Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer’s best picture win caps night of Academy Awards triumph for blockbuster biopic

Oppenheimer, the blockbuster biopic about the race to build the first atomic bomb, claimed the prestigious best picture trophy at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Director Christopher Nolan’s film starred Irish actor Cillian Murphy as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the US effort in the 1940s to create a weapon devastating enough to end World War Two.

Murphy won the best actor trophy, and Nolan was named best director, and the film picked up four technical awards. Emma Stone won best actress for Poor Things, which also won for best production design, make-up and hairstyling, and costumes.

A three-hour historical drama about science and politics, Oppenheimer became an unlikely box office hit and grossed US$953.8 million, in addition to widespread critical praise.

Cillian Murphy, winner of the best actor, in a still from Oppenheimer. Photo: Universal Pictures

It was the first of Nolan’s films to win best picture. The director has previously won acclaim for The Dark Knight Batman trilogy, Inception, and Memento among other movies.

Oppenheimer triumphed over feminist doll adventure Barbie, a movie it had battled in a box office showdown dubbed “Barbenheimer”. Other best picture contenders included The Holdovers, a dramedy set in a New England boarding school, and the World War Two Holocaust tale The Zone of Interest.

In supporting actor categories, Robert Downey Jr. of Oppenheimer and The Holdovers star Da’Vine Joy Randolph claimed their first Academy Awards.

Downey, who was nominated for an Oscar in 1993 before his career was derailed by drug use, won his honour for playing Oppenheimer’s professional nemesis.

“I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy, in that order,” Downey joked before he saluted his wife, Susan, who he said found him as a “snarly rescue pet” and “loved him back to life”.

Robert Downey Jnr, best supporting actor winner, laughs at a comment from host Jimmy Kimmel during the Oscars ceremony. Photo: Reuters

Da’Vine Joy Randolph poses on the red carpet as she arrives for the Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Photo: Reuters

Randolph won the best supporting actress trophy for playing a grieving mother and cafeteria worker in the comedy set in a New England boarding school. She shed tears as she accepted her award.

“For so long, I always wanted to be different, and now I realise I just need to be myself,” she said. “I thank you for seeing me.”

British Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest was named best international feature. Director Jonathan Glazer addressed the Israel-Gaza conflict in his acceptance speech.

Police officers stand guard at the red carpet area following pro-Palestinian demonstrations near the Dolby Theatre ahead of the 96th Academy Awards. Photo: AFP

“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza. All the victims of this dehumanisation. How do we resist?” he said to cheers and applause.

The Boy and the Heron, Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s semi-autobiographical film about grief, was named best animated feature.

Winners were chosen by the roughly 10,500 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

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Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, hosting the show for the fourth time, opened the ceremony by complimenting, and taking jabs at, many of the nominees and their films.

The comedian praised Barbie, the pink-drenched doll adventure, for remaking a “plastic doll nobody even liked any more” into a feminist icon.

Kimmel said many of this year’s movies were too long, particularly Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic Killers of the Flower Moon about the murders of members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma.

John Cena performs on stage during the presentation of the Oscar for costume design, awarded to Poor Things. Photo: Reuters

“In the time it takes you to watch it, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders,” Kimmel joked.

As the stars celebrated, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters angered by the Israel-Gaza conflict shouted and slowed traffic in the streets surrounding the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. “While you’re watching, bombs are dropping,” one sign read.

“The Oscars are happening down the road while people are being murdered, killed, bombed,” said 38-year-old business owner Zinab Nassrou.

Billie Eilish (left) reacts to winning the Oscar for best original song with Ariana Grande (centre) and Cynthia Erivo (right). Photo: EPA-EFE

At the awards venue, a handful of celebrities, including Mahershala Ali and singer Billie Eilish, who won her second best original song Oscar at the age of 22, wore red pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Actor Mark Ruffalo praised the protesters as he entered the theatre and raised a clenched fist. “We need peace,” he said. Elsewhere on the carpet, stars strutted in strong silhouettes, sparkles and a splash of Barbie-inspired pink.