The Oscars Were Everything, Everywhere, And All At Once

The 95th annual Academy Awards have come and gone and after back-to-back ceremonies that ended in controversy and debates about how out of touch the Academy have become with the casual movie go-er, we ended up with a well-reviewed show dominated by a word-of-mouth independent A24 backed sci-fi/fantasy absurdist comedy film that managed to be a box office hit and bleed into pop culture.

Everything Everywhere All At Once broke records with its seven Oscar wins, the most for a movie since the 2014 ceremony and the most for a winner of the top prize five years before that. It became only the third film in history to win three acting awards joining A Streetcar Named Desire and Network; and it was the first to do that by a Best Picture winner as those two films didn’t even win the top prize. It made history as the winningest film ever in the above-the-line categories with six wins out of eight (It wasn’t eligible in one and wasn’t nominated in another). When future Oscar historians and pundits try to measure big sweeps and big wins by would be Picture winners, this film will be one of those they are measured against.

Its incredible to think that this movie had its world premiere before last year’s ceremony, literally a year before these Oscars at the South by Southwest Film Festival – an event not known for launching Best Picture contenders much less winners. While last year’s winner, CODA, also had its world premiere before the previous ceremony, it was released to the public later in the year in August. Everything Everywhere All At Once meanwhile came out to limited release on the week of the ceremony. Typically a Picture winner launches to the public at the earliest in August and on Christmas week at the latest.

And yes we’ve had some outlier winners that came out during the Summer such as Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Gladiator, Crash, and The Hurt Locker but you have to go all the way back to Silence Of The Lambs to the last time the movie that would win the Oscar  the following year was available to see in public theatres by the time that year’s ceremony was taking place. That means it had to accomplish the feat of going wire to wire and surviving an onslaught of Fall Festival campaigns from bigger studios with bigger money.

I always thought this movie had what it took to go all the way. Way back last Spring when I started looking over the Best Picture possibilities, I had the movie ranked at #11 just outside of the nomination lineup and had written “The movie is getting the kind of attention I haven’t seen for a film since 2019’s Parasite and key industry voters have been tweeting out in support of it. If this film’s amazing reception lives up to the hype and survives through the year…then not only can this get into the final ten but it could become the movie to beat on top of that.”

But I thought if it did win it would have to do so as a late surging underdog the way films like Spotlight, Moonlight, Green Book, Parasite, and CODA did. What I wasn’t expecting was for the movie to become the most overall awarded movie in history surpassing The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, to become the first movie in a decade to sweep all four major guilds while winning prizes at smaller techs/crafts guilds, and to come into Oscar Sunday the heaviest favorite in years, and then to have one of the most dominant performances in Oscar history.

Along with its Best Picture win it won Director and Original Screenplay for the duo known as the Daniels, officially making it so that the guys behind the “Get Down For What?” music video were Oscar winners. Its incredible editing beat out Top Gun: Maverick in a tough fight for that category, becoming a rare sweeper. It also won Actress for Michelle Yeoh, who survived one of the most titanic back-and-forth battles for that prize in the history of the category against Cate Blanchett; as well as Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan who just returned to acting with this role and had been inspired to un-retire when he watched Crazy Rich Asians back in 2018 which starred Yeoh. But the biggest surprise of all was that it helped Jamie Lee Curtis pull off one of the biggest come from behind wins, literally only having SAG to back her up as she surpassed early favorite Angela Bassett and BAFTA winner Kerry Condon in a wild three-way battle for Supporting Actress.

This overwhelming dominant performance throughout all of awards season tells me that perhaps it was always going to be Everything Everywhere All At Once. The film became an overnight box office and word of mouth success and only got stronger as the year went on. I had it predicted for a nomination by the Summer, had it as top-tier contender before the Fall Festivals, as a top two contender after Thanksgiving, and as the favorite by the time the industry awards were poised to have their go. I found 35 published anonymous Oscar ballots and kept track of the rank-choice ballot for Picture and was taken aback by how big a lead the movie had. I also noticed some of the older crowd had mentioned liking the movie more on re-watches which makes me think its early release was its secret strength.

Babylon became too divisive, The Fabelmans drifted off after the holidays, The Banshees Of Inisherin ended up being more of a critical darling than an audience favorite, and other box office hits like Avatar: The Way Of Water, Elvis, and Top Gun: Maverick had a ceiling to their support. The likely second place finisher was the Netflix-backed, German film All Quiet On The Western Front; but the curse of remakes of previous Picture winners never winning and its late surge seemingly coming too little, too late with almost no real guild support ultimately doomed it. Based on the anonymous ballots all these contenders would get top-five mentions by those who liked them but Everything Everywhere All At Once would get top-three mentions including easily leading the pack in Number One votes.

Granted we also saw other movies get their spotlight. All Quiet On The Western Front won International Feature, Cinematography, Score, and pulled off a huge upset in Production Design that for a few minutes there had some wondering if it had a shot to upset in Picture. Avatar: The Way Of Water escaped with Visual Effects and Top Gun: Maverick won that Sound Oscar I’ve been bullish on it winning since the day I saw the film. I was also beyond happy to see Women Talking winning Adapted Screenplay which means the Academy awarded my personal top two favorite scripts from last year. But we also saw The Whale, another A24 film (In fact their original top awards priority at the start of the year) upset in Makeup, paving the way for Brendan Fraser to beat out Austin Butler and Colin Farrell in a tight three-way race for Actor. This means A24 became the first ever studio in Oscar history to win all four acting awards in one year.

I’ve written on here before about my adoration for Everything Everywhere All At Once and the fact it was my favorite movie from what I really think was a solid 2022 for film. Its a film that I truly believe will age incredibly well as a Picture winner and will become in time a major mainstream classic among younger generations and sci-fi and fantasy fans in general. It will go down as one of the “cooler” picks for the prize in the nearly hundred years of its existence, and for me personally is easily a top-three if not top-five among my own ranking of Best Picture winners.

But the awards season has come to an end. We are now in the extremely early stages of the preliminaries for the 96th Academy Awards next year. I’ll wait a few weeks before writing up a look at potential contenders as I think the lineup for that ceremony has a chance to be just as solid as this year’s. But for now I think its best to take in the history that this little sci-fi/fantasy absurdist comedy pulled off. Because each awards season is different, and I can guarantee you that the next Best Picture winner will likely have to survive a much tougher path in a much tougher race that will see guilds go back to splitting winners. Things have reset for the battle for Oscars and all those studios have new life now that the juggernaut indie has had its moment in the sun.