20 Times the Oscars Got It Wrong

Some feel the sting of an Oscar snub and move on (“It was truly an honor to be nominated,” etc.). The regular nominees (the Blanchetts, the DiCaprios) notch acting nods, lose (widely smiling for the broadcast), lose again (smiling less), but we all know, eventually, they’ll get one. Then, there are the truly egregious career-long snubs. Currently, the list of these crimes of the Academy is topped by Glenn Close, who has gone decades since her 1982-84 hat trick of best supporting actress nominations (for The World According to Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural) left her empty-handed. The Academy’s crimes against Close worsened three years later when she was passed over for her iconic turns in 1987’s Fatal Attraction and 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons. When the Emmys recognized Close, handing her back-to-back wins for Damages, the Academy came back for her, only to deny Close wins for 2011’s Albert Nobbs, The Wife in 2018 and Hillbilly Elegy in 2020. And the runner-up, with fewer nominations than Close but equally robbed in her years when nominated, is Annette Bening, whose performances in the 1990 thriller The Grifters, iconic work in the era-defining classic American Beauty, career-best performance in Being Julia and universally praised work on The Kids Are Alright left her statue-less as well (incidentally, two of these losses were to Hilary Swank). Last year, Bening was denied again for her grueling performance as swimmer Diana Nyad in Nyad; we can’t help but wonder which stung worse — the jellyfish at her feet during the shoot or the inevitable, eventual Oscar snub. — Kevin Dolak

Contrary to popular belief, accolades should not be thrown at whichever biopic emerges the strongest in any given year (someone should tell the Academy that). But Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022) was raucous and substantive. Its star, Austin Butler — who landed the role at just 27 — learned karate, tap and swing dancing, had movement and dialect coaching for months on end and perfected the icon’s laugh, vocals and mannerisms. Sure, he became the laughing stock of the internet with his lingering “Elvis voice,” but when the leather suit came on and Luhrmann yelled action, that was Elvis Presley. Maybe Butler was too shiny — after all, he had not yet weathered the storms of stardom, and Brendan Fraser, who took home best actor for The Whale, needed to know Hollywood still had his back. But on performance alone? That Oscar should have been Butler’s. — Lily Ford

It’s a gripe heard for 20 years, but few wrong-headed Academy choices rankle as corrosively as the best picture win of Paul Haggis’ Crash, a race-relations drama that announces its Importance with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. What deepens the sting is that the win came at the expense of Brokeback Mountain, which won for the aching sensitivity of Ang Lee’s direction; screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s exquisitely crafted adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story; and Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting score. While Crash felt instantly dated, Brokeback hasn’t aged a day. Its portrait of the decades-spanning secret entwinement of two cowboys, played with raw yearning by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, remains among the all-time great screen love stories. The feeling that the Academy wasn’t ready to hand its highest honor to a queer neo-Western was amplified by homophobic comments from old-guard members like Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis, declaring that John Wayne would have despised it. — David Rooney

David Lynch didn’t need an Oscar to go down as one of American film history’s greatest and most idiosyncratic directors. His surreal, dreamlike films — Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway — will stand the test of time on their own, delighting, perplexing and maddening generations to come. But, man, it would have been nice if the Academy Awards had honored him for one of those titles anyway, and 2002 would have been an ideal year. By that point, Lynch had already been nominated and lost out for best director twice, for The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, and with Mulholland Drive, he had managed to not only scrape together a film from a failed ABC pilot but also to craft one of the most haunting stories about the Hollywood dream machine ever produced. With no disrespect to the great Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind isn’t going the distance like that. And while it’s nice the Academy gave an honorary Oscar to Lynch in 2020 before he died this year, it’s a shame the institution didn’t recognize him for arguably his most iconic and enduring L.A. film. Silencio forever. — Katie Kilkenny

Hoop Dreams changed nonfiction storytelling. Steve James’ 1994 documentary told of two inner-city Chicago teenagers who commute daily to a suburban prep school with hopes of making it to the NBA. Starting as a 30-minute PBS special, the project soon blossomed into a five-year odyssey and feature documentary that culminated in a top prize at Sundance. It then became a cultural phenomenon. The film took in more than $11 million at the box office ($24 million in today’s dollars). Roger Ebert called it “one of the best films about American life I have ever seen.” And documentary and even reality television would come to borrow its techniques of following characters on a journey with an unknown outcome. So how did the film not even get nominated for a documentary Oscar? Many film fans were asking the question — so much so that the snub eventually led the Academy to open up its doc nominating process to a much wider group that prevents such oversights from happening as often today. — Steven Zeitchik

