New movie review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Letitia Wright as Shuri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Sequels are hard. Sequels in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are harder still. Making the followup to what was once the most successful standalone superhero film of all time in the wake of your leading actor’s tragic death: near impossible. But the gears of corporate movie making grind away, demanding the next big thing.

Director and co-writer Ryan Coogler gives it his best shot, and while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is not a perfect film, nor does it quite rise to the level of its predecessor, it is the best anyone could have done under the circumstances. Wakanda Forever is smart, subversive, and filled to the brim with excellent performances by a game cast who deliver comic book exposition like it is Shakespearean verse.

The missing cast member, of course, is Chadwick Boseman, whose absence looms over the whole film. Boseman died of colon cancer in August 2020 at the age of 43, leaving a whole in the hearts of family, friends, and fans alike. Though it was likely considered, there was no replacing Boseman, who put his stamp indelibly on King T’Challa and the Black Panther. 

Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole would have to adjust their plans and rewrite a sequel that was already in the works. They would have to address the tragedy directly. There could be no quickly moving on from one of the iconic characters of modern times. After all, the first film is the highest-grossing live-action film with a black lead of all time. It was a cultural event with meaning that far outstripped its place in the MCU. It became the first superhero film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, where it won three Oscars. And it made Boseman a hero to a generation of black audiences that had been and remain historically underserved by big-budget Hollywood movies.

The film opens with the offscreen death of T’Challa, as we watch his sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), in her lab, desperately seeking a cure for his unnamed illness. Her idea: to create a synthetic version of the purple heart-shaped herb that Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger destroyed the last of in the first film. Her mother, Quen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), arrives to tell her she is too late. T’Challa is dead.

What follows is the first of the film’s many gorgeously crafted sequences – a lengthy Wakandan funeral that is equal parts reverent and exultant. It is intended as an opportunity for the audience to grieve Boseman as much as it is an opportunity for the Wakandans to grieve their king. It works on both counts and sets up one of the central themes of the film: How does a nation, a people, move forward without its protector and patch the hole in its soul?

We quickly learn that world powers see Wakanda as weakened and the loss of the Black Panther as a chance to pilfer the nation’s reserves of vibranium, thought to exist only in Wakanda. However, we soon discover there is another source of the precious metal, deep in the Atlantic Ocean, in the heretofore unknown underwater kingdom of Talokan. The Talokan people, led by the centuries old mutant Namor (Tenoch Huerta), defend their territory from the mining operation, which leads to increased international scrutiny of Wakanda.

If this sounds like a lot already, it is, and Wakanda Forever’s greatest sin is that it is overstuffed with side characters and plots meant only to service the greater MCU story. This is not the fault of the filmmakers, necessarily, but rather one of the burdens of operating within the massive Marvel machine. Among these side characters, we get the return of Martin Freeman’s Agent Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ CIA Director de Fontaine. We are also introduced to Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a brilliant MIT student who invents a machine for detecting vibranium.

Thorne is great in the role, and I enjoyed much of what the Riri character brings to the movie, but along with the CIA plot, it is one thing too many in a movie that already has so much to deal with. We also get a side plot with Danai Gurira’s Dora Milaje general Okoye as she grapples with her place in the new Wakandan order. And the always-great-to-see Lupita Nyong’o is back as Nakia, a former Wakandan spy who now runs a foundation for children in Haiti.

As great as Gurira, Nyong’o, and Thorne are, it is all too much. The film is at its best when it focuses on its three central characters: Queen Ramonda, Princess Shuri, and Namor. It helps that Bassett, Wright, and Huerta give the three best performances in the film. Bassett, in particular, is just stunning in her power and control. When they all meet on a river bank about a third of the way through the film, the fireworks are instantaneous and the key conflict of the story is set into motion.

At the end of Black Panther, T’Challa reveals Wakanda’s power to the world, ending centuries of isolationism. This inadvertently places Talokan at risk due to the world’s newly born hunger for vibranium. Namor insists that Wakanda form an alliance with Talokan and go on the offensive to protect their nations from any would-be invaders. Like Killmonger in the first film, he wishes to burn the world to save his people. If Queen Ramonda refuses the partnership, Namor says he will destroy Wakanda as a show of strength and go on to burn the world anyway.

