The 98th Academy Awards aired March 15, 2026, from the Dolby Theatre. Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" won Best Picture and six Oscars total, beating Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," which had set an all-time record with 16 nominations. Conan O'Brien hosted for a second consecutive year. The ceremony introduced Best Casting as its first new category in 25 years, saw the first woman ever win Best Cinematography, and featured pointed political jabs while Trump raged about the news media on Truth Social.

1. The Academy Got It Right (Film critics, including IndieWire and ScreenRant)

Paul Thomas Anderson's six-Oscar sweep was long overdue; the movie was artistically bulletproof.

Anderson waited 14 nominations for his first Oscar, and the film earned every one of its six statues. IndieWire chief critic David Ehrlich gave it an A. ScreenRant called it a masterpiece. The critical consensus was unusually unified — this wasn't a "well, somebody had to win" situation. The movie landed with critics the way few studio films do anymore.

Deadline's review declared that Hollywood had finally figured out its big night. The show moved, the jokes hit, and the ceremony felt less like an endurance test than it has in years. Anderson's acceptance speech was characteristically understated — he talked about hoping his children's generation brings some common sense and decency. No grandstanding. No manifesto.

The supporting wins reinforced the film's depth. Sean Penn took his third career Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Cassandra Kulukundis won the inaugural Best Casting award — both for "One Battle."

2. Sinners Was the Real Best Picture (Sinners advocates, including NPR critics)

Sixteen nominations and four wins can't erase the feeling that the Academy flinched on a vampire movie.

Ryan Coogler made Oscar history with the most nominated film ever, and it still wasn't enough. NPR critics called Sinners a stunning feat of artistry from a filmmaker who clearly needed to get everything out there. The record-breaking nomination count said the Academy recognized the craft. The Best Picture loss said they couldn't quite commit to a vampire flick winning the big one.

The genre bias was the quiet story of the night. As NPR put it, traditional Academy voters were never going to fully vibe with vampires, while a political satire about extremism — One Battle — is exactly the kind of thing voters pick and feel good about themselves for picking. That's not a knock on Anderson's film. It's a knock on the institution.

Sinners still made history where it counted. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for his dual role. Coogler won Best Original Screenplay. Ludwig Goransson took Best Original Score. And Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman — and first Black woman — to win Best Cinematography in the category's 98-year history. She asked every woman in the Dolby Theatre to stand, and said backstage that "a lot of little girls that look like me will sleep really well tonight."

3. Chalamet Completed His Fall From Grace (Industry observers, including Variety, Gold Derby, and Showbiz411)

The Best Actor frontrunner lost the Oscar and became the ceremony's running joke — and it was entirely self-inflicted.

Timothee Chalamet went from Best Actor frontrunner to shut-out punchline in two weeks. Gold Derby called it an anatomy of a free fall. His odds collapsed after Michael B. Jordan's SAG Awards upset, and his movie "Marty Supreme" ended the night with zero wins. Not one.

His ballet and opera comments handed the ceremony its best material. In the lead-up to the show, Chalamet said he had no interest in working in ballet or opera — art forms where the whole point is keeping something alive that nobody cares about anymore. The room remembered. O'Brien joked about heightened security threats from both the opera and ballet community.

The roasting didn't stop with Conan. Alexandre Singh, accepting for best live-action short, pivoted his speech into a defense of theater, ballet, and the arts — pausing for a beat before adding "and also cinema" as the crowd erupted. Showbiz411 ran the headline: "How to Lose An Oscar in 10 Days."

4. Hollywood Found Its Spine (Progressive commentators, including Deadline)

In a year when Trump raged on Truth Social during the broadcast, the ceremony pushed back — carefully, but unmistakably.

Conan O'Brien set the tone by pivoting from comedy to conviction mid-monologue. He paused the jokes, acknowledged that everyone watching knows these are chaotic and frightening times, and framed the evening as a tribute to global artistry, collaboration, and optimism. It was earnest without being preachy — exactly the balance that usually eludes awards show hosts.

The political moments were scattered but pointed. Javier Bardem wore a 2003 Iraq War protest pin and called for an end to war and a free Palestine. Jimmy Kimmel, presenting the documentary awards, made a free speech joke — CBS almost took him off the air for a Trump comment last year. Nobody gave a manifesto, but the cumulative effect was unmistakable.

The backdrop was impossible to ignore. While the ceremony aired, Trump was on Truth Social raging about media coverage of the Iran war, floating treason charges for news organizations. He wasn't responding to the Oscars — but the timing made the contrast hard to miss. Deadline framed the evening as Hollywood countering the chaos.

5. Nobody Outside Hollywood Cares (Conservative critics, including Kevin McCullough/Townhall and A.R. Hoffman/New York Sun)

The ceremony is an annual exercise in self-congratulation by America's most insulated class — and the public knows it.

Kevin McCullough at Townhall called it "Award Season Idiocy." In his telling, the Oscars are the most insulated people in America gathering to congratulate each other for their courage. His closer was blunt: the Oscars decide who holds a gold statue, but the American people decide who holds power. And that's one award Hollywood can't script.

A.R. Hoffman at the New York Sun argued the Oscars remain captive to resistance politics. The expectation that Hollywood would tone down the left-wing messaging after recent elections had, in Hoffman's view, proven entirely unfounded. If anything, the ceremony leaned harder into it.

The polling backs up the disconnect. A plurality of voters — 48% — say the entertainment industry has too much influence on politics. Even in heavily Democratic California, just 29% believe Hollywood has a positive effect on American culture.

6. Actually, the Show Landed (Entertainment industry observers, including Deadline, ComingSoon, and Hollywood Reporter)

Ratings are up, advertisers are paying more, and the ceremony delivered genuine surprises — the Oscars may matter more than the cynics think.

Things are on the upswing. Viewership has climbed for four consecutive years, and the show remains the top-rated primetime entertainment special. The 2025 ceremony drew 19.69 million viewers, up from the 2021 all-time low of 10 million. That's still a fraction of the 1990s peak of 40-55 million, but the trajectory is upward.

Advertisers are voting with their wallets. The 2026 broadcast sold out of advertising inventory, with rates growing by double digits over last year. You don't sell out ad space for a dying institution.

The ceremony itself delivered moments that broke through. SlashFilm noted that few comedians can jump from satire to sincerity the way Conan does, and his second year was even sharper than his first. Arkapaw's cinematography win — the first for any woman in 98 years — was a genuine historic milestone, not a token gesture. A woman wasn't even nominated in the category until Rachel Morrison in 2018. And Variety's pre-show worry that the late March date would make the Oscars feel like old news didn't hold — people were still arguing about Chalamet's ballet comments and the Best Picture race hours after the credits rolled.

Where This Lands

The people who think the Academy played it safe with "One Battle After Another" have a point — a political satire about extremism is squarely in the Academy's comfort zone. Very different from a vampire flick. On the other hand, Anderson's defenders aren't wrong: he waited decades and 14 nominations, and the film was straight up amazing. The Chalamet implosion was the night's most instructive subplot — you can have the performance, the campaign, and the feeling that you're overdue — and still lose the room with one mean remark about ballet.

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