Is this the most controversial Oscars race ever?

We're accustomed at this point to Oscars campaigns playing a little dirty. Ever since the rise of the now-disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s, smear tactics and morally shady marketing tricks have been a part of the race to win Best Picture. As far back as 2004, the Academy was forced to introduce new rules forbidding "disparaging references to other pictures or individuals competing in a given category in ads, mailings, websites or other forms of campaign communication".

This year, the wheels of the Oscar campaign machine seem to be turning with even more venom than usual, with numerous Best Picture contenders locked in controversy. It's not clear whether any of these controversies are actually a result of concerted campaigns, but their timing certainly seems primed to have a big impact on the decisions made by Academy voters.

Most notably, Netflix musical Emilia Pérez has found itself involved in multiple controversies since it secured 13 nominations — a record for a movie not made in the English language. The film was already divisive on its release, not least because its story focused on Mexico and its drug cartel wars while featuring very few Mexicans in the creative team.

Then, and most damningly, the film's star Karla Sofía Gascón — the first out transgender actor ever nominated for an Oscar — has been heavily and justifiably criticised for a series of offensive tweets she posted over the course of recent years. Some of the tweets contained disparaging references to the late George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the Muslim population in Spain.

Read more: 'Emilia Pérez is a groundbreaking trainwreck' (Yahoo Entertainment, 7 min read)

Gascón denied being a racist, apologised for the tweets, and then deactivated her account on X. For a film that trades so heavily on its status as a progressive story with a trans character at its heart, this scandal is an enormous hit to its credentials as a possible Best Picture winner, as well as for Zoe Saldaña in a Best Supporting Actress category that looked in the bag.

As awards pundit Scott Feinberg wrote in The Hollywood Reporter: "Based on my conversations in recent days with Academy members, many are going to have a hard time voting for Emilia Pérez in any category, given that Emilia Pérez herself has become toxic."

Meanwhile, the current bookies' favourite for Best Picture, The Brutalist, has also experienced a hefty controversy of its own. In an interview with an industry publication, the film's editor discussed the decision to use an AI vocal tool provided by the company Respeecher to enhance the Hungarian accents used by Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in the movie. He also explained how generative AI was deployed for some architectural imagery in the epilogue scenes.

Read more: AI voice technology used in The Brutalist is nothing new – the backlash is about transparency (The Conversation, 5 min read)

AI is a hot-button issue in Hollywood and was one of the key debates at the centre of the 2023 strike action taken by the writers' and actors' unions. The backlash was swift, despite the relatively minor nature of the use of AI. Respeecher also worked on several other Oscars contenders this year, including Emilia Pérez and the Robbie Williams musical Better Man.

This controversy doesn't seem to be halting the momentum of The Brutalist, though. It's still hoovering up precursor awards and stands tall at the top of the bookies' shortlists. It seems it'll take more than one AI storm to shake the foundations of such a towering epic of a movie.

Other contenders have also been wrapped up in controversies — albeit discussions which have made a lot less noise. The Best Actress category in which Gascón appears has been particularly hit. Brazilian star Fernanda Torres, nominated for I'm Still Here, apologised after a clip resurfaced of her appearing in blackface on a comedy show 17 years ago.

Read more: Sean Baker Breaks Down the Emotional Last Scene of ‘Anora’ (IndieWire, 6 min read)

Anora star Mikey Madison, meanwhile, sparked fury when she spoke about her decision to decline an intimacy coordinator for her performance in the movie. "My character is a sex worker, and I had seen Sean’s films and know his dedication to authenticity," she said in Variety's Actors on Actors. "I was ready for it. As an actress, I approached it as a job.”

Madison was criticised for appearing to diminish the role of intimacy coordinators. Her comments were interpreted as implying that actors who chose to work without intimacy coordinators were somehow more authentic than those who wanted them on set.

Somehow, Demi Moore's blood-soaked body horror performance in The Substance has emerged as arguably the least controversial option on offer in the Best Actress category. Who saw that coming?

All of this controversy comes on top of the usual discourse about "category fraud". Best Supporting Actor frontrunner Kieran Culkin is arguably more of a co-lead in A Real Pain, while the same consideration could be thrown at Best Supporting Actress nominee Ariana Grande in Wicked. These discussions arise every year and it will take more than that to stop Culkin winning, while the controversy around Emilia Pérez could give Grande the chance to unseat Saldaña.

Read more: How to watch the Oscars-tipped films (Yahoo Entertainment, 10 min read)

The 2025 Oscars race is one filled with noise at the moment, which perhaps reflects the perception that it's a more open contest than usual. Certainly, there's none of the procession feel that existed around Oppenheimer last year. In such a tight race, these controversies — whether they've arisen organically or been placed via dodgy tactics — can make all the difference.

The Oscars take place on Sunday, March 2.