The best movie of 2019 won four Oscars, including Best Picture, at the 92nd Academy Awards. Imagine that!
The 92nd Academy Awards were a long and not especially exciting affair, but we’ll never argue with great films getting their due and that’s exactly what happened at the 2020 Oscars. It’s hard to call Parasite’s four-win almost-sweep an upset, but it was a welcome surprise that the Academy did the right thing nonetheless.
From Brad Pitt getting political to Bong Joon-ho winning hearts and minds, we have the best moments and smart insights you can steal, but we also have gathered four FanSided staffers gathered to chat all things Oscar in a new episode of Extra Credits.
Watch the roundtable or read the conversation transcript below.
It’s a Parasite party
Shea Corrigan (Associate Editorial Director, FanSided.com): Welcome to Extra Credits. I’m Shea I’m joined today by Josh Wilson, Mia Johnson and Josh Hill. And we’ve got a little local award show to talk about, don’t we? Josh Hill, give us the headline.
Josh Hill (Editorial Director, FanSided.com): PARASIIIIIIITE. Yes. Oh my god and Bong Joon-ho. What a night, for Bong Joon. Give him all of the Oscars for literally every single thing, give him an Emmy, for what he did at the Oscar. That’s incredible.
Josh Wilson (Director, NBA Division): Even though he seemed like he really didn’t want more than two. He was kind of overwhelmed after he got the first two.
Shea: The second award speech, he was like, I wasn’t prepared for another one. I was ready to go relax and it was like, buckle up, Bong, we’ve got a lot more to come.
Mia Johnson (Entertainment Editor, FanSided.com): I called it like his Billie Eilish moment because you remember like at the Grammys, she was like she kept coming back. She was like, oh, you still want me to win awards? He was kind of like that, like oh my gosh.
Shea: Yeah, and one of my favorite sort of facts to come out of, you know, the night that someone threw out on Twitter and somebody else was like fact check: this is actually true. The only other person to have one four Oscars in one night is Walt Disney. So we’ve got company of two: Walt Disney, Bong Joon-Ho.
Wilson: Incredible.
Mia: As it should be.
Hill: He brought Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Oscars too when he said he’s going to Texas Chainsaw his Best Director Oscar and give it to Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino and Sam Mendez and Todd Phillips.
Shea: I also appreciate that he had, of the three speeches that he actually gave, like each one having a little bit of a viral moment. Like the first one he had, this is like South Korea’s first Oscar, and followed that up with “I am ready, ready to drink” and then had the wonderful, wonderful moment with Scorsese and a little bit of Tarantino as well.
Wilson: Yeah, it’s impressive to do that with the language barrier too I feel like because that’s what Parasite was, it kind of like transcended having a look at subtitles if you don’t speak that language for English speakers so.
Shea: I mean riffing more on his speeches, what was his line from the Golden Globes? They’re an inch just read them. We can all get over this. All right, so Parasite went four for six, right? They won original screenplay, international film, best director, best picture. Lost out on production design and score. Thoughts on that?
Wilson: I think the production design one I was hoping that they would win because it was just such an intricate part of the storyline. Like the house is so much of what that story is and just the levels of the house and how much that plays into what the movie was and the meaning behind it. So I was hoping that it would win that but it’s kind of hard to call it a loss when you win four of the six awards that you’re nominated for.
Mia: Yeah, you know what, though, it’s reminded me kind of like, I guess you would say the ratio of wins compared to nominations. I’m thinking like Joker where it was like 11 nominations — like the most of the whole award show and then to have that like whittle down slowly but surely to two.
Hill: Sorry, Joker.
Mia: Oh, dang it! So yeah, that was kind of interesting that Parasite was kind of like you know whispered like, okay, the Joker‘s got all these nominations and it’s like, well guess what?
Shea: And Parasite won its big ones too. But I couldn’t help but think that it could have had an even bigger night. A) there’s production design, but in terms of the nominations it didn’t even receive — it didn’t get a visual effects nomination because people didn’t realize that there were visual effects in the movie, which I think you know, probably speaks to how deserving of a nomination it was for visual effects. And then of course, the acting snub. Which was just inexplicable.