Namor and the Talokan people are clearly Latin coded, descended from Mayans who took to the seas to avoid destruction and enslavement at the hands of white settlers. They do so using a plant that bears similar properties to the heart-shaped herb of the Black Panther. One can easily see the seams where Namor would have been set up as a mirror to T’Challa – superpowered protectors of their people with differing views on what protection means. Instead, Shuri must fill this role, and it becomes a story of the destructive power of vengeance and the need to work through grief.

Similar to Killmonger in the first film, Namor makes a good point. It is highly likely that (probably white) invaders will come to destroy his people in order to steal their resources. We have already seen similar attempts on Wakandan resources. It becomes a matter of whether these two nations of color will come to war with each other over their disagreement on how to deal with outside forces beyond their control.

These are heady, fascinating dilemmas, and no one but Coogler is infusing the big-budget Hollywood machine with these kinds of radical discussions and ideas. The reason Coogler’s antagonists – neither Killmonger nor Namor is a “villain” in the traditional sense – are the best in the MCU is because they are complicated and in many ways correct. They have a point of view. They are not kill-crazy mad men lusting for power. Their goals stem from real cultural and political ideologies that come into conflict with Wakanda’s sense of justice.

Other MCU films do not ask these kinds of questions. They are mostly about their protagonists learning to be heroes and dealing with the responsibilities of what that means. Though the plots often involve world-altering stakes, the themes are generally quite small in their ambitions. Among the rest, only Captain America: Civil War really even attempts to look outward and consider the political and social ramifications of these narratives.

Maybe that is a lot to lay at the feet of a piece of blockbuster ephemera. But more than any other director working in the MCU, Coogler seems to understand that these stories need not be ephemeral. Superhero movies are the westerns of our time – the dominant cultural force, encompassing both the film and TV worlds and crafting the iconography of the era. They feature larger-than-life heroes operating against clear villains in worlds of strict moral codes. The thing about westerns, though, is that most of them are forgotten, or at the very least not particularly well remembered.

The ones that stood the test of time were those that dealt with themes that resonate beyond the screen. Films like High Noon and The Ox-Bow Incident last because they are unafraid to delve into the murkiness of real life and the gray areas in which most people live. For whatever flaws the sequel has, both Black Panther films share this essential trait. So as other superhero flicks fade from memory, Coogler’s willingness to engage the audience in meaningful moral debate ensures that we will remember Wakanda – forever.

See it? Yes.

New Movie Review: TÁR

Just being mad does not make one a genius, nor does genius require that one be mad. Case in point: writer-director Todd Field and his latest creation, Lydia Tár. Field’s third film should leave no doubt that he is a genius of the cinema, but he is far from mad. Rather, in interviews, he comes off as humble and humbled by his unusually protracted Hollywood journey. Whereas for the titular protagonist of TÁR, portrayed with equal parts ferocity and precision by Cate Blanchett, her madness seems to grow as her genius comes into question.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves, and if there is one thing TÁR exudes, it is patience. So let’s begin at the beginning. We are introduced to Lydia Tár during a New Yorker conversation on stage in front of hundreds of – it would not be a stretch to call them – worshippers. Worshippers at the altar of high society. Worshippers at the altar of classical music. And worshippers at the altar of the great composer who claims before them that she controls time itself. As she will find, however, there is no more dangerous place to be than placed upon a pedestal.

Immediately after this, Lydia indulges the fawning of a fan in the lobby. In fact, she revels in it, both in the attention of a beautiful woman and in the flattery of her own brilliance. For Lydia, the two go hand in hand. She is hurried away by her assistant, Francesca (a perfectly seething Noémie Merlant), who has seen this act before. The maestro (not maestra, we are informed in the opening scene) is needed at lunch with a wealthy benefactor who hopes to learn her artistic secrets. He fancies himself an amateur conductor and wishes to see her notes. She refuses and suggests he lacks whatever alchemy produces great artists, an alchemy which she, of course, is certain she possesses.

Within three scenes, Field and Blanchett have established so much about their main character. She is a gifted self-promoter who feeds off the adoration of the crowd. She needs their love, but beyond that, she absolutely believes she deserves it and has earned it through her “genius.” And, possessed of this genius, she also feels it is hers to share with the crowd or withhold from a benefactor. With all of this firmly in mind, Field delivers the coup de grâce of his film’s first act.

