It wouldn’t be an Oscars season without some controversy, and this year, it’s the strangely lauded Emilia Pérez that’s making no sense to anyone outside the Academy. The comedy-musical-crime drama Emilia Pérez stars trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón as a male-presenting Mexican cartel kingpin who enlists Zoe Saldaña’s lawyer in Mexico City to help her leave the cartel and go undercover to receive gender-affirming care and transition as a woman so she can live her life authentically as the titular Emilia Pérez.
The unevenly-reviewed Emilia Pérez is also a story about Mexicans that features no Mexican leads, shot in France by a French director, Jacques Audiard, focusing on Spanish-fluent characters portrayed by actors criticized for a lack of authenticity in their accents. It’s a lot to unpack and the backlash to it has been significant and ongoing (via Today). That hasn’t stopped Emilia Pérez from garnering over a dozen Oscars nominations, including Best Picture, and Best Actress for Gascón. The discrepancy has left plenty wondering how on earth Emilia Pérez managed to become the most-nominated movie for the 2025 Oscars, snagging 13 Academy Award nominations. It’s a fair question worth diving into and the answer reveals a lot about the current state of Hollywood.
Emilia Pérez Leads All Oscars Contenders Despite Not Impressing Critics & Audiences Hating It
For Once, Critics & Audiences Are Largely In Agreement
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Currently, Emilia Pérez is sitting at a 71% score on Metacritic and a 75% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. While those aren’t necessarily bad scores, they’re not glowing, either – certainly not enough for a movie that’s getting this much Oscars buzz. One would expect to see scores in the 90th percentile, in this case, but it’s not. Its general critics’ scores have been so low, in fact, that if Emilia Pérez ultimately takes home the biggest prize of the night at the 2025 Oscars, it will be the lowest-rated Best Picture winner since Crash in 2006.
Critics aren’t infallible, but it’s really telling that Emilia Pérez’s Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score is noticeably lower than any other 2025 Best Picture nominee.
Critics aren’t infallible, but it’s really telling that Emilia Pérez’s Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score is noticeably lower than any other 2025 Best Picture nominee. Compare it to fellow nominee A Complete Unknown, for example: despite that movie having the same Metacritic rating and a Rotten Tomatoes critics score 5% higher, it only has eight nominations to Emilia Pérez’s 13. Eight Oscar nominations is nothing to scoff at, but it’s not the juggernaut that Emilia Pérez has been.
2025 Best Picture Nominee Current RT Critics Score Current Metacritic Score # Oscar Nominations I’m Still Here 95% 85% 3 Anora 93% 91% 6 Conclave 93% 79% 8 The Brutalist 93% 90% 10 Dune: Part Two 92% 79% 5 Nickel Boys 90% 91% 2 The Substance 89% 78% 5 Wicked 88% 73% 10 A Complete Unknown 80% 71% 8 Emilia Pérez 75% 71% 13
But this isn’t a case where critics were lukewarm on it and audiences loved it, either – across the board, audiences have hated Emilia Pérez, evidenced by its controversy and backlash, as well as Rotten Tomatoes’ abysmal 26% audience score. Further, the very groups the movie was attempting to court – those of Mexican heritage and the LGBTQ+ community – were actively turned off by it, citing Emilia Pérez’s deeply problematic stereotypes of racism against Mexicans and Mexican culture (via CBC), as well as transphobia (via GLAAD). So critics aren’t impressed by it and audiences don’t like it at all, and yet, it somehow leads the pack of Oscars contenders in nominations. The reason for that is who votes for the Oscars.
Hollywood & Academy Voters Love Emilia Pérez (For The Wrong Reason)
It’s Worth Putting It Into Historical Context
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For better or worse, it’s neither critics nor audiences who vote on the Oscars; it’s the Academy, and thus, it’s Hollywood. And, for whatever reason, Hollywood loves Emilia Pérez. Part of this can be viewed through the lens of where Hollywood is at in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite year. The movement erupted in 2015, when influencer and Black activist April Reign coined the hashtag to describe the Oscars acting nominees for that year: across four acting categories and 20 nominations, every single nominee was white. The same happened the next year, in 2016, and the outcry was enough to force the Academy to reexamine its voting body and if it was truly representative. To the surprise of no one, it wasn’t.
Since then, the Academy has taken strides to diversify its ranks, and to its credit, it has done a lot of work in that regard – but it still has miles to go before it fully gets its head around true equity in storytelling. It’s true that the Oscars acting and Best Picture categories have been more fairly balanced in recent years – mostly – which is great to see. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but the work is at least being done, however, imperfectly.
The Academy still too quickly falls into the old habit of patting itself on the back for doing the bare minimum, and it still confuses tokenism for authentic representation.
But the Academy still too quickly falls into the old habit of patting itself on the back for doing the bare minimum, and it still confuses tokenism for authentic representation. So it’s not a surprise that Hollywood is falling all over itself to prop up Emilia Pérez as an example of powerful and diverse storytelling, even as the marginalized groups it purports to represent are roundly criticizing and rejecting its deeply offensive story.
Netflix’s FYC Campaign For Emilia Pérez Has Been An Onslaught
Netflix Has Paid & Paid Big To Make Their Movie A Contender
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The other issue is that, despite what the Academy would have one believe, the Oscars are often a popularity contest. That’s not to say that no nominees deserve the nominations they get; the vast majority of them do deserve their nominations and their wins. Still, every year, there are a few head-scratching choices and snubs. Less frequently, but still evident, is when a movie that is mediocre at best, and usually also problematic or cliché, suddenly gets buzzy – Green Book, which won Best Picture in 2019 (arguably for many of the same reasons that Emilia Pérez is getting buzz this year), comes to mind.
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It’s why studios spend huge sums of money on FYC (for your consideration) campaigns during awards season; there are plenty of examples of movies that weren’t in heavy contention picking up steam heading into the new year thanks to a juggernaut FYC campaign. The dirty secret of the Academy Awards is that FYC campaigns can be a bit like a rich kid getting into a prestigious school because their parents paid a huge sum of money, not because they earned it. Netflix originally bought Emilia Pérez at Cannes for $12 million after other distributors steered clear and reportedly has spent at least twice that much on its awards campaign (via Variety). The streamer wants Emilia Pérez to be a contender, and it’s willing to pay to get it there.
The dirty secret of the Academy Awards is that FYC campaigns can be a bit like a rich kid getting into a prestigious school because their parents paid a huge sum of money, not because they earned it.
Netflix has also been savvy enough to lean hard into the trans and Mexican inclusion aspect with its talent during awards season, putting its leading women front and center while making the press rounds, simultaneously either ignoring or dismissing the backlash to Emilia Pérez. When a streamer with the deep pockets of Netflix puts its considerable PR weight behind a movie, it makes waves, even if they’re not organic ones. And make no mistake, Netflix has put its full weight behind Emilia Pérez. It really, really wants one of its Netflix Originals to finally win Best Picture, and the streamer is gunning for it to be this year. Considering all of that, in the battle of the people vs. Hollywood, it looks like Hollywood and Emilia Pérez might win this round.
Sources: Today, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, CBC, GLAAD, Variety