So to me it’s a little disrespectful to be like, this was a great movie but so what to the actors.
Mia: Yeah, the acting snubs kind of reminded me like of last year with Black Panther because it was like the got the Best Picture nomination and they’re like, and that’s it. That’s fine. So I feel like those usually go hand in hand like if you’re gonna nominate like Once Upon a Time […in Hollywood] you’re gonna have like Leo and Brad. Yeah. And so to me it’s a little disrespectful to be like this was a great movie but so what to the actors. So I hope, I don’t know maybe next year that’s something that they can — if I can like look into the camera and plead to them — please nominate the actors as well. Expand. I don’t know it’s really hard.
Shea: The cynic in me thinks the Academy was like, well no one will know their name. But that’s how people learn actors’ names! When they win Oscars. But back to Joker! Two for 11. First off, what did everyone here think of Joker?
Joker comes up (almost) empty
Wilson: I really enjoyed Joker. I know that’s not necessarily the popular opinion among people who like watch a lot of movies but I thought it was a good film. I thought it took an existing story and did something different with it. And Phoenix’s performance is obviously really incredible. And I thought that definitely carried the film. But overall, I thought the story was good. And there are a lot of great things about the feel of that movie too, that I really liked. So I liked it. I don’t think it deserves necessarily the kind of tone that people look at it with. But yeah.
Mia: Yeah, I kind of feel … I did like it. I think maybe there’s a lot of like, maybe some problematic things here and there. I think specifically though, it’s in this weird space where like, it’s a comic book movie and it’s got the Joker and happens in Gotham City. But then it’s almost like it also doesn’t, which is also kind of interesting, because, you know, we’re like having this conversation about superhero movies and blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe I’m getting off topic. Yeah, overall, I would say it. I didn’t hate it.
Hill: No, it was, I mean, pretty intellectually bankrupt. As far as like being significant, like it’s just, it’s not — it’s what people think good movies should be. People who are making the movies — like oh, this is what a good movie should be. It should be a dark, gritty superhero take where we have made a lead actor who’s super method and it’s a good performance, like Joaquin Phoenix deserved to win the Oscar for it and it’s also the classic Oscar thing where he should have won his four other times. I mean, he should have won for Walk the Line. Like he should have won before this. This is why he won this one. It’s also a very actor movie. Like if I was an actor, if I was a thespian, I would be like that is capital acting what he’s doing right now, so I can see why that performance is what carried the movie. Everything else within that movie. I mean, it’s a pretty it’s a hollow drum.
Shea: I watched it four hours before the Oscars. When it came out, I was like, I’m gonna sit tight here and only see it if I have to because of Oscar buzz, and then 11 nominations I think counts as buzz I finally was like, yeah. But I think it was not as bad as I was — I didn’t hate it as much as I was expecting it to. I felt there were, a strong sort of like, I don’t know, disingenuous things where they were clearly going for like a certain, you know, I don’t know, target audience, let’s say, but then also wanted the plausible deniability of like, oh, it’s the Joker, of course we don’t condone what he said. Of course, you know, the comedy speech is not at all about me.
But anyways, so two for 11. Joaquin: I agree. I think he deserves it. Score: I’m choosing to believe she won for Chernobyl, moving on. I feel like there’s nothing really more to say?
[silence]
Wilson: As much as I liked the movie, like it still wasn’t the best of those categories that it was nominated for. So, even as someone who liked it, I think it’s justified that it only won two of the 11 it was nominated for it.
What about Marvel?
Hill: And I’m actually happy that it didn’t win the awards. Not because I didn’t like the film, but because we had this whole conversation coming into the Oscars with Scorsese and Marvel movies and Marvel getting shut out for this entire decade. Essentially, like it only won three Oscars and that was until last year, and a lot of that was the Black Panther effect.