The Lego Movie was fun and funny, fast-paced and featured one of the most catchy songs to ever come out of film (“Everything Is Awesome!!!” by Tegan and Sara featuring The Lonely Island. Just try getting that out of your head now). Yet the film — something truly original and never before seen in theaters — wasn’t even nominated for best animated movie, a category it should’ve won (Big Hero 6 ultimately prevailed). Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s 2014 movie holds up after multiple viewings, several years later (it even earned a sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, and spawned The Lego Batman Movie). With appearances by other pop-culture characters in the Lego universe (Superman and Green Lantern share a funny moment) and inside jokes about other franchises (Batman steals the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive and the ship gets swallowed by the giant asteroid slug), The Lego Movie manages to be smart, irreverent, sentimental and a crowd-pleaser all at once. — Kimberly Nordyke

Sure, there are worthy exceptions (Sophia Loren for Two Women, Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose) and questionable ones (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful, Jean Dujardin for The Artist). But Oscar’s limited recognition of performances not in English fuels fresh indignation pretty much every year. Remember best picture winner Parasite scoring the SAG ensemble award without garnering a single Oscar nom for its cast, not even Korean screen giant Song Kang-ho? Or Drive My Car’s shattering lead Hidetoshi Nishijima being passed over the year that, ahem, Will Smith won for King Richard — the same year Renate Reinsve was egregiously overlooked for The Worst Person in the World. Few contemporary directors can nurture such sumptuously emotional work from their actors as Pedro Almodóvar. That made it a crime when Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers lost to Jessica Chastain’s chewy turn in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and I’d argue that the soulful interiority of Antonio Banderas’ work in Pain and Glory was every bit the equal of Joaquin Phoenix’s tortured physicality in Joker. Don’t even get me started on Isabelle Huppert, who gave the performance of the year in Elle but lost to Emma Stone in La La Land. — David Rooney

I grew up with parents who showed me films that get celebrated on Oscar night, and babysitters who exposed me to films that become attractions at Halloween Horror Nights. In 1982, I was a well-rounded, cultured 7-year-old film lover, splitting my TV time between Scooby-Doo and Siskel & Ebert. Our beloved 49ers just won Super Bowl XVI, and an equally beloved film of mine (and yours) — Raiders of the Lost Ark — held several Oscar nominations in its fedora. Sure, there was Reds, with Warren and Jack, and On Golden Pond, with Kate, Henry and Jane, but when a synth-pop-scored, stale biscuit of a movie called Chariots of Fire (which my parents took me to see) streaked in to steal best picture, my 7-year-old heart broke for the first time. Sure, Raiders won art direction, editing, VFX and both sound awards, but 7-year-olds just don’t dig the boutique categories. — Jason Head

There have been myriad music biopics that have either received Oscar nominations and/or won the golden statuette, including Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, Walk the Line, Ray and Rocketman. And while they’re all worthy films with great performances, there’s another music biopic seemingly excluded from the golden party, and one centered on a female singer who continues to have a legacy to this day: Gregory Nava’s 1997 film Selena. It has been 27 years since now-superstar multihyphenate Jennifer Lopez was on the brink of superstardom with her turn as Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Portraying someone so beloved who faced a tragic ending is no easy feat, but Lopez seemingly portrayed the singer with ease and perfection. From perfecting Selena’s dances to donning her iconic outfits and exuding her fun personality, Lopez not only committed to the role but was dedicated to ensuring Selena was portrayed as accurately as possible (Lopez even stayed in Selena’s family home at the time to prepare for the role). Despite being a film that continues to make an impact today, whether it be re-airings on cable and streaming services or inspiring other projects (Netflix’s Selena: The Series), neither Lopez nor the film got any recognition at the 1998 Academy Awards. The snub hurts more given the film was led by a Latin woman, centered on a Latin singer, her family and fan base and had a Latin director and team. Then because of the film, Lopez became the first Latina actress to earn $1 million for a movie role. It was such groundbreaking moment in film, especially given how common it was then and even today to see a lack of Latin films starring Latin actors, that it’s a snub that still doesn’t sit right. — Lexy Perez

