Oscars 2025 Snubs: Denzel Washington, Margaret Qualley, Dune and More Go Overlooked
0 Comments Each and every year’s Oscars lineup brings its fair share of snubs and surprises, twists and turns. Still, it’s fair to say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2025 was filled with some stunners, including Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here shocking many prognosticators when it ended up in both the Best Picture and Best Actress races.
Indeed, the Brazilian film that is also nominated for Best International Feature saw Fernada Torres get into the Best Actress category (likely at the expense of Nicole Kidman or Angelina Jolie) while the film ended up on the shortlist for the Academy’s top prize, edging out presumed contenders like A Real Pain and Sing Sing. Yet for every pleasant surprise—at least for those who can quantify overlooking the drastically underrated Sing Sing as pleasant—there were more painful snubs, perhaps none more visible than Margaret Qualley for The Substance.
To be sure, the venomously satirical body horror-comedy from Coralie Fargeat had a great morning overall. In addition to Demi Moore picking up a Best Actress Oscar nod, the film proved skeptics wrong and was nominated for Best Picture and Director. This marks only the seventh time a horror film was nominated for Best Picture and the seventh time a horror helmer got into the director race (and believe it or not, it is not for the same seven films).
However, Qualley’s omission in the Best Supporting Actress category feels like an oversight given how critical her performance as “Sue,” a duplicitous and younger doppelganger of Moore’s aging movie star, is to that film.
Another genre favorite who got snubbed is Denzel Washington in Best Supporting Actor for Gladiator II. Washington chewed scenery all along the Appian Way, but in a movie that campy and over-the-top, it was more of an asset than hindrance. The two-time Oscar winner with a grand total of nine nominations seemed like a shoo-in for his scene-stealing work. However, he got passed over in his competitive category seemingly for Jeremy Strong’s performance in The Apprentice.
That grim Donald Trump biopic apparently struck a chord with the Academy overall. While it was not nominated for Picture, writing, direction, or any other technical achievements, it saw both of its leads recognized, including Sebatian Stan’s surprise nomination for Best Actor as a vain, leering, and rapist Trump. He seemingly nudged out Daniel Craig’s boisterous turn in Queer.
For genre fans, however, the bitterest snub also seemed almost inevitable. After being passed over for Best Director in 2022, Denis Villeneuve is ignored again in 2025 after sticking the landing on Dune: Part Two. While the film ended up on many best of the year lists, including the Academy’s, the monumental effort that went into adapting Frank Herbert’s science fiction opus seems strangely undervalued by the Academy. And for Dune: Part One, he at least got an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. No such luck on the generally better regarded second half of the adaptation.
Also not entirely surprising, but no less stinging, is the complete shut out of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, a frothy spectacle that wowed and pleased most audiences and critics last spring. Perhaps too light (read: entertaining) for the Academy to nominate for Best Picture, its absence in Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and especially Best Original Score—courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—errs toward baffling.
Other snubs include both Nicole Kidman for Babygirl and Angelina Jolie for Maria being ignored in the Best Actress category, and Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu unsurprisingly going unrecognized beyond technical categories like Best Cinematography, Production Design, Costume Design, and Hair and Makeup. It seems with the Academy it’s Highlander rules when it comes to horror movies in the Best Picture/Director races: there can be only one.
Also we love James Mangold around these parts, but in what world is A Complete Unknown better directed than RaMell Ross’ reinvention of cinematic perspective in Nickel Boys? But what, to you, are the biggest surprises and snubs after this year’s Academy Awards nominations?
The post Oscars 2025 Snubs: Denzel Washington, Margaret Qualley, Dune and More Go Overlooked appeared first on Den of Geek.
From https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/oscars-2025-snubs-denzel-washington-margaret-qualley-dune/