The fact that it was so important to the movie going experience for the last decade, and completely reinvented how we go to movies in a streaming era. Like you needed to see Endgame on Thursday because it was going to get spoiled on Friday. Marvel changed — the Oscars are supposed to be a celebration of movies, not like film or cinema, the movie going experience. That’s what they sell to us and package to us every single year. And Marvel was representative of that. That was the comic book movie that deserved to be honored. I didn’t want that to get spoiled by Joker being an artsy comic book movie, or something that like the voters thought should be a comic book movie that wins.
Mia: Yeah.
Shea: Jake Gyllenhaal should have been nominated for Mysterio. That’s the thought I just had. I genuinely think Far From Home was the best superhero movie that came out last year because I think I liked it better than Endgame. Endgame had more of like a punch because of the narrative arc, but I think in terms of like standalone superhero. Did Captain Marvel come out last year too?
Mia: It did. Yeah, three back to back. A lot of people were like, is Robert Downey Jr. gonna get the Oscar nom? I mean, he played the role for 10 years, which is like phenomenal. And same for like,
I was like, who Steve Rogers? Chris Evans! Same thing for him, but I think because Robert Downey Jr. has had such a big impact, and just the entirety of the fandom and it’s like when Tony Stark died, everybody just like flipped. It was such a big thing and I think that really doesn’t come across if you’re not a great actor and you’re not dedicated to it. Then he came out with Dolittle.
Hill: It changed the entire way that we look at blockbuster filmmaking. Like a decade ago, it was all about cashing in, and the dedication to trusting the process of we’re going to make 20 some movies and they’re all going to be very tightly connected. Like that’s incredible. Like if that’s not worth honoring at the Oscars. I don’t know what is.
Wilson: Yeah, but if you nominate Robert Downey Jr. are you nominating him for just the one movie or like the culmination of the past decade of work and how does that stack up to just the movies where actors are getting nominated for their individual roles in one movie?
Shea: But that’s no less shady or whatever then you know giving the makeup award. Where this is like Leonardo DiCaprio in Revenant. I think the Academy does kind of award bodies of work and if anything, a body of work as a single character is probably more worthy.
Wilson: Yeah, especially if it’s consistent over a decade and really well done. Yeah.
Shea: Well, speaking of movies that the Oscars chose to honor but not nominate, we should probably talk about the opener, yeah?
Singing about the snubbed
Wilson: Yeah, Us, the jumpsuits, Midsommar, the floral get-up.
Mia: Oh, I missed us. Oh my god.
Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, they were kind of like hidden back there. Just to say,
Hill: Queen & Slim was in there too.
Shea: Dolemite is My Name.
Wilson: Yeah, I mean for me, like I enjoyed all those movies and wanted to see them get nominated for various things. So it’s kind of like a twist of the knife to show it in the opening and be like, we’re going to celebrate these things, but they weren’t good enough for us to, you know, nominate them and formally say these were good things that we should nominate and look at for awards.
Hill: Yeah, it was 100 percent the Academy that having its cake and eating it to. Like come on, nominate these movies! Like, what are we talking about? We just had this whole discussion about Marvel and how important it was to the movie making experience of the last decade, like these movies are great pieces of cinema that happened this year, but we’re just going to look them over? We’re going to like almost insultingly throw them into musical number at the beginning of the show? Where Janelle Monae has to motivate people to sing with her? She’s like, come on everybody. Let’s get excited about these movies nobody saw but are actually really good. It was borderline insulting because like Wilson said, I loved a lot of those movies and to see them kind of shoehorned in there, it kind of sucked.
Shea: And they were worthy movies. I’m blanking on an appropriate level of movie for this example, but it wasn’t something where I was like, this was a big moment, this is really fun, but you know, perhaps we can all agree, it didn’t need an Oscar nomination. I think you can make the case for all four of those we listed as deserving at least one nomination and instead they’re like, here’s a costume.
Mia: Eddie Murphy. Lupita. I’m, like come. The dancing Dolomite in the background was just like, it felt like a slap in the face.
Wilson: Yeah, because things like Midsommar? The set design for that? Like that could easily have been nominated. Just the feel and vibe you get through that whole movie. It’s a horror movie that is shot in broad daylight, like it easily could have been nominated for that and the other ones too.
