2018 Oscars: ‘Shape of Water’ wins Best Pic; Jordan Peele makes history

Erik Anderson March 4, 2018

HOLLYWOOD, CA – MARCH 04: Director Guillermo del Toro (L) accepts Best Picture for ‘The Shape of Water’ from actor Warren Beatty onstage during the 90th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center on March 4, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

After one of the wildest awards seasons in years; a strange combination of rubber-stamped acting winners and a completely up in the air Best Picture race, Guillermo del Toro’s adult fairy tale The Shape of Water came out triumphant, winning Best Picture, Director, Score and Production Design.

The Shape of Water came into the Oscars with wins from the Producers Guild and Directors Guild and gives a lot of weight to how the preferential ballot can really derail a film with more wins from plurality-based ballots. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was a strong frontrunner on paper having beaten The Shape of Water at the Golden Globes and BAFTA.

With this win, we saw a handful of statistics and streaks fall. It broke the long-standing ‘rule’ that a film that doesn’t receive a Screen Actors Guild Cast nomination can’t win Best Picture. That has last for nearly a quarter of a century as the only film to overcome this was the very first one in the inaugural year of that category – Braveheart. It also killed two streaks with one stone; first Best Picture winner that was a December release and with a female lead. The last to do that was 2004’s Million Dollar Baby. The film also keeps the Telluride streak going; the last eight films that have won Best Picture premiered or showed at the festival. Amazingly, it managed all of this without an acting or a screenplay win, something that hasn’t been achieved since 1997’s Titanic.

del Toro became the third of the ‘Three Amigos’ to win Best Director. Along with Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and Alejandro G. Iñarrítu (Birdman, The Revenant), they make up four of the last five wins in that category.

It’s hard to say if the backlash that was generated against Three Billboards took root enough for it to lose but The Shape of Water had no less than three accusations of everything from ‘inspiration’ to outright plagiarism and it still won. Overall, the film was clearly less divisive than Three Billboards and, with a band of outsiders (a mute woman, a black woman, a gay man, a fish man) rising up against an evil white guy (and the Russians!) it might have spoken to Academy members in a socially and politically progressive way.

No surprises in the acting Oscar winners: Sam Rockwell, Frances McDormand, Allison Janney and Gary Oldman all picked up expected trophies

The four acting winners were mainstays of the awards season, winning every single televised precursor (Critics’ Choice, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA) leading up to their Oscar wins – first in history. Plus, they all managed to do so without any of them winning a top-tier critics’ win (NBR, LA, NY, NSFC). Allison Janney, Supporting Actress winner for I, Tonya, joins Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Sissy Spacek and Mary Steenburgen to became the sixth actress from The Help to win an Oscar. Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) joins Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Glenda Jackson, Jodie Foster, Vivien Leigh, Luise Rainer, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank and Elizabeth Taylor as the newest member of the double Best Actress winners club. McDormand gave a rousing speech, encouraging every female nominee of the night to stand up be seen. “Look around,” she said. “We all have stories to tell and projects we need financing.” She went on to mention the ‘inclusion rider‘ contract clause in which an actor demands that diversity be included both in front of and behind the camera.

Both winners in the screenplay categories made history. Jordan Peele became the first black winner in Original Screenplay and at 89 James Ivory became the oldest Oscar winner ever, winning Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. It was also the first time since 2011 that the screenplay winners were the only awards for their respective films.

The #MeToo movement was front and center, both as a part of host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue as well as with the speeches from three of ousted sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein’s most high-profile accusers – Ashely Judd, Annabella Sciorra, and Salma Hayek Pinault. They introduced a superb segment highlighting the importance of diversity and intersectionality in film.

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway returned after last year’s epic Best Picture envelope mixup (in which Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner when it was actually Moonlight) to announce Best Picture again. This time they got it right.

Robert Lopez (“Remember Me,” from Coco) became a double EGOT winner. He now has two Oscars, two Emmys, three Grammys and three Tony awards.

Roger Deakins, after 14 nominations and no wins, finally broke that losing streak to earn an Oscar for Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049. A similar (and even longer) drought was quenched last year when 21-time nominee Kevin O’Connell won Sound Mixing for Hacksaw Ridge.

Musical performances from all of the Oscar-nominated original songs, including Gael García Bernal, Mary J. Blige, Andra Day, Natalia LaFourcade, Miguel, Keala Settle, Sufjan Stevens (with St. Vincent, Chris Thile and Moses Sumney) and Common, all brought the house down or a tear to the eye.

In all, seven of the Best Picture nominees earned at least one award. Only The Post and Lady Bird went home empty-handed.

Here are the 2018 Oscar winners for the 90th Academy Awards.

Best Picture

THE SHAPE OF WATER
Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale, Producers

Directing

THE SHAPE OF WATER
Guillermo del Toro

Actor in a Leading Role

GARY OLDMAN
Darkest Hour

Actress in a Leading Role

FRANCES MCDORMAND
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Actor in a Supporting Role

SAM ROCKWELL
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Actress in a Supporting Role

ALLISON JANNEY
I, Tonya

Writing (Original Screenplay)

GET OUT
Written by Jordan Peele

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
Screenplay by James Ivory

Animated Feature Film

COCO
Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson

Foreign Language Film

A FANTASTIC WOMAN
Chile

Documentary Feature

ICARUS
Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan

Documentary (Short Subject)

HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405
Frank Stiefel

Music (Original Score)

THE SHAPE OF WATER
Alexandre Desplat

Music (Original Song)

REMEMBER ME
from Coco; Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez

Film Editing

DUNKIRK
Lee Smith

Cinematography

BLADE RUNNER 2049

Production Design

THE SHAPE OF WATER
Production Design: Paul Denham Austerberry; Set Decoration: Shane Vieau and Jeff Melvin

Costume Design

PHANTOM THREAD
Mark Bridges

Makeup and Hairstyling

DARKEST HOUR

Sound Mixing

DUNKIRK
Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker and Gary A. Rizzo

Sound Editing

DUNKIRK
Richard King and Alex Gibson

Visual Effects

BLADE RUNNER 2049
John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert and Richard R. Hoover

Short Film (Animated)

DEAR BASKETBALL
Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant

Short Film (Live Action)

THE SILENT CHILD
Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton

Author
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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.