For nearly a century, the Academy Awards have served as Hollywood’s grand self-portrait. Each year, the global film industry gathers beneath the lights of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles to celebrate the achievements of the previous year and crown its winners with cinema’s most famous prize. The Oscars remain one of the most recognisable cultural rituals in entertainment, a night where prestige, performance, and spectacle converge.
At their best, the Academy Awards remind audiences why films matter. They celebrate storytelling, craftsmanship, and the collaborative art that lies behind every frame projected on screen. This year’s ceremony offered those familiar moments of emotion and theatre that have defined the Oscars for generations. Emotional speeches, unexpected wins, and the occasional flash of genuine humility all played their part.
Yet beneath the glamour, the Oscars also reveal something else about Hollywood. They show the industry’s contradictions.
For years, the Academy has struggled with an image problem. Television ratings have fallen, and audiences have grown increasingly sceptical of a ceremony that often feels disconnected from the people who watch the films it celebrates. While the awards still carry enormous prestige within the industry, the cultural authority of the Oscars is no longer unquestioned outside Hollywood.
One of the most visible flashpoints came during the “Oscars So White” controversy, which erupted in 2015 when all twenty acting nominees were white for the second consecutive year. The hashtag quickly grew into a wider conversation about systemic racism and representation in Hollywood casting and award recognition. Those concerns were legitimate and long overdue. For decades, the industry had struggled with meaningful inclusion, particularly regarding roles, opportunities, and recognition for minority performers.
But the debate was not without its own contradictions. Some of the loudest voices calling for reform came from figures within the same privileged industry structure they were criticising. Actor Will Smith was among those who publicly criticised the Academy’s lack of diversity and announced a boycott of the ceremony.
The irony was difficult to ignore. Smith himself had already been nominated for Academy Awards twice during his career, and on both occasions he lost to other Black actors. The controversy highlighted a deeper problem in Hollywood’s culture of public advocacy. Genuine structural issues were sometimes entangled with personal grievances and industry politics.
This dynamic is part of what fuels the public perception that the Oscars can feel self-congratulatory. Hollywood is often eager to celebrate its own moral awareness, yet less comfortable confronting the structural realities of the system that produces it. When actors deliver speeches about social justice from one of the most exclusive stages in entertainment, audiences sometimes hear sincerity. At other times, they hear a lecture from people whose lives are far removed from those watching at home.
The Academy has taken steps to address these criticisms. Membership has expanded significantly in the past decade, bringing in more international voters and a more diverse professional base. In theory, this broadening of the voting body should create a more representative awards system and reflect the increasingly global nature of filmmaking.
A recent rule change has also addressed one of the Oscars’ long-standing open secrets. Voters must now confirm that they have actually watched the nominated films before casting their ballots. For years, it was widely acknowledged within the industry that some voters based their decisions on reputation, studio campaigns, or partial viewing rather than the films themselves.
Requiring voters to watch the nominated work may sound like an obvious standard, but its impact is potentially significant. Smaller films and less aggressively marketed productions now have a better chance of competing against studio campaigns backed by massive advertising budgets. In theory, it gives a fairer hearing to the many craftspeople and independent creators whose work might otherwise be overshadowed by prestige marketing.
But the Academy’s attempts at reform continue to raise questions about priorities.
In 2024, the Academy announced a new competitive category for Best Casting, which debuted at this year’s ceremony. While casting directors play a vital role in filmmaking, the decision puzzled many observers. Poor or uninspired casting has become one of the most common complaints among modern audiences, particularly when studios adapt beloved intellectual properties or franchise material.
In that context, the decision to create a casting award felt strangely misaligned with audience concerns. If the Academy truly wished to recognise overlooked parts of filmmaking, many critics argue that a far more obvious addition has existed for decades.
Stunt performers.
From high-speed car chases to physically demanding fight choreography, stunt work has defined some of cinema’s most memorable moments. Yet despite the skill, training, and risk involved, stunt performers remain entirely absent from the Oscars. The omission is especially striking when compared with other awards ceremonies. The Screen Actors Guild has recognised stunt ensembles for years, and audiences regularly celebrate stunt professionals as central figures in action filmmaking.
Unlike many areas of the film industry, stunt work is also often rooted in working-class labour. These performers risk injury to create the illusion of danger that defines modern blockbuster cinema. Their absence from Hollywood’s most prestigious awards has long been viewed as one of the Academy’s most glaring oversights.
