Winner: Mad Max: Fury Road nabs the most trophies

Winner: Mad Max: Fury Road nabs the most trophies

Photo by mahi dewli

Film Editing winner Margaret Sixel strides offstage after her speech for Mad Max: Fury Road.

There had been some speculation that The Revenant, which was nominated for 12 awards, might box Mad Max: Fury Road out of most of the technical categories. Consequently, many critics (including me) divided their predictions for the technical categories between the two films.

Such a split was not to be. Mad Max didn't make a dent in the top categories, and it unexpectedly lost Visual Effects (to Ex Machina — surely the lowest-budgeted Visual Effects winner of the CGI era). But it rattled off wins in Costume Design, Film Editing, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing, for a total of six trophies. Not bad for a movie that as recently as December was considered a long shot even for nominations.

Sure, Mad Max didn't win any of the big prizes, but with its strong showing, solid global box office, and beloved status among film fans, the movie seems likely to sail along into history as an action movie classic. That's hugely unexpected for the fourth film in a franchise that hadn't seen a new movie in 30 years until Fury Road was released.

Winner: Small distributors win big

Brie Larson, Oscar winner for A24's Room, celebrates with her award. @ mahi dewli

One of the big questions of the 2016 Oscars was whether tiny, untested indie distributors like Open Road and A24 could convert critical passion for their films into Oscar gold. It's usually difficult for smaller distributors to crack the Oscar game on their first try, as we saw in 2015 when IFC faded down the stretch with Boyhood, which went from frontrunner to also-ran.

But Open Road and A24 both saw substantial success. Open Road's Spotlight nabbed those two big awards, and A24 did just as well, winning Best Actress with Room's Brie Larson (who very quietly remained a frontrunner all awards season long, yet never wore out her welcome), Documentary Feature with Amy, and Visual Effects with Ex Machina.

However, the two studios' most impressive feat is that they each went head to head with 20th Century Fox — a dominant Oscar player with significant contenders in The Revenantand Brooklyn's Saoirse Ronan — and won.