It’s not often you see one of Hollywood’s power players sucker-punch one of their peers live on television, but this is what unfolded on Sunday evening, Californian time, at the Dolby Theatre.
I speak, of course, of Apple's late victory over Netflix to become the first streaming service to win the Oscar for best picture.
In a moment that seemed to be fading from cultural memory even as it was happening, Sian Heder’s uplifting CODA, which stands for child of deaf adults, took home the ultimate prize, beating the film that had been the favourite to claim it for much of this interminably long awards season.
Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog, Netflix's arty Western-of-sorts, CODA been a contender. Instead, the Apple TV Plus-distributed story about a hearing teenager who acts as an interpreter for her deaf family became the little movie that CODA.
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Heder, who had already won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, looked thrilled. Apple's chief executive Tim Cook, bow-tied and in the auditorium, was happy too. Better luck next time, Netflix.
That’s what he could have tweeted, were he less of a grown-up. Instead, he went for the more subtle approach of offering his congratulations to Heder, the cast and producers of CODA “and all involved in these historic wins!”
Sensibly, none of this matters to most people. Even those who had the misfortune to watch the 94th Academy Awards live – well, mostly live – from Los Angeles will have been distracted by other business on the night.
Apple’s besting of Netflix is only interesting because of a semi-amusing narrative that has become embedded in pre-Oscars conversation since 2019, which is that this much-coveted award has never been coveted as hard as it has been coveted by Netflix.
The perception is that Netflix really, really wants to win the best picture statuette, and the fact that it hasn't is seen as incontrovertible evidence of its status as a reverse Sally Field: Academy members don't like it.
Netflix’s turn?
Indeed, executives at Netflix could be forgiven for wondering if their biggest mistake has been to try too hard. Surely this year was its turn? It had Campion, it had critical acclaim... it had Apple on the other side of the ring.
This is the same Apple that has only been in the scripted film and television business for a little over two years. The iPhone seller was barely even flirting with the whole concept of content in 2017, when the first streamer-backed film secured a nomination for best picture.
That wasn't Netflix either, but Amazon, which had acquired the US rights to Kenneth Lonergan's brilliant Manchester by the Sea at the previous year's Sundance festival. Although it would have been a worthy recipient, the 2017 Oscars telecast will forever be remembered as the one at which Moonlight beat La La Land to the top prize.
That Manchester by the Sea was never the favourite, combined with the fact that it had a wide cinema release, meant Amazon never became the focal point of a terse back-and-forth about streaming versus cinema the way Netflix did.
Before The Power of the Dog, four Netflix films had secured best picture nominations, and it should have won for the first of these, Alfonso Cuarón's Roma, in 2019. That it didn't was attributed at least in part to a backlash from voters in response to Roma's limited cinema release.
This year, however, it was streamer versus streamer, or limited cinema release versus even more limited cinema release, and Netflix still couldn’t get over the line on the preferential ballot.
Maybe the reason, bizarre as this sounds, was the actual films? As political as the Oscars can be, this is definitely possible.
The Power of the Dog is about toxic masculinity, but then what isn’t these days? Its big crime against viewers is that it is both slow-moving and demands close attention in order for its final scenes to make sense. That’s not a great combination for a film most people will have watched on Netflix in various states of brain fog – or watched and paused, watched and paused, watched then googled “The Power of the Dog ending explained”.
CODA is overlong and predictable, but it fits a template of films Oscar voters traditionally love. It’s heartfelt, lightly funny and places the urge to perform at the centre of its story. The audience can root for almost all of its main cast, while understanding the conflict between them.
Early on, its dialogue spells out the obvious – the film ironically not showing enough faith in non-verbal communication. Then, in one school concert scene, pride and pain merge on the face of best supporting actor winner Troy Kotsur and it elevates itself above the competition.
Apple bidding
This low-budget film was made without Apple's help. Like Amazon and Manchester by the Sea before it, Apple merely outbid everybody else at a Sundance auction, quietly sticking it on Apple TV Plus last August. Then the pre-season campaigns began. Apple, perhaps buoyed by its seven Emmy awards for comedy Ted Lasso, appears to have simply decided it was in it to win it.
Cook might be a red carpet newbie, but in retrospect, the idea that a $2 trillion company, the biggest in the world by stock market value, could ever have been the underdog seems laughable. Apple didn’t just back the right horse. It was the right horse.
So what’s next for Apple TV Plus? Its catalogue, its content spending and its estimated subscriber tally is still more modest than that of other streamers, but its service is also cheaper, currently costing €4.99/£4.99/$4.99 a month as well as being purchasable as part of Apple One, a compelling bundle of five Apple services.
Buyers of new Apple devices are given a free three-month trial to the streamer. Marketing triumphs such as CODA’s Oscar glory will help Apple reduce the inevitably high churn rate on this offer and keep device users glued to its platform for longer. It’s a seductive play from a casually powerful company.
Apple doesn’t strictly need Oscars. And yet you get the feeling it’ll be amassing them all the same.
