The Snubs & Surprises Of The 2018 Oscars

Another year, another Academy Awards ceremony down, and it was one with plenty to be happy about: long-overdue recognition for tremendous actors like Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney, much-deserved writing prizes for Jordan Peele and James Ivory, a double victory for the beloved Guillermo Del Toro.

READ MORE: ‘The Shape of Water’ Wins Best Picture & Director: The Full List Of Oscar Winners Here

That said, while it was a solid ceremony (as we covered in our Best & Worst Of The 2018 Oscar Ceremony), it perhaps wasn’t the biggest shocker — even an awards idiot like this writer who hasn’t been paying that much attention only missed a few times on his ballot. However, there were still a handful of Surprises, and a few of what, for lack of a better term, tends to be called Snubs: below, we’ve run down the biggest of them. Take a look below, and let us know what upset your particular Oscar apple cart, and who you wanted to see win over the victors, in the comments.

READ MORE: The 2018 Oscars By The Numbers

Surprises

“Icarus”
Best Documentary Feature was one of the more open and competitive categories this year, with legendary non-fiction filmmaker Steve James and “Abacus: Small Enough To Jail”; powerful Netflix film “Strong Island” (helmed by the first trans man ever to be nominated); oldest ever Oscar nominee Agnes Varda’s “Faces Places”; and searing Syria pic “Last Men In Aleppo,” which made headlines when one of its filmmakers was denied a visa by the U.S. government (a decision that was ultimately reversed), all looking like strong contenders to win. In the end, it was Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan’s “Icarus,” an investigation into the Russian Olympic doping scandal, that took the prize, giving Netflix their first Oscar in a feature category. It was always a viable winner — it’s a film that had real-world impact, done with a light-footed, thriller-ish manner. But its victory against such heavyweight competition provided probably the biggest surprise of the night.

The Shorts categories
However obvious a winner might seem in the shorts categories, the things that often end up making and breaking your Oscars pool, there’s always at least one curveball in there that sees Tina From Accounting sneak ahead thanks to pure luck. Perhaps the animated one was more anticipated than some — Pixar’s “Lou” might have tempted many, but they’ve only won the category twice in twenty years (last year’s “Piper” being the most recent), and L.A. clearly wanted to vote for Kobe Bryant, even if he was accused of sexual assault. But given recent events, most figured that voting members would go for Reed Van Dyk’s powerful school-shooting themed “DeKalb Elementary” for Live-Action Short: instead, the prize was taken by “The Silent Child,” made by two former stars of the British soap opera “Hollyoaks,” and revolving around a deaf six-year-old (writer-producer Rachel Shenton movingly signed her speech). And although “Heroin(e)” had the might of Netflix behind it in the Documentary Short category, causing many to predict it, instead it was Frank Stiefel’s “Heaven Is A Traffic Jam On The 405,” about artist Mindy Alper, that took the prize.

The lack of surprises
The Prognostication Industrial Complex, and the host of precursor awards, have made true shocks on Oscar night increasingly rare — what was the last real on-the-night upset in an acting category, for instance? We suppose you could maybe argue Christoph Waltz in “Django Unchained” over Alan Arkin and Tommy Lee Jones, or maybe Octavia Spencer in “The Help” over Berenice Bejo, but neither of those were real jaw-droppers. But even then, the Academy have thrown a few real shocks in the last few years to keep us on our toes: “Spotlight” upsetting “The Revenant” and “The Big Short” in 2016, and obviously the “Moonlight” reveal last year. But this year, even in a year where Best Picture was nominally wide open, things mostly went to plan — the movie that won the top prize was the most nominated film and the winner of Best Director, the acting categories all followed the precursors, and even below-the-line had relatively few shocks. Is it a sign that we simply follow the tea leaves a little too closely? Or does it suggest the Academy membership lining up and voting for the films they think they should be voting for? Probably more the latter, but it’d still be nice to have a few shocks next year.