Jamie Lee Curtis beat some tough competition at the 2023 Oscars when she took home best supporting actress for playing an IRS inspector in Everywhere All at Once. So tough, in fact, that she arguably should not have won in the first place. Curtis’ own co-star, Stephanie Hsu, was also nominated for her performance as Joy Wang and villainous alter ego Jobu Tupaki. With 25 more minutes of screen time, Hsu’s performance was more compelling, more central to the movie’s plot and, quite frankly, more unique — Curtis wasn’t bad, per se, but we’ve seen her play these characters elsewhere (The Bear, The Last Showgirl). Angela Bassett also shared the nomination that year, recognized for her work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Bassett carried the Marvel follow-up to Chadwick Boseman’s death with grace and strength, and her loss alongside Hsu’s (and fellow nominee Hong Chau) left many decrying the Academy. — Zoe G. Phillips

What exactly does the Academy want out of a best picture contender? What are the ingredients of the secret sauce? Is boundless imagination not among them? Or superlative craftsmanship? Or a perfectly balanced emulsion of pathos and comedy? I’m asking because I genuinely can’t fathom why no Terry Gilliam film has ever been nominated for the top prize. Not Brazil (1985), Gilliam’s still all-too-relevant maximalist dystopia, not his bonkers modern fairy tale The Fisher King (1991). But the most maddening snub, for me, is the omission of 1989’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a surreal, emotionally rich, breathtakingly ornate rococo fantasy that contains some of the most memorable images ever put to film (including a never-more-beautiful Uma Thurman as Botticelli’s Venus, and a giant rising from the sea with a three-masted ship for a hat …). The movie went way over budget (no wonder, given the opulence onscreen) and underperformed at the box office despite great reviews. It was, perhaps unfairly, written off as a financial disaster, which helps explain why it got no love at the Oscars, which are after all an industry award. Yet one can understand Gilliam’s confusion about the Academy’s criteria. “The Oscars mean very little — look who wins!” the Monty Python veteran told my colleague Seth Abramovitch on his podcast, It Happened in Hollywood. “I don’t understand what the judgment of the Academy members is. It seems to be all over the place.” Munchausen may be the story of the world’s greatest liar, but its creator speaks the truth. — Julian Sancton

Sometimes somebody wins an Oscar and it’s ridiculous, but you think, “Well, it was a weird year and they had to give the thing to SOMEBODY.” If Roberto Benigni had won his best actor Oscar in one of those years, you’d shrug and go, “Well, everybody loved his schtick for a few months.” But Benigni was always going to win what was then the “foreign language” Oscar for Life Is Beautiful and his broad, mawkish performance won lead actor in a year in which his competition was: Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters, Nick Nolte in Affliction and Edward Norton in American History X. Those are four all-timer performances, three of them from actors who, to date, still have never won. That’s criminal. — Daniel Fienberg

I saw Titanic when it came out in theaters at Christmastime in 1997. I was 21 and got swept up in the epic-ness of it and the romance between Rose and Jack. Newly in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, I vowed to watch every movie he ever made. When the Oscars rolled around in March 1998, I was happy to see Titanic win so many awards, including best picture. It wasn’t until after the Oscars that I realized how wrong the Academy was. I didn’t catch L.A. Confidential while it was playing in theaters, but I rented it on VHS about a month after the awards. I was riveted from the start. The world that it built — exploring the underbellies of Hollywood and the LAPD in 1950s Los Angeles — with such incredible costumes, sets, cinematography and writing was thrilling. And every actor gave an Oscar-caliber performance. Seeing this movie was a milestone in my film education. Titanic was a blockbuster, but L.A. Confidential was the superior film. Thank goodness it was recognized with the best supporting actress (for Kim Basinger) and best adapted screenplay awards, but the fact that it was snubbed for best picture is a true Hollywood scandal. — Jennifer Levin

A drama about the pains of divorce versus a cinematic opus that frames the Vietnam War in its darkest days, the competition for the best picture Oscar in 1979 mirrored major cultural shifts: the women’s lib movement and the domestic fallout from a war that took place thousands of miles away. In a sense, both tackled the realities of a new America, where faith in old standbys like the nuclear family and duty to country were shattered. The two films featured marquee names — Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer; Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen and Dennis Hopper for Apocalypse Now — but Francis Ford Coppola, coming off an Oscar win for The Godfather Part II in 1974, seemed primed for recognition in delivering a visceral, almost psychedelic epic that explored madness, imperialism and the very nature of war. 

