By Jesse Saunders
photo editor

Struggling with the backlash of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, this year’s show was expected to be, at the very least, interesting. While host Chris Rock did a fantastic job highlighting the issue, even he couldn’t stop the Oscars from being as boring as ever.

Failed attempts to limit speeches, strange new camera angles, a black host, jokes of the award show being the “white choice awards” and even a vice presidential cameo couldn’t help fix the Oscars continuing problem of being much too long and not enough fun. The problem stemmed from not the show itself, although that had plenty of issues, but from the nominees.

It’s unfair to discount the awards entirely, as they did honor some of 2015’s greatest films, but beyond the controversy, many viewed this year as one of the most boring for nominees.

Even within the best picture category, voters seemed to overlook fantastic films like “Carol.”

In many ways, having Rock as a host served as a way for the Academy to save face, but he didn’t play it safe at any time, which in the end paid off.

The winners also took time to tackle various issues with several, including Leonardo DiCaprio, mentioning climate change.

The Academy gave winners the ability for more movement as speakers this year, thanks to one of the Academy’s more brilliant innovations: showing who the winner would like to thank at the bottom of the screen instead of forcing them to spit it all out after arriving on stage.

DiCaprio’s win also says a lot about how the Oscars’ system works. His lack of Oscar wins is one of American pop culture’s biggest running jokes and in all honesty, it should have continued. There’s no arguing that DiCaprio is talented, but winning for this role gives people the mindset that they don’t have to be the best to win an Oscar, they just wait long enough and they’ll get one.

The production of the whole show was as grand as every other year, minus a few intense mess ups including a camera completely moving off the speaker, Kevin Hart’s microphone going out and several moments where no one found a good reaction shot.

This year’s strange theme had to do with the process of making a film, but wasn’t spoken about enough to make a cohesive production.

While not a surprise, the best picture win for “Spotlight” and the several awards won by the “Mad Max: Fury Road” team were welcome additions to a broadcast that didn’t contain any real shock.

The show acted as a way to try and apologize for the lack of diversity and while Rock did a solid job as host, the content fell flat.