Lydia delivers a guest lecture to a conducting class at Juilliard. A student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender conducts a piece by an unknown modern, female composer, of whom Lydia is instantly dismissive – most likely in the very manner the classical music establishment would have first dismissed her. She suggests the student give a try with some Bach. He demurs and says that he cannot in good conscience conduct a piece by a composer whose personal life was so reprehensible. She seems personally offended on Bach’s behalf, and what follows is a lengthy treatise on an age-old debate: Can we – and more importantly, should we – separate the art from the artist?

Of course, this is Lydia’s class, and she holds all the power. In front of a packed house – her favorite – she pokes, prods, and belittles the student who dared question Bach’s place in the pantheon. Her position: simply that it would be infantile to deny or disregard someone’s obvious genius based on his questionable personal life. Would not the student, she asks, want to be judged on his work and not his own private life? At this, he has had enough and angrily storms out of the classroom. Perhaps in Lydia’s eyes, she has won. But won what, and at what cost?

The rest of the film will engage with and deconstruct this argument, using Lydia Tár herself as the subject. We will come to learn of accusations of impropriety from a former protégé. We will witness acts of petty deceit and staggeringly poor judgment. We will see her treat those closest to her, including her partner, Sharon (a wonderful Nina Hoss), with coldness and ingratitude. We will watch her act in ways that would have future students refuse out of principle to engage with her work.

This would be fascinating enough to watch in and of itself, particularly with Blanchett’s wrecking ball of a performance at its center, but it would be somewhat trite. The argument between art and the artist, by now, is shopworn and a little boring. The trick of the film and what makes it a masterpiece is that Field is not interested in debating whether artistic genius excuses personal failings. He seeks to interrogate whether genius itself is a myth, and this becomes far more exciting to explore over the course of the film.

For the purposes of this investigation, it is immaterial if Lydia Tár is guilty of the specific charges levied against her, and Field smartly leaves it up to the audience to decide how much is true, how much is fabricated, and just how much we can believe any of the stakeholders. During a conversation with a retired composer and former mentor of hers, Lydia is told that these days, an accusation is as good as a conviction in the court of public opinion. The film’s final hour bears this out.

As Lydia’s world unravels, we learn more about what it took to fashion the mystique that surrounds her, and we begin to question how much is real and how much is smoke and mirrors. It is not by accident that in her moments of greatest self-doubt, Lydia lights a pair of candles to stare into her own reflection. In a late, standout scene that features Blanchett and Hoss going toe to toe to great effect, Sharon asks if Lydia remembers the politicking and maneuvering it took to place the conductor in her position of power.

You see, Sharon is the first chair violinist of the Berlin Philharmonic, which Lydia conducts. We learn in the film’s opening conversation that historically, orchestras once were led by the first chair violinist, something which Lydia deems highly illogical – of course, the conductor is vital to the orchestra! But, without Sharon, could Lydia have reached the heights she has? Indeed, without the musicians who sit before her, what would there be to conduct?

It is here that we should note Field’s fascinating opening gambit. Before that New Yorker conversation and before anything else, the film begins with its end credits played in reverse, culminating in the title card, “Written, produced, and directed by Todd Field.” Field has been coy in interviews as to the exact meaning behind his decision to start the film this way, but it certainly foregrounds the reality that it takes hundreds and hundreds of people to mount a movie. Field’s name may be most prominent in the credits, but his film could not exist without all the names that come before it.

It is a metatextual act of humility on Field’s part, the kind of humility Lydia Tár would be incapable of displaying. This humility is well earned and very real for Field, who has been out of the game for the better part of 16 years. Though he has directed many commercials, he has not had his name on a short, a documentary, an episode of television, or a feature film since the equally brilliant, though vastly different Little Children in 2006.

He has been attached to numerous projects over the years alongside fellow luminaries such as Joan Didion, Cormac McCarthy, and Jonathan Franzen, among others, but nothing ever came to fruition. If you ask Field how it is that TÁR came to be the project that finally made it happen, he will tell you he is just as surprised as anyone. The vagaries and whims of Hollywood, he suggests.

Whatever it was that brought Field back and TÁR to the big screen, the cinema is better for it. If genius exists, then Field has it, propped up as he is by the tremendous actors and many fine craftspeople – Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir foremost among them – who helped make this film happen. If, on the other hand, genius is a myth, then Field is doing a damn fine imitation.

