Oscars 2021 Review: 8 Ups & 8 Downs

Downs...

8. The In-Person Ceremony Is A Weird Mess

This year's Oscar ceremony was always going to differ hugely from the norm, though with the Academy forging ahead with an in-person ceremony split across several countries and co-producer Steven Soderbergh promising an ambitious "cinematic" Oscars, expectations were high for the best of all the COVID-era awards shows.

On one hand it was definitely refreshing to see so many nominees together in the same room, and staging the main hub in Los Angeles' Union Station gave it an undeniably intimate feel.

But there were also numerous head-scratching creative decisions which made the show feel patently less-than compared to a typical Oscars broadcast.

Worst of all, most categories didn't feature any clips of their respective films, and the categories that did show clips were seemingly picked at semi-random. For casual audiences who might not be aware of every nominee, it seemed like a totally thoughtless oversight.

Though the lack of reliance on Zoom calls was a plus, and the show got off to a promising start with Regina King's Ocean's Eleven-style entrance to Union Station, it's tough to feel like Soderbergh and co. really delivered a diverting Oscars for the pandemic era, even accepting the obvious challenges involved.

All in all, though, the biggest mistake of the night wasn't at all related to the pandemic, but that misguided calculation to shake up the running order of the awards - but we'll get to that later.