For two whole minutes, the 2025 Golden Globes were glamorous and surprising. Demi Moore wafted on stage to collect her Best Actress award for the gonzo horror movie The Substance, and spoke eloquently and emotionally about her fears, her self-doubt, and the occasional sadness of her Nineties fame. Then the Globes went back to being straitlaced, unexciting, and basically the Oscars.
Wicked, the populist fave, won a single award. The tedious, maddening musical Emilia Pérez swept the biggest categories. Relatively obscure arthouse films beat out Moana 2 and Nicole Kidman. Wins felt considered and often surprising. If this were the Oscars, there’d be little to complain about (well, apart from the eternally confusing Emilia love). But this was the Globes, long established as a Eurotrash panoply of chaos and nonsense. Without either, they hardly need to exist.
The necessity of televised awards shows is debated annually, with conversation typically going in circles. The audience invested in these things will show up through thick and thin; those who don’t care to watch movie stars take home trinkets will never be convinced otherwise. But the Globes have historically catered to both groups at once, jeering at the very industry it’s celebrating (there’s a reason one-time host Ricky Gervais is still so associated with it), while getting the winners right just enough to satisfy the people earnestly tuning in.
That seems to have fallen by the wayside lately, though. For years the Globe’s voting body was mired in scandal and corruption, which explained why its winners and nominees were so reliably kooky. But a wave of reforms in 2021 has helped the ceremony clean up its act – if also making it a lot less distinct in the process. Today they are borderline inessential, just another drab, humourless affair that spotlights the same cluster of movies as the Oscars and the Baftas.
Viewing figures for last night’s ceremony won’t be available for several more hours, but US broadcaster CBS will likely be anxious over its victors, which largely ran the gamut from “who?” to “huh?”. For any other awards show, the Best Actress in a Drama trophy going to Brazilian actor Fernanda Torres – for her stirring work in the acclaimed yet decidedly non-commercial I’m Still Here – would be a plot twist worth celebrating, but Globes bosses likely wanted a speech by any one of her five starrier rivals; a few minutes with an emotional Angelina Jolie, or Kidman, or even young and cool Mikey Madison for Anora.
The dominance of the masterful, serious and difficult The Brutalist in the Drama categories speaks well for its Oscar hopes, but again this felt like an uneasy fit for the Globes. In an alternate, more ratings-friendly timeline, Timothée Chalamet would have won Best Actor for his Bob Dylan biopic over The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, for instance.
The Wicked wash-out will have also been of particular concern. Jon M Chu’s musical has made far and away the most money of this year’s major nominees, while the nutty press tour by its stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande has generated headlines for months. The Globes of old would have thrown trophies at practically everyone involved – a Best Supporting Actress speech by Grande would have been a guaranteed delight – but last night it went away with just one, for Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. This is a new category introduced last year – Barbie took that one home – and seems to speak to the ceremony’s shifting priorities when it comes to mainstream hits.
The TV categories, it seems, haven’t been affected in the same way, but perhaps that’s because TV has never felt like a Globes priority – this remains a ceremony that worships the kinds of stars typically seen on enormous cinema screens, not in little boxes in voters’ living rooms. Shōgun and Baby Reindeer were two of the only real smashes of last year on the small screen and understandably dominated in the Drama slots, with the Jean Smart industry satire Hacks sweeping in Comedy. You won’t hear many complaints there. Likewise about host Nikki Glaser, who did well, balancing out the wholesome gags with withering asides.
Overall, though, the Globes are in dire health. This was always going to be a strange and unpredictable Oscar season, one devoid of an Oppenheimer-style juggernaut that ruled the box office as much as it ruled voters’ minds. But the 2025 Globes didn’t need to be quite so resistant to the wackiness and glamour that once defined them. Where was the brazen celebrity worship that saw Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie infamously nominated for The Tourist in 2011? Where was the Hugh Grant win for doing a Jar Jar Binks impression in Heretic? Where was the fun? Yes, it’s been traded for vague respectability and winners that will likely be replicated at the Oscars (expect at least a nod for Fernanda Torres in the Best Actress category, and for Emilia Pérez to become Netflix’s first Best Picture Academy Award winner), but the soul of the Globes seems permanently lost.
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Outside of that Moore win, with its Nineties optics and bonafide “Hollywood goddess” sparkle, the one moment of last night’s Globes that felt in keeping with ceremonies of old was the presence of Sharon Stone. Announcing the winner of Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language, she brought with her an outrageous gown, dramatic autocue reading, and an unnecessary French lilt to the delivery of the title “Emilia Pérez”. It was a show-stopping moment that was also a tiny bit mad, and what this show always used to be. I vote for her to host next year. Maybe produce the entire thing too. To hell with it, re-name it The Sharons just to see what happens.