See it? Yes.

Rise and Fall: The 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2022

Cate Blanchett, in Todd Field's TAR.

There are a few basic truths when compiling a list of the most anticipated movies of the fall. Chief among these is that the director rules. Nothing is more exciting than a new feature from a brilliant filmmaker, and this year offers an embarrassment of riches. Next: All buzz is good buzz. Most of the films below have debuted at one film festival or another, and the first round of critical notices is in – some good, some bad. The good reviews just make me more excited, and the bad ones just make me curious. The anticipation remains.

Nevertheless, great filmmakers sometimes make terrible films or, worse, middling, unmemorable films. Looking back over my previous “Most Anticipated” lists, the movies run the gamut from my personal top 10 and Best Picture winners to pure trash and everywhere in between. That is what is so exciting about anticipation. Before the film starts rolling, it could be anything. There is virtually no chance the following 10 films will end up as my top 10 of the year and a similarly slim chance that all 10 will even be good. But, right now, we don’t know. There is only hope.

This year, more than most, my hopes are high for the final four months of the year to deliver great cinema. This is primarily due to the fact that the first eight months have been mostly disappointing, with just one or two movies I would consider truly great. We need greatness back on screen, and though not all of these movies are likely to deliver that, they are the best chance we’ve got.

Before we get to the list, five more films I am excited to see in the rest of 2022: Laura Poitras’ Golden Bear-winning documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed; Andrew Dominik’s already-controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde; Sam Mendes’ Olivia Colman-starring ode to movie theaters Empire of Light; Steven Spielberg’s memoir on film The Fablemans; and Rian Johnson’s whodunnit sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Now, the 10 movies I cannot wait to be front row, center for this fall:

10. The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood

Release date: September 16

Viola Davis is such a tremendous actress, able to lose herself completely in characters, that I think we sometimes forget what a badass she can be on screen. But, if you look at her filmography, it is not short on action movies, thrillers, and good old-fashioned shoot-’em-ups. Steve McQueen’s excellent heist thriller Widows has probably been the shining example of this – until now.

With The Woman King, Prince-Bythewood appears to be unlocking the final level of Viola Davis Action Star. Based on the true story of a fierce band of women warriors in 1800s coastal Africa, Davis’ ascendance to the action throne is just one reason to be excited for this film. Beyond that, Prince-Bythewood seems to be telling a story of empowerment, determinism, and the eternal struggle to preserve one’s homeland, and there is never a bad time for this type of story.

9. White Noise, directed by Noah Baumbach

Release date: November 25

For someone of his stature, Baumbach’s resumé is quite a bit more uneven than it might seem at first. For every masterpiece like Frances Ha and The Squid and the Whale, there is a misfire or mediocrity like The Meyerowitz Stories or Mr. Jealousy. However, when he is on his A-game, there are few outside of Alexander Payne who can match his acerbic wit and dry, cutting observations on modern life. That said, White Noise is one heck of a curveball for the writer-director.

Starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, both on their fourth collaborations with the director, this is Baumbach’s first adaptation, and he has picked a doozy. The film is based on Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, which sees a college professor and his family facing down a potentially cataclysmic event. For a director who has always focused on smaller stories of human foibles and the like, it will be fascinating to see what Baumbach does with a story this grand and this strange. 

8. Avatar: The Way of Water, directed by James Cameron

Release date: December 16

What is there to say? We have waited 13 years for this, the sequel to the biggest movie of all time. Cameron is the king of spectacle, and of course, the first trailers are awe-inspiring, introducing audiences to previously unexplored parts of Pandora. There is no reason to believe the director of The Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens will not pull off something truly special here, and yet, that is what many people seem to believe right now.

Cameron faced similar doubt before he launched Titanic, formerly the biggest movie of all time before he topped it with Avatar, which faced even greater doubt. He works on scales few filmmakers could even imagine, both from a budgetary and a story standpoint. He is synonymous with success, innovation, and entertainment. To doubt him is to risk being made the fool, and that is a risk I am unwilling to take. Give me my popcorn, show me to my seat, and bring it on.

7. Decision to Leave, directed by Park Chan-wook

Release date: October 14

Admittedly, I had been a bit of a Park novice until last year. Of course, I had seen Oldboy many years prior, and I loved The Handmaiden when I saw it in theaters, and I enjoyed his section of the Korean horror omnibus Three … Extremes. But, I had only scratched the surface. Last summer, I finally caught up with the first two parts of his vengeance trilogy – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance – as well as his unique take on the vampire mythos, Thirst.

