Academy Awards commentary: CODA and Will Smith supply memorable Oscar moments

For all of those newsworthy breakthroughs, however, and despite the fact that people were happy to be back in the Dolby Theatre after a two-year hiatus due to covid, the most memorable moment was Will Smith’s bizarre physical and verbal assault on presenter Chris Rock after Rock told a joke at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. The onstage ambush, which initially felt staged as a gag, left the live and home audiences in stunned, what-just-happened disbelief. Moments later, when a simultaneously defiant and contrite Smith won an Oscar for his leading role in “King Richard,” he tearfully noted how life was imitating art, referring to his real-life character Richard Williams, father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, whom Smith described as “a fierce defender of his family.”

What will inevitably be remembered as “the slap” instantly gave the Oscars the kind of viral moment that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been chasing for years, as ratings have plummeted, especially among younger viewers. The disconnect between Hollywood movies and the audience has only widened over the past two years, when the coronavirus pandemic halted many releases, shuttered theaters and sent people to their couches, remotes in hand.

Were they watching movies? Or TV? The distinction became increasingly fuzzy, as feature films were absorbed into the great wash of visual storytelling that has been flowing onto our home screens with dizzying speed and increasingly unmanageable volume. In an effort to engage young viewers, the academy took to social media to poll fans on their most “cheer-worthy” movie moments of 2021, as well as their favorite films. The results were underwhelming, with two forgettable Zack Snyder productions — “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and “Army of the Dead” — taking top honors in what looked suspiciously like a massive trolling operation.

“CODA,” which over the past several weeks quietly overtook Campion’s Netflix movie “The Power of the Dog” as the best picture front-runner, was undeniably popular with the people who saw it; but according to a recent report in Deadline, fewer than a million people have watched it on Apple TV Plus since it premiered on the streaming service in August. “Power of the Dog” was considered a success for Netflix, but only about 3 million people have seen it on that service. (“Don’t Look Up,” the climate change satire that was also nominated for best picture, was seen by more than 10 million Netflix subscribers.)

Meanwhile, the movies that succeeded in getting people into theaters in 2021 — films like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the James Bond installment “No Time to Die,” went home virtually empty-handed on Sunday, although Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell won for their Bond theme song. In a nod toward old-fashioned big-screen entertainment, “Dune,”…