Hill: And I didn’t want to take anything away from Little Women, but Florence Pugh getting nominated for [Midsommar] would have been a good way to kind of honor that. Also getting Little Women more nominations and wins would have been a nice way to honor Little Women, but that’s just my opinion. What do I know?
Jojo Rabbit an upset?
Shea: Well, so on that note, Little Women won one Oscar for costume design. Arguably, it was robbed of an Oscar as well. Well, it was robbed of many Oscars and many nominations. But the big one that jumped out to me was Adapted Screenplay. What do we think about Taika Waititi winning for Jojo Rabbit?
Mia: It’s so hard because I love them both.
Josh: I think Taika Waititi is gonna win another Oscar for something better than Jojo Rabbit. Like Jojo Rabbit definitely feels like we’re cashing in on he’s really buzzy right now. People know who he is. I mean, if you watch like, some of the stuff that he did before, you’re in on the joke.
Like I made the argument that John Mulaney should host the Oscars but he still feels a little too underground. Like he’s not mainstream enough. I think Taika Waititi is now becoming mainstream enough to where he can win an Oscar and steal it away from Greta Gerwig.
But I’m with Mia, they’re both deserving. I love them both. But what Greta Gerwig did with Little Women is brilliant. It was so good. It’s Oscar worthy! Like, what are we talking about?
Shea: Love the man, feel meh about the movie. And the thing with Little Women, I saw someone observed that it’s not just a good screenplay. It’s a good adaptation, like what she did in the script as far as adapting both the novel and sort of being conversation with previous adaptations, like, the skill that you’re highlighting there is in the adaptation, which feels worthy for an Oscar.
Hill: Not giving an Oscar to a well-written movie is probably the most Oscar anything ever so. Greta stock continues to go up because the Oscars just refuse to honor her.
Shea: She’s gonna be the new winner to Leonardio DiCaprio. There’s so many. We did this exercise I think somewhat recently about the number of people that are just racking up nominations and no wins. Amy Adams. I think she’s our current leader in that regard.
Hill: That’s true. I’m fearful that Adam Driver’s gonna fall into the Leonardo DiCaprio cage of snakes.
Mia: Noooooo.
Hill: He’s already been nominated, what, twice now? Yeah. He’s got BlackKklansman and now he’s got Marriage Story. Oh, yeah.
Mia: It’s like one of those things that was like it was a great performance but it was not, out of all them, necessarily — was he in the Best Actor category? Okay. Oh, yeah. He’s like almost there. So close.
Anticlimactic acting categories
Shea: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about Best Actor, Best Actress, because those categories were locks for what feels like a month and just I felt like the most anticlimactic parts of the night. Was there anyone that you know, you held out a sliver of hope that were going to pull off the upset or did you,I don’t know, how did you feel about four winners Laura Dern, Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger and Brad Pitt?
Mia: You know what, the moment, I think it was the first award of the night, the moment that Brad Pitt got the award, his name was called, I was like, okay, we’re playing it by the books. You
know, I was like, oh, God, here we go. Because it was kind of like, maybe this is because like, we’re like deep into this where we’re like looking at who’s you know, the most expected to win or blah, blah, blach. And so I know like with the posts that we’ve been writing, it was like, beat by beat, pretty much everyone we expected to win did win. So I don’t know. It’s like half of me is saying, yes, they’re deserving of that. And you know, of course this was going to happen anyway. But then the other half is like, I want to see something exciting. I don’t just want to be able to like pick it off the top of my head like I’m psychic or something.
Wilson: Yeah, from a viewing perspective, you kind of don’t want an award show to be formulaic and to be able to predict it. So just from that perspective, I would like to be surprised and have someone kind of jump up, but I’m okay with the people that won.
Hill: Renee Zellweger. And I mean, she’s already won. So it’s not really taking much away from her from saying like, she basically won for impersonating Judy Garland, which, I mean, in a way is acting through a certain point of view.
