Oscars 2026 Ceremony Awards “Sinners”, “KPop Demon Hunters”, “Weapons” and More!

The Oscars aired last night, and a bunch of geeky, nerdy fare won trophies during Hollywood’s biggest award ceremony. And now that certain emotions have simmered down, let’s talk about it!

It’s been a while since I’ve been looking forward to the Oscars with such excitement. Yes, I have been following (and somewhat enjoying) the event for decades, but my point is that, this time around, my excitement was a bit different from before because a bunch of geeky/nerdy content was nominated, including Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters, Frankenstein, and Bugonia. It’s always great to see the Academy widen its perspective when it comes to the diversity of quality content out there. The Oscars have been recognizing unconventional non-dramatic fare over the years, but the chances of such movies actually winning have also increased, and so has my excitement.

You can read the full list of nominees and winners over on Wikipedia.

In this article, I will be going over some of the categories as well as my opinions about the ceremony as a whole.

The Best Picture winner ended up being One Battle After Another, which, in my opinion, was expected. However, kudos to Sinners, Frankenstein, and Bugonia for being nominated. We had vampires, the Frankenstein monster, and aliens in these respective movies. And while I think it likely came down to between One Battle After Another and Sinners at the end, I’m okay with the current winner selected by the Academy. It was the expected choice.

Paul Thomas Anderson won Best Director for One Battle After Another. Ryan Coogler was also up for the award via Sinners. Again, I think it was likely between these two impressive directors, and Anderson very likely took the win due to the Academy thinking it was his time. I think we all know Coogler will win Best Director down the line soon. Coogler did win Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Sinners last night. So, yay!

Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sinners, where he portrayed twin brothers named Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore. I was expecting Jordan to win. And yes, I was aware of the controversy around nominee Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) regarding his comments about Opera and Ballet. However, frankly, I highly doubt his comments played a major part in swaying the voters. From what I can tell, the time his comments went viral, the Oscar voting had already closed.

In my opinion, the win was likely between Jordan and Ethan Hawke (who played queer talent Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon), regardless of Chalamet making those comments or not.

Having said that, the way host Conan O’Brien and other people aimed their jokes and shade at Chalamet, the young (and clearly talented) actor should consider holding a meeting with his PR team to get rid of the current narrative surrounding him ASAP. It’s not a good look to be the butt of certain types of jokes in front of many of your peers and industry bigwigs, especially when you have made it quite obvious, more than once, that you really want to win an Oscar.

As expected, Jessie Buckley won Best Actress in a Leading Role for Hamnet, where she played Agnes Shakespeare. But still, yay for Emma Stone being nominated for playing an alien in Bugonia.

Sean Penn won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for One Battle After Another as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw. Jacob Elordi was nominated as The Creature (Frankenstein), and Delroy Lindo was nominated for playing Delta Slim (Sinners).

Sinners also got Wunmi Mosaku as Annie on the list of Best Actress in a Supporting Role. However, Amy Madigan as Gladys won for Weapons. Madigan’s role wasn’t that of an obvious queer character in the film, but Aunt Gladys did take the queer community by storm on social media. Also, I think we can all agree that this was a career win for Madigan. I’m happy for her.

KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, and Michelle L.M. Wong) won Best Animated Feature Film against Arco, Elio, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, and Zootopia 2.

Yeah. I think we all knew that Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters was going home with the trophy. Not only was it deserving of said win, but the film itself continues to be a cultural phenomenon.

KPop Demon Hunters also got a second Oscar with ‘Golden’ winning Best Music (Original Song) for music and lyrics by Ejae, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu-kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, and Teddy Park.

I have seen certain online discussions about how ‘I Lied to You’ (Sinners) was the more deserving winner on the list. However, Sinners did win Best Music (Original Score) for Ludwig Göransson.

Certain people have to realize how the Academy tries to distribute wins across films when possible.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (Avatar 3) won Best Visual Effects against F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, The Lost Bus, and Sinners, which, yeah, expected.

As for the ceremony itself, it was okay. The theme being ‘Humanity’ didn’t really leave much of an impact due to there not being much discussion about AI forcibly taking over creative avenues across various industries, and not to mention how the award show refused to make an actual statement about ‘Humanity’, considering the current political tensions surrounding the Middle East.

Also, not a lot of human empathy was shown to winners during their acceptance speeches, with one of the most unfortunate moments involving the talent behind ‘Golden’.

This was so sad to watch! The production could have given them 1 more minute!

TPTB continuing to shorten acceptance speeches during the Oscars by citing time constraints just sounds like an excuse when most of the “comedic” segments could be taken out or shortened to allow the actual winners (who put in the hard work behind the recognized films) to share their feelings on the main stage.

Hopefully, next year’s ceremony will do better when it comes to highlighting the winners, but I doubt it.

What did you think about the Oscars 2026 ceremony?

Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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