Each film was impressive, surprising, and invigorating. I look forward to diving further into his filmography and that includes my excitement for his latest feature, which has already been submitted as the Korean entry for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards. It received widespread acclaim when it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Park won his first best director award at the festival. 

6. Women Talking, directed by Sarah Polley

Release date: December 2

Polley’s last film was the excellent experimental documentary Stories We Tell, in which she examined the ways we alter and obscure our personal histories to suit the narratives we need to believe about our lives. It was raw, it was honest, and it was uncompromising. It seems likely all three of those words will be used to describe her newest feature, about a group of women in a religious colony who must reconcile their beliefs with the reality of their existence.

The subject matter is likely to be a major talking about around this film, which deals heavily with sexual assault, and it will almost certainly be a difficult sit for most audiences. But in her three previous features, Polley has proven herself uniquely attuned to the tone and purpose of her message, and there may be no working filmmaker more likely to treat the material with the care and consideration it deserves. All of this is not to mention a ludicrously stacked cast that includes Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, and Ben Whishaw.

5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, directed by Ryan Coogler

Release date: November 11

The original Black Panther film was a cultural force almost without equal. It became one of the highest grossing films of all time, it breathed fresh life into a stale genre of films, and it spoke to and for a massive and massively underserved filmgoing audience. It would be asking too much to expect the sequel to reach those heights, but if anyone can make it happen, it would be Coogler.

I do hope he gets away from the superhero genre sooner rather than later, and his historic Best Picture Oscar nomination last year for Judas and the Black Messiah suggests he has his eyes firmly set on the kind of stories he wants to tell. I hope Wrong Answer, his long gestating film about the Atlanta test score scandal, comes to pass. And, I hope he has a blank check to make whatever he wants forever on the back of his MCU success. But for now, superheroes or not, whatever Coogler makes, I am 100 percent in.

4. Bardo (False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths), directed Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Release date: November 18

Iñárritu’s past two films (Birdman and The Revenant) topped this list in their respective years, and there is good reason for that. No one is making films as interesting or as inventive on the same kind of grand scale Iñárritu does. Early reports suggest this is no less grand and no less inventive. And, honestly, it is evidence of the special fall ahead of us that this film clocks in at just No. 4 on this list. 

It should be mentioned that those early reports out of multiple film festivals have been scathing, at least on the critical side of things. Critics have labeled it a mess, a slog, and a self-important, self-indulgent disaster. However, Iñárritu’s fellow filmmakers have sung his praises, with luminaries such as Chloé Zhao, Barry Jenkins, and Lulu Wang declaring it a masterpiece. There was a similar split between artists and critics on the receptions for Birdman and The Revenant, which likely explains why Iñárritu won Best Director for both films despite critical misgivings. For me, Iñárritu has earned the benefit of the doubt.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh

Release date: October 21

McDonagh took a lot of flack for his last feature, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, and its handling of race in America. And though I liked that film immensely, it probably was ambitious for an Irish filmmaker, no matter how intelligent and talented, to try to tackle such thorny topics as police brutality and systemic racism in the rural US. With The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh is firmly in his own milieu.

Reuniting with In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, McDonagh’s latest has received glowing notices out of the festivals, with some hailing it as the writer-director’s finest achievement yet. Considering In Bruges remains one of my favorite films of all time and the first trailer suggests something altogether strange and unexpected, it would be hard to imagine being more excited for a film.

And yet, there are two more features to speak of:

2. Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben Östlund

Release date: October 7

Only 10 filmmakers in history have multiple Palmes d’Or. Just three of those filmmakers won for consecutive films. Billie August won for Pelle the Conqueror in 1988 and The Best Intentions in 1992. Michel Haneke won for The White Ribbon in 2009 and Amour in 2012. And now, Östlund has won his second in a row, following up 2017’s The Square with this year’s similarly geometrically concerned Triangle of Sadness. Including his 2014 international breakthrough Force Majeure, it is safe to say Östlund makes event movies for the arthouse crowd.

