My Reaction to the 2017 Oscars

​Hello, fellow moviegoers!
   Wow! Did that really just happen?
   In case you didn’t watch the Oscars last night, or you haven’t been on social media at all in the last 12 hours, the Oscars pulled a Steve Harvey. They accidentally awarded Best Picture to the wrong movie. La La Land was initially announced as the winner, but in the following excitement, it became apparent that they read from the wrong card. The actual Best Picture winner is the film Moonlight. Yeah, that happened…

    Before I get too far into this article, I just want to say, good for Moonlight. That movie was an absolute triumph of a film! It was ​a look into the life of somebody who most of the general movie-going audience wouldn't be able to relate to, yet they make the character extremely relatable. The biggest success of Moonlight is how perfectly it highlights that we're all people just living our lives. We all have different circumstances, and we all have different approaches to the world, and that's okay!
   Now, many people are speculating to their heart’s desire over what actually happened last night. If you’re like my father, you believe that it was all a set-up to get people talking and increase ratings. In reality, though, we don’t actually know what happened. We do know that Warren Beatty did, in fact, have the wrong envelope. He had the envelope containing Emma Stone’s Best Lead Actress win. However, Stone claims she was holding the envelope when they won. How could that be? Well, turns out they actually have duplicates of all of the envelopes just in case one gets lost. Chances are, some confusion happened backstage and Beatty ended up with the other Best Lead Actress envelope. Mistakes happen.
   Take what you want from all of this, but what I believe the most disappointing thing is about all of this actually isn’t La La Land's loss (though that is a bummer). I believe the most disappointing thing about this situation is the fact that it is overshadowing the fact that, guess what? Moonlight won Best Picture! That happened! It was a major Oscar upset! Moonlight is a great movie, and I believe that it winning Best Picture should motivate a lot more people to see it! However, the situation is completely overshadowing that! Please! Go see Moonlight! It’s a movie that I believe everybody should see at least once. I feel bad for the cast and crew of Moonlight for not being able to get the experience of hearing their name called for Best Picture in a traditional fashion. That would've been a much better way to receive the award, but they won nonetheless Personally, I would’ve voted for La La Land, but hats off to Moonlight for the upset!
   Though you wouldn’t believe it by reading the headlines, there was actually more to this year’s Oscars than just that big mishap. First of all, the most exciting thing to me was seeing Casey Affleck win the award for Best Lead Actor. I thought for sure that Denzel Washington was going to win; he was fantastic in Fences, and he had a lot of momentum going into the ceremony. However, Affleck took home the award for his performance in Manchester by the Sea. A performance which, I believe 100% deserved that award.
   All of the other acting category wins weren’t really big surprises, but they were still great to see! Viola Davis won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Fences, and she gave arguably the best and most emotional speech of the night. Emma Stone won Best Lead Actress for her performance in La La Land, and in the first award of the night, Moonlight's Mahershala Ali won the award for Best Supporting Actor! Ali’s win is particularly exciting because he has become the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar. Also extremely impressive is that all of these now Oscar-winners are first-time winners! All of these were their first Oscar wins! These performances were each fantastic, and their wins were very well deserved.
    As far as my predictions went, I think that I did alright, though that really depends on what your definition of alright is. I ended up correctly guessing 11 of the 24 categories, so just under half of them. Though most of the categories I missed were the minor categories. Plus, there were several cases where the person I predicted would win lost, and the person that I thought should win ended up actually winning. So I'm by no means upset.
   Before I finish this article, I just want to address one thing. Since last night’s confusion, I’ve seen a little bit of a backlash against Moonlight over its win over La La Land. I’ve seen people posting things such as “#NotMyBestPic” on social media, and other things generally dogging on Moonlight for its win. To those people I have to say, have you even seen Moonlight? Did you take the time out of your busy lives to go see this movie? Chances are, the answer is no. That speaks to an overall problem with people and the Oscars. Many people don’t see all of the films nominated, which is understandable. (Heck, even I didn’t see Lion.) However, just because you didn’t see a movie, that doesn’t give you the right to say something should’ve won instead of it. If Lion had won Best Picture instead of Moonlight, I wouldn’t be out tweeting and saying that it was ridiculous. I wouldn't have the right to since I haven't seen Lion. I would actually go watch the movie, then I would make a decision after reasonably comparing the two. The Oscars award the best films of the year, not the most popular. So I urge you, watch Moonlight. It’s an extremely powerful film. It’s very well made, and it tells a great story that I think most people need to hear.

​   So what did you think of last night’s Academy Awards? Did you agree with all of the wins? Let me know what you think by commenting on this post! Also, if you enjoyed this article, share it on Facebook and Twitter! It really helps! Don’t forget, I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so check back then for more movie reviews and miscellaneous movie thoughts!
Thanks for stopping by!