Oscar spoils shared between The Revenant, Spotlight, Mad Max – and SPECTRE

At an Oscars ceremony where there was as much talk about who was not nominated as about who was, there were a number of big surprises, not least in the top category.

Spotlight was a surprise Best Picture Oscar winner
Spotlight was a surprise Best Picture Oscar winner

Spotlight, about the Boston journalists who exposed the scale of child sex abuse within the Catholic church in the city, surprised many awards watchers by snatching the Best Picture Oscar from the grasps of The Revenant.

Spotlight also won the Best Original Screenplay prize for its director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer. But it was The Revenant that made most of the headlines; Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar, as the film’s lead, the Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu became only the third director to win back-to-back Oscars, after last year’s Birdman, and won his third successive Oscar for cinematography, following Birdman and Gravity. With a nod to the diversity row as he collected his award, Iñárritu said “What a great opportunity to our generation to really liberate ourselves from all prejudice and this tribal thinking and make sure for once and forever that the colour of your skin
becomes as irrelevant as the length of our hair.”

But the film to walk away with the most awards on the night was Mad Max: Fury Road, which took six prizes in the technical categories, including Film Editing, Make Up and Costumes, for the British designer Jenny Beavan.

There was more British success for Ex Machina, which beat Mad Max and Star Wars to the Visual Effects Oscar, Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy and Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall, the theme song from SPECTRE, became the second Bond song to win an Oscar, after Adele’s Skyfall, despite being poorly reviewed at the time of the film’s release. Smith used his win to add a little diversity, dedicating his award to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

There was also an unexpected acting award for the Britain’s Mark Rylance, whose turn as a Russian spy in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies saw him trump the favourite in his category, Sylvester Stallone. What made this category particularly unpredictable was that – as the OscarSoWhite campaign highlighted – the Screen Actors Guild winner, Idris Elba, missed out on an Oscar nomination, and the SAG Awards, traditionally an accurate predictor of the acting honours, got the other three right; Brie Larson was named the Best Leading Actress for Room and The Danish Girl‘s Alicia Vikander repeated her SAG success in the Best Supporting Actress contest.

Leonardo DiCaprio took home one of The Revenant's 5 BAFTAs.
Leonardo DiCaprio used his first Oscar win to call for action to beat climate change

One of the pre-awards favourites, The Big Short, could manage only the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, while Pixar added to its Academy Award tally with Inside Out joining seven former winners, including Up, Toy Story 3, Wall-E, and The Incredibles. The Hungarian Holocaust drama Son of Saul won the Best Foreign Language Film and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight picked up one of the three awards it was nominated for, earning the veteran composer Ennio Morricone his first Oscar, at the age of 87, for the film’s score.

This was a year of much-anticipated winners, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, and surprises, including Spotlight – whose success was foreseen by only the Screen Actors Guild – making it the most accurate of predictors.

But the 88th Academy Awards will go down in history as the year that prompted the most prestigious organisation in the industry to announce changes to increase the number of minorities among its members – and it includes women in that category. But when it’s only two years since 12 Years a Slave earned nine nominations and three wins, it could be that changing the make-up of the Academy might have little effect on the films whose excellence it hopes to celebrate.

A full list of the 2016 Oscar winners:

BEST PICTURE

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight – WINNER

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ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

Matt Damon, The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant – WINNER

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

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ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Cate Blanchett, Carol

Brie Larson, Room – WINNER

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy

Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

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ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christian Bale, The Big Short

Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies – WINNER

Sylvester Stallone, Creed

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ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl – WINNER

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

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WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

The Big Short – WINNER

Brooklyn

Carol

The Martian

Room

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WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

Bridge of Spies

Ex Machina

Inside Out

Spotlight – WINNER

Straight Outta Compton

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ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Anomalisa

Boy and the World

Inside Out – WINNER

Shaun the Sheep Movie

When Marnie Was There

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CINEMATOGRAPHY

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant – WINNER

Sicario

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COSTUME DESIGN

Carol

Cinderella

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The Revenant

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DIRECTING

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant – WINNER

Room

Spotlight

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DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

Amy – WINNER

Cartel Land

The Look of Silence

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

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DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)

Body Team 12

Chau, beyond the Lines

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness – WINNER

Last Day of Freedom

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FILM EDITING

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Embrace of the Serpent

Mustang

Son of Saul – WINNER

Theeb

A War

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MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out

the Window and Disappeared

The Revenant

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MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Bridge of Spies

Carol

The Hateful Eight – WINNER

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

“Earned It,” Fifty Shades of Grey

“Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction

“Simple Song #3,” Youth

“Til It Happens To You,” The Hunting Ground

“Writing’s On The Wall,” Spectre – WINNER

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PRODUCTION DESIGN

Bridge of Spies

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The Martian

The Revenant

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SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

Bear Story – WINNER

Prologue

Sanjay’s Super Team

We Can’t Live without Cosmos

World of Tomorrow

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SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

Ave Maria

Day One

Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)

Shok

Stutterer – WINNER

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SOUND EDITING

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The Martian

The Revenant

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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SOUND MIXING

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road – WINNER

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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VISUAL EFFECTS

Ex Machina – WINNER

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens