92nd Academy Awards

Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger ().[13]

The Academy held its 11th Annual Governors Awards ceremony on October 27, 2019, and presented the following four awards:[6]

• David Lynch
• Wes Studi
• Lina Wertmüller

• Geena Davis

The presenters for the 92nd Academy Awards were:[15]

Musical performances at the ceremony were:[16]

Forty-eight nominations went to 15 films on the list of the year's 50 top-grossing movies. Only Toy Story 4 (5th), Joker (9th), Knives Out (15th), How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (16th), 1917 (17th), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (20th), Ford v Ferrari (22nd), Little Women (28th), and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (46th) were nominated for Best Picture, Best Animated Feature or any of the directing, acting or screenwriting awards. The other top 50 box-office hits that earned nominations were Avengers: Endgame (1st), The Lion King (2nd), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (3rd), Frozen II (4th), Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (24th), and Rocketman (33rd).

The show opened with a comedy routine featuring Steve Martin and Chris Rock; following the host-less ceremony from the prior year, ABC's vice president of special programming Rob Mills said they felt it was tradition to open the ceremony with a bit of comedy before starting the awards.[22]

The performance of "Into the Unknown" from Frozen II featured Idina Menzel and Aurora joined by nine of Elsa's voice actresses from international dubs of the film.[23] Up-and-coming actors such as Beanie Feldstein, Kelly Marie Tran, Anthony Ramos, Utkarsh Ambudkar and George MacKay were used introduce some of the veteran presenters, an idea by producers Lynette Howell Taylor and Stephanie Allain to highlight inclusion within the Hollywood community.[22]

James Corden and Rebel Wilson presented the award for Best Visual Effects dressed in cat costumes to satirize their starring roles in Cats — a film critically-panned for its visual effects, among other factors — and told the audience "As cast members of the motion picture Cats, nobody more than us understands the importance of good visual effects."; Mills said Corden had come up with this idea.[22] The next day, February 10, the Visual Effects Society issued a statement criticizing Corden and Wilson's act, commenting that "[t]he best visual effects in the world will not compensate for a story told badly".[24][25]

Another highlight of the ceremony was Eminem's surprise performance of "Lose Yourself". The song had been nominated for and ultimately won Best Original Song in 2003,[26] but Eminem declined to attend the ceremony due to his lack of confidence that the song would actually win, among other factors.[27] The idea of bringing Eminem back originated from Mills and the Academy, wanting to keep a "high energy" musical act in line with Justin Timberlake and Queen + Adam Lambert's opening performances during the 89th and 91st Academy Awards, respectively, as well as to find a way to give Eminem a chance to perform his winning song. Further, Eminem found the opportunity timely as he had just released a new album, Music to Be Murdered By. The performance was a closely-held secret by the ceremony's producers, and Eminem was reportedly given the option to drop out of the show if word of the performance leaked, and thus was scheduled in mid-ceremony rather than as an opening act so that if he did back out, it would not have disrupted the program.[28][22]

When accepting the award for Best Director, Bong Joon Ho, stated, "When I was young and studying cinema, there was a saying that I carved deep into my heart, which is, the most personal is the most creative." He then said that this quote had come from "our great Martin Scorsese", which prompted the audience to give Scorsese an enthusiastic standing ovation.[29][30]

As Kwak Sin-ae, CEO of Barunson E&A and producer of Parasite, finished her acceptance speech for Best Picture, and Miky Lee, vice president of South Korean conglomerate CJ Group and executive producer of Parasite, was about to give one, the stage lights went off. The audience—including Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Charlize Theron in the front row—then vocally pleaded for the lights to go back on to allow Lee to deliver her remarks.[31] It is well-known that acceptance speeches are often cut due to the longer-than-usual run time of the Academy Awards. In South Korea, questions arose as to whether it was appropriate for Lee to give an acceptance speech when she was not a part of Parasite's Best Picture nominated team, which were producers Kwak and Bong Joon-ho. In response, Kwak wrote in a social media post that it was arranged in advance that, in the event Parasite were to win Best Picture, she would give a quick speech and Lee would give one next. Kwak also wrote that Bong had a shortage of speeches after winning three categories prior.[32][33]

An estimated 23.6 million viewers watched the ceremony live, with a 5.3 rating among key demographic viewers. It represented a 20% decrease over the previous year's ceremony, and made it the least-watched Oscar ceremony of all time. The ceremony still eventually ranked as the most watched award show of the 2019-2020 television season, as declining viewership is a phenomenon seen across all award shows over the past few years. The 2020 Oscars is also one of the last live awards shows to have aired in the U.S. amidst the current upheaval in the general awards show calendar due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.[34]

Parasite's Best Picture win was well-received by film critics, who hailed it as a major step forward for popular appreciation of international film and for restoring the legitimacy of the Academy. "The academy gave best picture to the actual best picture", wrote Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times, who continued that the film awards body was "startled ... into recognizing that no country's cinema has a monopoly on greatness".[35] Conversely, U.S. president Donald Trump lambasted Parasite's win at a campaign rally in Colorado on February 20, 2020, questioning why a foreign film won Best Picture;[36] his comments were widely condemned as "xenophobic" and "racist".[37] The North American distributor of the film, Neon, responded by tweeting: "Understandable, he can't read."[38]

• Academy Awards official website
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official website
• Oscars Channel at YouTube (run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

• Oscars 2020 at BBC News
• Oscars 2020 at The Guardian

Other resources

• The Oscars (2020) on IMDb