But I was excited for Brad Pitt, because he finally gets his acting Oscar. His first Oscar, he gets the one for 12 Years a Slave, but like, this is his first Oscar. And the fact that Quentin Tarantino gave it to him I think is really cool. Because what Tarantino does, is he’s like so obsessed with the history of movies and the power of movies, that he helped us remember how much we love Brad Pitt!
Like when he took his shirt off? In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, everybody was like, oh, yeah! Brad Pitt, that’s right! And he won an Oscar for that! That’s incredible.
Shea: Yeah, I did think it was interesting that apparently in his back room interviews or wherever, he said that he was gonna take, like a hiatus and he was going to, you know, disappear again. And I thought he was disappeared! I thought this was him coming back!
Mia: He just fades into the background. He’s like, you never saw me.
Hill: He also got emotional too, that was cool to see. Like we’ve had fun with his awards tour and Brad Pitt being cool Brad Pitt, effortlessly. And then he actually showed some emotion like you could feel like he was really… He’s forever, he’s tattooed on the story of Hollywood in a way that he’s been deserving because I mean, he’s Brad freakin Pitt. And now he’s an Oscar winner and it took this long.
Wilson: I feel like everybody forgot about Ad Astra too.
Hill: That’s the point. You can’t sell movies with a Brad Pitt, with his face and name on a movie poster anymore and that’s kind of indicative of that but the fact that you know he was able to have this sort of a comeback in a movie that’s about movies it’s the most Oscar thing ever but it’s just good to see Brad Pitt finally get what he’s owed.
More speeches!
Shea: So we liked Brad getting sentimental. Any other favorite acceptance speeches?
Wilson: Joaquin’s was… interesting.
Shea: On brand.
Hill: A journey.
Wilson: Very much on brand I felt bad having coffee with milk in it this morning. I guess if that’s what he wanted to do, I’m thinking about those things more now. So.
Hill: It was quite a journey. I did like that, when Casey Affleck won for his Oscar, the big thing was like all Ben Affleck. So bringing up River Phoenix was really cool. Because if we’re talking about — the big theme of movies this year was mortality and reckoning with your legacy and River Phoenix and Joaquin Phoenix, it seems that him bringing his brother back on the biggest stage right there? Talk about forgetting somebody who was a huge deal. I think that that was that was really cool. And it clearly, I mean, it’s something that means something to him in that winding, you know, Space Odyssey journey we went on.
Mia: When he started saying artificial insemination, I was like, oh, wow. I mean, yeah, it was expected of him. He does kind of get really like sentimental about these things. And I don’t know, it’s like, you can say it’s weird. But you can also say, in an odd way, he’s preaching the truth about like, and I feel like maybe you know, everybody kind of like wants to have their preaching moment. But I feel maybe with him, it’s a little more sincere. Like he actually feels like I know we’re ruining environment or everybody should be vegan. Which yeah, I don’t know, I need the milk.
I don’t know, It’s quite interesting. I don’t, maybe to me, to see like the inner workings of his mind maybe I’m like a psychology freak, but it’s really interesting to see how maybe he’s not kind of like the stereotypical like Hollywood actor. Or I don’t know, I’ve also seen the clip where he threw a tantrum or something while filming Joker and it’s also like, you know, we all have our own, two sides.
Shea: He does kind of acknowledge that too. Self-awareness goes miles in my book, and he was like, very much like, I’ve been a scoundrel! (Which is an amazing way to phrase that.) Like, I’ve been like a jerk on set. Yeah, I need to do better. But like, we all need to do better. Yes we do Joaquin.
Wilson: Part of me preferred that he would spend a little bit more time talking about like the actual award and like, acting in general and what it meant to him. But if you win the award, you get your time, talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Hill: Also the finesse of getting up there and immediately telling everybody to be quiet and stop applauding.
Shea: You’re not wasting my time. And then just to bring it back to Parasite again, I feel like we can’t talk acceptance speeches without reminding everyone know, you know, all four of those ruled. Good stuff.
Wilson: Is Bong still drinking, do we think?
Shea: I certainly hope so.
Wilson: For awhile now.
