The Oscars Are About This Year, Not About All-Time

In his latest article, Deadline awards columnist Pete Hammond quoted a letter from an anonymous Academy member that’s sure to upset some Oscar enthusiasts. “I haven’t seen even half of the nominated films, nor do I care to,” the member wrote, citing several justifications, including irritation with a new rule that requires voters to watch all of the nominated films and a general desire to do something else with their time.

However, the most salient justification came at the end of the letter, when the member observed, “But really, the Oscars have become pretty irrelevant. Anora? CODA? Everything Everywhere All At Once? vs The Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton? Which three movies will people still be watching five years from now? It’s all about the film, not the award. Rather than watch the Awards, I’ll probably watch Singin’ In The Rain or North By Northwest or The Searchers – REAL best pictures which weren’t even nominated.”

To some, the letter reads like a tough truth made all the harder to accept at the height of Oscar discourse, just days before the awards ceremony. But instead, it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the function of the Oscars, a misunderstanding held by everyone from Academy members like the letter writer to the lay speculator at home. The Oscars are never truly about cementing cinema history or the greatest films of all time. They are about capturing a snapshot of movies that year, both on the screen and the surrounding milieu.

Nowhere is that point more clear than with one of the films that the letter writer cites. When CODA released in 2021, first at Sundance and various festivals and eventually on Apple TV, it received a warm reception from critics and general audiences. The story of a hearing young woman (Emilia Jones) with deaf parents and a deaf brother, CODA offered a kind, realistic look at an underrepresented community. Written and directed by Sian Heder, who based her film on the French-Belgian movie La Famille Bélier, CODA features strong performances, good cinematography, and a compelling (if sometimes clichéd) story.

Very few people would call CODA a bad movie. Yet, even four years later, very few people would call it the Best Picture of 2021, even though it beat out the likes of Dune, The Power of the Dog, King Richard, and West Side Story.

Did the Oscar voters make a mistake? The above letter writer certainly seems to think so. And it’s not much of a stretch to say that most of the other Best Picture nominees of that year are revisited and more fondly remembered than CODA. Heck, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during the ceremony that bestowed the honor on CODA has more of a cultural legacy than the big winner. So the answer must be, “Yes, the Oscar voters messed up in 2022,” right?

Well, no. Because CODA was the Best Picture of 2021, as we thought about that year in cinema at the time. We were still at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2021, which particularly impacted the way we view movies. Dune, West Side Story, and even King Richard, big blockbusters with big feelings and stakes work better on a giant screen, which the majority of people weren’t willing or able to do. More traditional dramas such as Drive My Car, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, Licorice Pizza, and Don’t Look Up were a bit too prickly, a bit too challenging for audiences already overburdened with the stresses of a global pandemic.

So it’s no wonder that so many voters went for a quiet, life-affirming, but still well-made drama that plays best on streaming TV. CODA reflected what people wanted out of cinema—not forever, not to stand the test of time, but right then, when they were reflecting on the past year during the spring of 2022.

The of-the-moment nature of the Oscars always results in misfires, and it’s definitely worthwhile to look back at an all-time classic being overlooked for something that has aged poorly. Yes, The Wizard of Oz is better than Gone With the Wind, everyone remembers Citizen Kane and no one remembers How Green Was My Valley, and choosing Forrest Gump instead of Pulp Fiction will look bad for the rest of time, no matter what stupid thing Quentin Tarantino will say next.

But in 1940, 1942, and 1997, voters were reflecting on the cinematic year that just ended, not on the rest of movie history. It was the right call at the time.

This Sunday night, we’ll probably learn that Academy members have once again chosen the wrong film or performer, bestowing the award on some forgettable distraction instead of a defining work. While we can, and certainly will, talk about it on Monday morning, we have to remember that the 98th annual Academy Awards don’t define what films will matter in 2026 or 2027, let alone 2075. They just reflect what the Academy considered important about movies in 2025. No less, but certainly no more.

The 98th Academy Awards will air on ABC and Hulu on at 7pm EST on Sunday, March 15, 2026.