oscar winners 2016

Oscars 2016: 4 winners and 3 losers from the 88th Academy Awards

Spotlight wins the big prize, but Mad Max wins the most awards.

Acting winners Mark Rylance (left), Brie Larson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and

 Alicia Vikander celebrate backstage

The 2016 Oscars were a weird roller coaster ride of expectations.

The movie that won the night's first award, Best Original Screenplay,

 bookended the evening by also winning Best Picture —

 but those were the only two prizes it won.

In between, a post-apocalyptic action spectacular cleaned up, an R-rated art film 

won three high-profile awards, and host Chris Rock kept the focus squarely 

on the Oscars' diversity (or lack thereof). Naturally, the ceremony was

 not without controversy, but said controversy didn't always 

come from the direction you'd expect.

It was as wild and well-produced a telecast as any in recent memory,

 with clips packages that actually explained the awards they introduced

 and a surprising run of really good speeches. There were winners 

both unexpected and very expected, and only a couple of cringe-worthy moments.

You can read a full list of winners here. But some films won bigger

 than others — and that's what we're here for. Here are four winners 

and three losers from the 88th annual Academy Awards.

Winner: Spotlight takes home the night's biggest prize

The team behind Spotlight accepts the Oscar for Best Picture.

Spotlight won only two Oscars, but they were both big ones. 

The night's first prize, for Best Original Screenplay, went to 

screenwriters Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy (who also directed the film), 

and then Spotlight lost the next four awards it was nominated for.

Heading into Best Picture — the last award of the night —

 the odds were not in Spotlight's favor. The last time a movie won Best Picture

 and only one other award was in March 1953, when The Greatest Show on Earth 

 took home Best Picture and Best Story (coincidentally enough,

 another screenwriting prize) at the 25th annual awards.

Since then, the floor for Best Picture winners has been three total awards

. (The most recent Best Picture winner to win only three 

awards total was 12 Years a Slave, in 2014.)

But Spotlight broke through to win the biggest prize of them all

, in a result that seemed to shock even producer Michael Sugar, 

who accepted the award. He rattled off a few words about holding

 the Catholic Church accountable for the sexual abuse of children,

 then wrapped up the night.

RelatedWhy Spotlight did — and didn't — deserve to win Best Picture

Spotlight's win is the result of many things — the way the Oscars choose Best Picture, the film's important subject matter, nostalgia for journalism, etc. — but chief among them is distributor Open Road Films, a tiny studio that made sure Oscar voters saw the film early, and then kept it in the conversation.

After Spotlight won the Screen Actors Guild ensemble cast award, Mark Ruffalodelivered a speech in which he declared that to support Spotlight was to support allforms of fighting against systemic injustice — not just sex abuse in the Catholic church. That central campaign narrative took hold, and Spotlight rode it all the way to the win.

The Oscar rarely goes to the absolute best movie; it much more frequently goes to the film with the best narrative. And that turned out to be Spotlight in this very confused year. (It certainly didn't hurt that Spotlight was also a very good movie, in the classicist style the Oscars generally prefer.)