One Battle After Another’s big night: Key takeaways from the 2026 Oscars
Al Jazeera
Paul Thomas Anderson’s political chase film earned six Oscars, beating the vampire thriller Sinners, which scored four.
As anticipated, it ended up being One Battle After Another’s night at the 98th annual Academy Awards, with the political thriller carting away six Oscars out of a total of 13 nominations.
But while Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnum opus continued its march towards award-season domination, there were moments of genuine surprise and subversion in Sunday’s ceremony.
Some of those moments had to do with the current political climate in the United States.
Host Conan O’Brien and his fellow presenters deftly avoided mentioning President Donald Trump by name, but their barbs took direct aim at his policies since returning to office.
Other surprises came from within the filmmaking community itself. For only the seventh time in Oscar history, a tie was announced: Two films had gotten an equal number of votes for Best Live Action Short.
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