Hill: Then they try to play him off for Best Picture. That was incredible. Like when they turned the music on a Martin Scorsese when they finally gave him his Oscar after missing it twice. They’re like all right, yeah, nevermind. I thought when it went dark and it went back to Jane Fonda, I was like, oh God, they did it again. They screwed it up. Oops, we read the wrong card. Because it was so perfect that Parasite won.
Shea: There would be a riot.
Hill: It didn’t feel right that it won because it was so right that it won, I just didn’t believe it. I was like, something has to go wrong here. And then the chants to bring it up, bring it up. I mean, it was, that’s everything we wanted.
Shea: And the roar That you could hear in the clip when she reads out Parasite as Best Picture is just amazing. It’s awesome. But I become a little bit of a Parasite crowd truther in that what I noticed, the crowd doesn’t seem — like the people whose reaction shots are getting who are in the front couple rows, they don’t actually seem that into it. And I totally believe that the masses in the theater are totally Parasite stans because Parasite is for the people and we love it. So the cheers I think they’re totally real, the excitement is there. But maybe it’s just after like three and a half hour award show that there’s only so much energy you can bring, but it was like scanning from people to people and it felt very muted. Like they were clapping, they were standing. But I don’t know, as people that sort of, you know highly attuned to looking for reaction shots to use them on Twitter, it seemed real muted to me.
Hill: It did. Although Tom Hanks gave us another Tom Hanks moment so he saved it. Leave it to Tom Hanks.
Shea: When Tom Hanks and Charlize Theron led the bring-the-lights-up chant, I was like all right, I could see that, but I was expecting more. And then there were all those stories about people rushing up to see them and you know, congratulate them afterwards. And I was like, that sounds like Hollywood.
Extra Credits and, uh, Eminem
Shea: All right, so final thoughts then? I guess we should do extra credits right? Who gets extra credit, who gets a bonus Oscar?
Hill: Bong gets all of my bonus.
Shea: Make it a round, a sweet five.
Wilson: Yeah, let’s do it.
Mia: Hmm. You know I was gonna give the Oscar to Eminem but he technically did get his Oscar, he just coming back to be like, hey I won, I just didn’t get to perform it.
Hill: You want to be surprised, Wilson, Eminem performing at the Oscars!
Wilson: It kind of just felt out of place though. I didn’t enjoy it at all.
Mia: It was like a weird montage, like a best clip YouTube video of like, oh here all these songs from movies and then, here’s Eminem.
Hill: That was peak “please watch our award show moment from the Oscars.”
Shea: It was like a big why but I also feel like it was… we were talking earlier about how not having a host is supposed to like tighten things up. But instead the Oscars keep filling time with things like a live Eminem performance for a song that’s not even like an even anniversary. It’s been 18 years.
Wilson: And that’s a really good example of like music being tied into a movie but it was so long ago like they’re probably been much more recent examples of like songs and movies like working together.
Shea: And we just super didn’t need a live performance at that part of the show anyways.
Hill: My favorite was when they go to the crowd and everyone’s just trying to sing along and they’re definitely like two or three lines behind or ahead, it’s just a giant mess. It’s
wild.
Shea: It also occurred to me — Billy Eilish was one of the like top reactions. It’s possible it was the first time she’s ever heard that song.
Mia: Because she’s 18.
Shea: Yeah, she’s so young. And she doesn’t seem like somebody who spends a lot of time in like, football arenas where they play the song all the time.
Mia: Oh, yikes.
Shea: So that could have been what was happening.
Wilson: She’s also known to not know like a lot of music that came before she was alive. So it is plausible it was the first time she heard that.
Shea: It wasn’t just, oh this is not for me. It’s like what is this? She’s processing in real time.
Mia: Making me feel old.
Shea: And I guess on that note then is there any final thoughts?
Wilson: I think if I had to give an extra credit to someone other than Bong, Ray Romano. The dropping the F bomb or whatever they had to pull the plug on.
Shea: I think I would go Janelle Monae for that killer opener. Don’t feel great about the way the Academy was leveraging those snubbed movies but she was great. That’s all from us.
Josh: Don’t drink milk!