative backlash over “Green Book” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” for good reason I suppose. I haven’t seen “Green Book” (and not sure I want to, based on the reviews), but I don’t think I’ve seen a worse choice for best picture since “Crash” beat “Brokeback Mountain” in 2006. It’s obvious there’s still a long way to go for both the Academy Awards and Hollywood.
Greg in Hollywood (Greg Hernandez), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped from original)
