2026 Oscars Called 'Tasteful but Overly Safe' in Review
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- The 2026 Oscars were characterized as 'tasteful and overly safe' in Variety's review, with the set resembling an 'open-air steak restaurant in the lobby of an oversize corporate hotel' that cycled from sushi restaurant to 'the world's largest tiki bar' over the course of the night.
- Conan O'Brien hosted with what the review called an 'entertainingly sharp' monologue, landing a Ted Sarandos diss ('This is his first time in a theater!'), tweaking Timothée Chalamet about 'attacks from both the opera and ballet communities,' and quipping that 'Hamnet' and 'Bugonia' sound like 'off-brand lunch meat.'
- Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor in a four-way race against Chalamet, Ethan Hawke, and Wagner Moura — the review called the win the Academy's 'deepest acknowledgment' of 'Sinners,' while noting Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't even in the running.
- 'One Battle After Another' took home six Oscars including Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson and the new Best Casting category, with Sean Penn winning a supporting prize despite not showing up to accept it.
- The In Memoriam segment featured Billy Crystal's tribute to Rob Reiner and Barbra Streisand's homage to her 'The Way We Were' costar Robert Redford, while the review flagged Brigitte Bardot's omission as a notable oversight given her place in film history.
- The review's sharpest critique: despite 'One Battle After Another' having politics 'at the very core of its cinematic DNA,' the telecast never explicitly engaged with what the film was actually about — a viewer who hadn't seen it could watch all six wins without learning the premise.
Why it matters: The Academy delivered a watchable, criticism-proof telecast by sanding off every rough edge — but in smoothing over the political substance of its biggest winner, it turned 'One Battle After Another' into a generic trophy magnet rather than a cultural statement, the exact safe-broadcast template producers were trying to escape from past 'boring Oscar telecasts.'
