The 92nd Academy Awards, or the Oscars, was held this past Sunday, February 9th. This prestigious award ceremony highlights successes for films made over the past year. Some viewers have strong opinions about certain award winners, however, these viewers continue to turn back for more Oscar content with 23.6 million viewers. All those viewers had the opportunity to watch history be made this past Sunday, a new Best Film winner.

These 23.6 million viewers had some strong opinions about the four-hour event. TV ratings were down 20 to 30 percent from last year, the shows second host-less year. The Oscars also scored a rating horrendous rating of 5.3, barely getting beaten out by a similar award show for singers and songwriters, the Grammys. This rating of 5.3 is down significantly from last year’s rating of 7.7. Not every aspect of the award ceremony, however, was frowned upon by these viewers. The film Parasite took home the first-ever Best Film award for a movie that is not in English. For 91 consecutive ceremonies, the award has gone to a film that primarily spoke English. 

Parasite, a dark comic satire pictures a Korean family attempting to worm their way into a wealthy family’s life, won the hearts of critics around the world. They didn’t only pull in one award, but stole the show in a way, taking home a whopping four awards: best director, best foreign-language film, best original screenplay, and of course, best picture. “There are so many trophies and they’re all so heavy,” Bong Joon-Ho, the movie’s director, said. Parasite wasn’t the only film to have a successful evening, the film 1917 did good, but not as good as film reviewers predicted.

1917, a World War 1 era film capturing a soldier’s struggle to deliver a message calling off a potentially devastating ambush, pulled in three awards. An unfortunate feat when considering the film was nominated for ten different awards. Regardless, this year’s Oscars was successful in the fact that they united Hollywood with the successful night for the native-language film, Parasite. This expanded the idea for different types of films winning prestigious awards at the Oscars, showing that awards don’t just go to renowned names.