The contrast between recognising casting while continuing to ignore stunt performers highlights a broader issue. The Oscars have historically favoured certain forms of artistic labour while overlooking others. Cinematographers, composers, and editors rightly receive recognition, but many of the physical and technical crafts that shape filmmaking remain outside the Academy’s spotlight.
The industry now faces an even more complicated challenge as artificial intelligence begins to reshape the landscape of creative work.
AI technology is already capable of replicating voices, generating visual effects, and producing script-like text. While some filmmakers see the technology as a tool that could enhance production, others view it as a direct threat to creative labour. During recent Hollywood labour disputes, writers and actors voiced serious concerns that studios could use AI to replicate performances or generate content without fair compensation.
The implications are profound. Cinema has always evolved alongside technology, from sound to colour to digital effects. But AI raises deeper questions about authorship and artistic ownership. If performances can be digitally reproduced or scripts partially generated by machines, what exactly counts as creative work?
The Academy cannot avoid that debate. As the symbolic guardian of cinematic excellence, the Oscars have commented on AI through jokes and skits, but a serious denunciation has yet to occur.
AI is a threat to workers’ rights, art, and the environment, and the Academy needs to hold the studios wanting to use it to account. Disney has shown to be hypocritical in this regard, announcing that they intend to use generative AI in their filmmaking while seeking legal action against AI generators who use Disney-licensed material.
Hollywood’s most prestigious awards ceremony has never been entirely free from controversy, and few scandals have cast a longer shadow over the Academy Awards than those involving sexual abuse and misconduct within the film industry itself. Two names in particular, Harvey Weinstein and Roman Polanski, have become emblematic of the tensions between artistic prestige and moral accountability.
For decades, Harvey Weinstein was one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. As co-founder of Miramax and later of The Weinstein Company, he became notorious for aggressive Oscar campaigns that helped shape modern awards-season strategy. Films such as Shakespeare in Love, The King’s Speech, and Chicago all benefited from Weinstein’s relentless lobbying of Academy voters. Yet behind the scenes, Weinstein’s power masked years of horrific abuse. In 2017, investigative reporting revealed a pattern of sexual harassment, assault, and coercion spanning decades. The revelations triggered the wider #MeToo movement, forcing Hollywood to confront the culture of silence that had allowed such behaviour to persist. Weinstein was expelled from the Academy shortly afterwards and later convicted of rape and sexual assault in court, but that was somehow even more damning as the Academy, and the industry in general, had enabled Weinstein’s abuse for decades.
The case of Roman Polanski presents a different but equally troubling chapter in the Academy’s history. Polanski fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. Despite this, he continued to work internationally and remained a celebrated director for decades. In 2003, he won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist. Polanski did not attend the ceremony due to his fugitive status, but the moment nevertheless highlighted the Academy’s hypocritical relationship with its own values. For years, he remained a member of the organisation, only being expelled in 2018 after renewed pressure following the Weinstein scandal.
Together, these cases illustrate the uncomfortable truth that Hollywood’s culture of prestige has often coexisted with a reluctance to hold powerful figures accountable. The Academy’s responses have evolved over time, but the legacy of these scandals continues to shape how audiences view the institution today. It makes the moral grandstanding and lecturing for Hollywood’s elite all the more unpalatable.
Despite the criticisms and scandals, the Oscars remain a powerful institution. Winning an Academy Award can transform careers, elevate independent films, and introduce audiences to voices they might otherwise never encounter. The ceremony still serves as one of the few global stages dedicated entirely to celebrating cinema as an art form.
But prestige alone is not enough to sustain credibility.
For the Oscars to remain meaningful in the modern era, the Academy must continue to evolve. Recognising stunt performers would acknowledge one of the industry’s most overlooked crafts. Expanding transparency in voting and membership could rebuild trust in the awards process. Confronting the implications of AI would demonstrate that Hollywood understands the future of its own medium.
Most importantly, the Academy needs to lead the industry in holding power to account. It can no longer sit idle while thinking that a skit or joke on a safe stage is enough. Award winners need to do more than make meaningless statements in sugary speeches. Actions speak louder than words.
The Academy Awards were created to celebrate the best of filmmaking. The challenge now is to ensure that the celebration reflects the full reality of the industry behind the scenes.
Hollywood loves stories about reinvention. If the Oscars wish to remain the ultimate symbol of cinematic achievement, they may need to embrace one themselves.
