What Oppenheimer's Oscar Wins Say About The Current State Of The Academy

Heading into Sunday's ceremony, it was clear that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' membership was quite fond of Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer." The three-hour biopic fell one nod short of tying "Titanic," "La La Land," and "All About Eve" for the most Oscar nominations ever received by a single film.

With its numerous wins, let there be no mistake: A huge chunk of the Academy found Nolan's achievement undeniable at just about every artistic and technical level. As for what this says about the state of the Academy in 2024, that's a trickier assessment.

For years, AMPAS was rightly criticized for its deplorable lack of diversity in its membership and seeming disinterest in doing anything to rectify the situation. This changed (albeit slowly) after a 2012 Los Angeles Times study showed that the Academy was 94% white and 77% male. That no one was terribly surprised by these numbers only compounded the embarrassment. If the Academy wanted to truly celebrate the finest cinematic work of each year, the organization had to broaden its ranks to include more people of color and, well, non-dudes.

AMPAS eventually instituted a diversity initiative that has noticeably addressed these concerns, yet a 2022 study revealing the Academy was still 81% white and 67% male showed there is still a great deal of work to be done. And while each of the eight major categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Original Screenplay, and Adapted Screenplay) included at least one non-white nominee, there was still an overall preponderance of whiteness.

With this in mind, what does "Oppenheimer" bringing home so many Oscars say about the Academy other than a film packed with white people was favored by a membership that is overwhelmingly white?

For starters, we'll never know what the vote tally for "Oppenheimer" looked like demographically because AMPAS understandably does not reveal who voted for what. I do think they could make the competition more interesting to the general public if they released vote totals, but the leadership has consistently resisted this.

Most of these wins were foregone conclusions when "Oppenheimer" hit theaters in July. There was a glimmer of hope at the time that the Barbenheimer phenomenon would lead to a heated awards competition between the two vastly different movies, but Greta Gerwig's very funny and beautifully crafted film just couldn't get significant prestige traction over the last few months. When Gerwig and Margot Robbie failed to make the final five for, respectively, Best Director and Best Actress, that was all she wrote for "Barbie" in the main categories.

Once again, the Academy demonstrated its tiresome preference for seriousness over fun (though "Barbie" had much more on its mind than a good time).

That the big, sobering movie that did big box office won big at the Oscars shouldn't come as a surprise — particularly at a moment fraught with worry over declining theater attendance in the Covid age. And this, I think, is the big takeaway from Oppie's big night.

After the lengthy SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes (which were needlessly prolonged by greedy/clownish film and television executives), the film industry is desperate to get moviegoers going to movies again. No more of this wait-until-streaming nonsense. Buy yourself a ticket, splurge on overpriced concessions, and watch a movie on the big screen as its director intended. Because without a healthy theatrical release window, the movies will get smaller and, in a way, less magical.

No movie delivered that big-screen sensation more ecstatically than "Oppenheimer." Even though much of the film is dialogue-driven, when Nolan unleashed the fiery spectacle, audiences were reminded just how awesome, transporting, and downright terrifying a gargantuan film from a terrific director can be.

"Please go back to the movies!" If AMPAS is sending any kind of collective message in 2024, this is most certainly it. Would it have been nice to see Celine Song's bittersweet triumph "Past Lives" win Best Picture this year? Of course! But wins for "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "Nomadland," "Parasite," "The Shape of Water," and "Moonlight" indicate the Academy (and, perhaps, the industry in general) is, if not as diverse as it should be, getting less white. Right now, it is of equal concern for all of AMPAS' 10,000-plus members to save the art form they love.