Taking aim directly at the moneyed elite and the implicit contradictions and hypocrisies of the modern economic system, Östlund’s film takes places on a doomed luxury cruiseliner. The setting and story are ripe with possibilities for skewering the upper classes, and Östlund is a filmmaker who has never shied away from that kind of skewering, whether it be with a scalpel or a broadsword and often both at the same time.

1. TÁR, directed by Todd Field

Release date: October 7

The man. The myth. The legend. 

By coincidence, many of the filmmakers on this list are returning from extended absences. Neither Östlund nor McDonagh has made a film in five years. It has been seven years for Iñárritu between The Revenant and Bardo. Polley had not made a feature for 10 years before Women Talking, and of course, Cameron has been working for 13 years on his Avatar sequel. But, none has been gone as long as Todd Field.

An actor best known for a supporting role in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Field made his feature filmmaking debut in 2001 with the Best Picture-nominated In the Bedroom. He followed that up in 2006 with Little Children, to my mind, and without caveat or reservation, one of the finest films of the 21st century. In the 16 years since, he has not directed a single film, nor has he helmed an episode of television. He has simply been gone.

Sure, he has been attached to any number of intriguing projects over the years with big names such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonathan Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, and the like, but none has come to fruition. His explanation to the New York Times in an interview earlier this year: He often sets his sights on productions that are, by their very nature, difficult to get made. 

On paper, TÁR would also seem to be an inherently difficult-to-make project, yet here we are, less than a month away from the long-awaited return of one of my favorite filmmakers in the game. It does not hurt anticipation that the early reviews out of the festival circuit are raves or that star Cate Blanchett reportedly delivers the finest performance of a career filled with fine performances or that the exquisite trailer promises a psychological drama of the highest order. It all adds up to my most anticipated movie of the year – hell, of any year in a long time.

All Over But The Shouting: 2021 Oscars Wrap-up Part II

For an Oscars season and Academy Awards ceremony as strange and eventful as we just experienced, it felt necessary to break the wrap-up into parts. In Part I, we covered the actual award winners and their speeches. In Part II, we are talking about the ceremony itself. And, for Part III, the controversy around the Will Smith-Chris Rock altercation.

We are not going to talk about the slap here. We all know it happened, and that’s what the third part of this series is about. For this, I want to talk about the other three hours and 40 minutes of a broadcast that was, at times, embarrassing to watch but mostly just dull. 

It was always going to be bad. From the minute the Academy announced it would award eight categories before the show, it was clear this would not be an event for people who care about movies. That was further made clear by the decision to include two fan-voted “awards” on the broadcast – segments that went over about as well as you would imagine.

There was never going to be a version of this show for movie lovers. Still, I was unprepared for just how hostile it would be to the art of filmmaking and how insulting it would be to fans of that art.

Let’s start with the obvious and go from there: the eight awards presented prior to the broadcast. During the actual show, we got truncated clip packages for each category and edited speeches from each of the winners. Later, as the show was stretching well past the three-hour mark, it was reasonable to question why this even happened. The ceremony ran more than 20 minutes longer than last year’s show, which included all the categories and cut off no speeches. And, what did we get in trade? Nothing of value.

During the run up to the show, we said the calculus would be: If you are cutting eight categories from the show, every moment of the show needs to justify that decision. Otherwise, we loyal viewers will be left constantly asking: We gave up eight categories for this? I expected to ask that question, but I did not expect it to be the theme of the show.

Some culprits were clear and others more subtle. There was, of course, the excruciatingly long James Bond 60th anniversary package, introduced by three extreme sports athletes. I think Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater, and Shaun White are cool, but they don’t have anything to do with movies, and they certainly don’t have anything to do with 007. A 60th anniversary tribute is nonsensical in the first place, but if you insist on having one, perhaps invite one of the dozens of performers in the audience who has been involved in the series to introduce it.

Shockingly, that wasn’t even the worst “anniversary” tribute of the night. That would have to be the 50th anniversary tribute to The Godfather, generally regarded as one of the five or 10 best movies ever made. That was a Best Picture winner celebrating a milestone anniversary, so I at least get the thinking behind a tribute, but that seems to be the extent of the thought put into it. 

First and foremost, yes, The Godfather came out in 1972, and this is 2022, meaning it has been 50 years since the film came out. But, these are the awards for the films of 2021, and the ceremony at which The Godfather won Best Picture took place in 1973, meaning for Oscars purposes, this was the film’s 49th anniversary. But, maybe I am the only one who cares about that.

