I agree with phylos. The only surprising moment of the night was Ex Machina’s win for Best Visual Effects. I was not expecting that at all, considering the budget and overall how subtle the film’s effects were, but that film is absolutely deserving of an Oscar so I’m glad it won something. I was honestly expecting either Star Wars or Mad Max to nab it. Guess they wanted the little guys to have their moment to shine.
I’m also glad Alicia Vikander won for Best Supporting Actress, even if its for a movie I thought was only okay. I’m just pretending she won it for Ex Machina. Also slightly surprised that The Revenant didn’t end up winning Best Picture, but Spotlight was probably my second guess for the film they’d end up picking. DiCaprio winning was long, long overdue and all he had to do was nearly kill himself to get it.
But other than that it was a completely predictable show. From the extremely obvious race jokes to Inside Out winning the “Disney/Pixar Award.” Don’t get me wrong, I loved Inside Out and think it’s win is actually deserved (unlike Frozen and Big Hero 6 years prior), but it would have been nice to see Ghibli’s last film take home the award given their amazing contributions to animation as a whole, and the fact that Princess Kaguya or The Wind Rises should have won the last two years but didn’t.