The 2017 Academy Awards—honoring the films of 2016 should’ve been unkillable. Instead, Oscar Night played like a bloated rough cut with no producer in the room. On this episode of The Movie Makeover, we treat the ceremony like a failed prestige picture and fix it the only way Hollywood understands: with structure, discipline, and a ruthless trim.
This was the year of Moonlight, a film so precise and devastating it barely raises its voice—and still floors you. The year of La La Land, a nostalgia bomb polished to a mirror shine. The year of Manchester by the Sea, which emotionally waterboards you for two hours and then asks for another take. Add in the formal ambition of Arrival, the righteous competence of Hidden Figures, the theatrical muscle of Fences, the slow-burn fury of Hell or High Water, the craft-forward carnage of Hacksaw Ridge, and the earnest uplift of Lion—and you’ve got a lineup that should’ve guaranteed a clean win.
We pull in the wider bench too—Jackie, Silence, Sausage Party, Elle, The Lobster, Nice Guys, and Sing Street—and ask how a year this confident onscreen produced a ceremony this insecure off it. (Yes, according to Mike, the scrappy Irish teen musical with wall-to-wall bangers somehow felt more alive than most of the broadcast.)
Best Needle Drop (or: When a Song Actually Does the Work)
If you want a masterclass in how to use a song, start with Sing Street—where music isn’t wallpaper, it’s character, propulsion, and plot. Now contrast that with the Oscars’ taste for sonic sugar highs. Can’t Stop the Feeling! from Trolls is engineered joy—fine, effective, and designed to sell plush toys. Then there’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which weaponizes pop itself, including a perfectly deadpan cameo moment from Seal that understands satire better than most acceptance speeches understand time limits. The makeover here is simple: stop rewarding loud for being loud. Give the win to the needle drop that changes the movie, not the one that survives the radio.
