Awards season is underway with the Golden Globes 2018! Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Big Little Lies emerged as the big victors of the night, but who missed out at this year’s HFPA awards?
After all that excitement and buzz, awards season kicked off in style with the 75th Golden Globe Awards, and… well, it all went mostly as expected, actually. All things considered, most of the winners were either easily predicted or ones that surprised but didn’t shock. Given how much of this awards season, from the critics’ choices onward, has been so delightfully unusual and tough to nail down with no real front-runners, the Golden Globes’ choices couldn’t help but feel somewhat anti-climactic. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was pegged as a Best Drama winner from an early point, and it remains something of an easy consensus pick for those who may struggle to rally around one film in such a packed year. The television side of things offered more surprises, but still, we’ve compiled a short list of the snubs that made even us hardened awards cynics raise an eyebrow.
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Get Out Is Shut Out
It’s hard to claim that Jordan Peele’s spectacular satirical horror Get Out was ever a front-runner in this season. Sure, it’s a critical and commercial darling, but the staid world of awards season still has a major block against genre cinema. The film had also been shut out of most of the Golden Globes nominations – nothing for screenwriter and director Jordan Peele, for example – so it losing Best Comedy/Musical to the equally adored Lady Bird wasn’t a shock. Still, it’s hard to justify the most buzzed about and urgent film of 2017 being ignored in such spectacular fashion. Here’s hoping the Oscars don’t follow suit.
Sam Rockwell Wins Best Supporting Actor
Most of the Golden Globes 2018 acting awards went as predicted – Gary Oldman winning Best Actor in a Drama for his turn as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, Frances McDormand and Saoirse Ronan taking home the respective Best Actress awards, Allison Janney’s scene-stealing work in I, Tonya nabbing her Best Supporting Actress – but the supposed acting lock of the night never happened. Willem Dafoe’s career-best performance in The Florida Project has snatched up nearly every critics’ award over the past few months and it seemed all but confirmed that he’d do the same thing last night at the Globes. Alas, Sam Rockwell was the Best Supporting Actor of the night for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. As much as Dafoe deserved it, it’s hard to be mad at one of our most critically underrated actors getting a moment of glory.
Guillermo del Toro wins Best Director
The Best Director category was jam-packed with deserving winners (although, as pointed out by Natalie Portman on the night, it was also noticeably all-male), with several major names not making the cut. The Shape of Water was the most nominated film of the night but most of us didn’t foresee it winning in the major categories, fearing it would be seen as too esoteric for voters. Fortunately, that proved untrue and the delightful Guillermo del Toro beat Martin McDonagh and Christopher Nolan to take home the Globe. In his speech, he paid homage to the monsters who crafted his life and career.
Read More: Why The Shape of Water is An Oscar Front-Runner
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Wins Best TV Comedy
The Globes have always been fascinatingly offbeat when it comes to their TV awards. They were happy to award streaming services before the Emmys and they don’t always go for the most talked about or acclaimed shows of the season. In that sense, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Amazon comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel winning in Best TV Comedy isn’t the biggest shock of the night, but many had predicted Aziz Ansari’s Master of None taking home the prize, or even the revival of Will & Grace. Hardly a snub by its traditional definition, but certainly a choice that felt inimitably Golden Globes-esque.
Ewan McGregor Wins Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Film
Season 3 of Fargo was not its best-reviewed season, nor was Ewan McGregor’s performance the most acclaimed in it. Facing up competition like Robert De Niro, Jude Law and Kyle MacLachlan, you can’t blame anyone for thinking that McGregor didn’t have a chance here. Still, as wonderful as it would have been to see MacLachlan get some much-deserved awards for his staggering work in Twin Peaks, it was never going to happen.
Next: Oscars 2018: Which Films Stand a Chance at Winning Best Picture?
