Oscars 2024 Review: 10 Ups & 6 Downs

3. The Lackluster In Memoriam Segment

The In Memoriam segment gets criticised year in and year out for "snubbing" numerous high-profile departed members of the film industry, and the Academy's attempts to combat the issue this year fell totally flat.

In an attempt to pre-empt social media outrage about names being left off the roll call, several-dozen names - including Lance Reddick, Sinead O'Connor, Treat Williams, and Burt Young - were confined to a text crawl on a stage screen.

However, between how briefly the list was shown and how incredibly difficult the small font was to read, it proved to be a totally inelegant, botched attempt to solve a "problem" which is probably best solved by... just presenting all the names properly.

Add to this the producers constantly shifting attention away from the names appearing on-screen towards the dancers on stage, and it's clear that the Academy continues to massively overcomplicate what should be an extremely straightforward part of the show.