Second, like the extreme sports intro to the Bond tribute, why did Sean “Diddy” Combs introduce this tribute? There was not one performer or filmmaker available to talk about the influence of The Godfather on their work? We had to resort to a music artist?

Then, there was the clip package itself, which included scenes from all three Godfather films, the second and third of which were celebrating their 48th and 32nd anniversaries, respectively. I also didn’t see anyone else mention this, but the spoken dialogue in the package mostly came from the third film, generally agreed to be the worst of the series and also not the movie being celebrated.

Finally, there was the appearance of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola with legendary actors Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (who, of course, only appears in the second film of the trilogy). This should have been the biggest moment of the night, and it was positioned that way – a Godfather reunion taking place toward the tail end of the show. Some of this is not the Academy’s fault – the slap having taken the wind out the sails for everything to come after – but the shoddiness of this tribute was truly appalling. 

Coppola delivered brief, relatively perfunctory remarks, thanking author Mario Puzo and producer Robert Evans, and Pacino and De Niro didn’t speak at all. Why on earth would you invite two of the most legendary actors in Hollywood history onto the stage and not invite them to say even one word? It boggles the mind.

Now, those are a lot of words spent breaking down what was ultimately a pretty small part of the show – its smallness being problematic in and of itself – but that one segment was emblematic of the lack of care and consideration put into any part of the show. The producers wanted to give the appearance of loving movies without apparently loving movies.

That lack of reverence for the art supposedly being celebrated extended to what is usually among the most powerful moments of any Oscars broadcast: the In Memoriam. I have complained in the past when the Academy has prefaced the In Memoriam segment with a song performance, which is then followed by another song performance to accompany the tribute to the artists who died in the past year. I would take that presentation in a heartbeat over what we got.

We got dancing. A choir. Two relatively up-tempo music numbers. I understand the inclination toward a celebration of life rather than perhaps a quieter, more somber affair, but this I did not understand. It was tone deaf and sad in all the wrong ways.

The hosts were fine. Some of the jokes were okay, though the animation branch is right to be offended by the presenters positioning animated films as something only children enjoy – a particularly galling assertion in a year with Flee nominated. It is as though the folks writing the intros didn’t watch the movies – I would be very surprised if they did. Moreover, it felt like the producers did not watch any of the movies, or at least, they did not put on a show that felt like it cared about the nominated films.

Which brings us to the final point I want to make: the Twitter “awards.” Opening up anything of this nature to the wider world to vote on is generally a mistake. See the Boaty McBoatface saga. For the Academy – an organization that could charitably be described as “not tech savvy” – to jump into the cesspool of Twitter and think that anything good would come out of it was naive at best and self-destructive at worst.

First up was #OscarsCheerMoment, which for whatever reason seemed to cover all movies ever, not just films from 2021. This made an already inane exercise shockingly useless. To the degree the producers and ABC wanted this, they got what they wanted: about 2 minutes of out-of-context superhero footage, capped by the revelation that the most cheerworthy moment in the history of cinema was when The Flash entered the Speed Force in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a movie that never actually played in theaters.

If that all sounds like gibberish, that is precisely what it felt like in the moment, and the most cheerworthy moment of all time was rightly greeted by icy silence in the room of mostly accomplished artists. Later, Snyder’s Army of the Dead, a zombie movie released and quickly forgotten on Netflix, won the #OscarsFanFavorite “award,” proving only that Snyder’s fans are the most obnoxious and well organized of fandoms on the internet. More silence in the room.

It is exactly this kind of lowest-common-denominator, squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease thinking that is destroying the movie industry. That is why the box office results look the way they do. That is why the films nominated for the Academy Awards are so little seen. There is assumed to be no money in challenging the audience, in giving them something new and interesting. Great films are marketed like rare jewels, available only to the few, while the industry caters exclusively to those consumers who shout the loudest.

Ratings were up 6 million viewers from last year, a nearly 60 percent increase over the all-time low of the 2021 ceremony, which attracted just 10.4 million viewers. The Academy will likely tout the changes it made as a cause of the increase, but it seems unlikely ABC will consider the second-lowest ratings in the history of the show a win, leaving the future of the broadcast up in the air. This probably was not the end of the Oscars. But, it sure felt like the beginning of the end.