Alas, Academy voters found Kramer’s themes of shifting gender roles in parenthood to be especially timely given the rise in divorce rates during the 1970s. And four years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War still felt like a raw wound for American audiences. Which is to say, Kramer was accessible while Apocalypse Now was a downright terrifying theatrical experience. Time has told a different story, though. Widely regarded as a grand cinematic feat, Apocalypse Now has far eclipsed Kramer vs. Kramer in cultural legacy (what was once seen as a progressive portrayal of fatherhood feels somewhat imbalanced now), often appearing in lists of the greatest films ever made despite having won only two Oscars (cinematography and sound) to Kramer’s five. The horror. — Shirley Halperin

I know this is a common one, but the Oscars got it wrong the year Toni Collette didn’t get any recognition for her role in the 2018 horror movie Hereditary. She’s incredible in that movie! Every time I watch it, I’m exhausted by the end, not only from being mentally scarred and terrified but also from witnessing Collette physically and emotionally drain herself. I particularly love the tense dinner scene between her, her husband and her son. Her (spoiler alert) daughter has just been tragically killed and she’s so heartbroken and outraged over her grief that she stands and screams at them both with a ferocity only Collette could conjure up. It’s sad and scary all at once. I can’t believe she didn’t get nominated for that scene alone! Honestly, I think the Oscars could recognize more horror in general. There’s no reason for them to be … scared! — Mitchell Brown

The Dark Knight. Inception. Interstellar. These were three of the most ambitious, technically challenging films of the century so far. They proved that Christopher Nolan was the undisputed top director of his generation, what Spielberg or Scorsese were before him. Yet even after 2009, when the Academy expanded its best picture category from five to as many as 10 nominees in response to the uproar offer The Dark Knight’s best picture snub, it failed to recognize filmmaker Nolan in the best director category for any of these movies. It took nearly a decade after The Dark Knight for the Academy to wake up and give him a nom. And it took Nolan making an “Oscars movie,” the World War II drama Dunkirk, to get the job done. — Aaron Couch

I remember leaving the movies after watching Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and feeling like I’d just seen the coolest mover ever. It was so meta and layered, funny and thought-provoking, and impressively crafted to move seemingly in one take. It felt so daring — and a huge reason the film was able to hit the mark was Michael Keaton. Not only because of his performance but because the audience already had the collective knowledge of his actual career — the “Batman” of it all — which added to the surrealism. Keaton’s portrayal of a washed-up Hollywood actor, potentially not too dissimilar from himself, was self-aware, stirring and quite entertaining. Birdman landed Keaton his first ever Oscar nomination for best actor, and he was the frontrunner after winning the Golden Globes. It felt like it was his time, and yet, he went home empty-handed. Eddie Redmayne won for the Theory of Everything — a film that was fine, but certainly no Birdman and definitely not memorable. Does anyone even remember it? Birdman even won best picture that year! And so I say Michael Keaton was robbed. — Lesley Corral

A time when the Oscars got it wrong was when Inception lost best picture to The King’s Speech in 2011. Some would argue that if any film should have won that year, it should have been The Social Network or Black Swan, to which I would say “honestly, fair,” and I would have loved to see either of those two films win. However, as more time passes (pun intended), the more Inception’s legacy is cemented. To this day, people still argue over the final scene and reference the film when encountered with other cinematic ambiguous endings. The film entered our lexicon, launching a thousand portmanteaus with the suffix -ception tacked on to the end of words to incorrectly describe a thing within a thing. While the semantic shift of the word “inception” does not equate to meriting a best picture win, there is no denying that the film certainly had a larger cultural impact. — Naomy Perdoza

Amy Adams may not exactly be struggling for Academy recognition, given that she’s been nominated six times over the past 20 years. But that just makes it more perplexing to me that the one time she was passed over was for 2016’s Arrival, possibly the very best work of her entire career. True, her performance in Denis Villeneuve’s cerebral sci-fi is not the showy sort that Oscar voters are so often accused of favoring. Her Louise’s emotions are muted under layers of loneliness and loss, and precision-calibrated for a twisty structure that changes our interpretation of her as the film progresses. But even from under all that restraint, Adams never fails to connect with us, to bring us into Louise’s wonder or worry or longing. Adams carries the film successfully enough, in fact, that the Academy deemed it worthy of eight other nominations (though it won only sound editing). But maybe that, in itself, was the problem: Her performance is so seamless and lived-in that it lends the film an inevitability, as if its great achievement was always going to unfold in exactly this way. — Angie Han