Top 4 Films Snubbed from the 2025 Oscars

This years Oscars and all film festival nominations and awards were to me, the most exciting yet. 2025, brought so much light to many amazing and new up and coming actors, films, and small indie film products- powerfully showing their talent. With that said, it makes sense why the Oscars were the most anticapted of the film award nominations yet. But for the 2025 nominations, while many recieved a rightful nomination, many also faced undeserving snubs as I would say of all time. So here is a set of four film article packages pointing out the top 4 films/actors that were snubbed from the 2025 Oscars.

Challengers

During the scene in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers when Art (Mike Faist) and his doubles partner Patrick (Josh O’Connor) first watch Tashi (Zendaya) play tennis, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ track “Yeah x10” ratchets things up to a fever pitch. The camera flips between Tashi, who’s kicking her opponent’s ass with seething intensity, and the two teenage boys, who lean back in their chairs like synchronized swimmers, utterly transfixed. That, I thought to myself, is the movies!

Well, apparently academy voters have sludge in their veins, because we found out on Thursday that Challengers was not nominated for any Oscars—not for screenplay (as I had hoped), and not even for the music. No Original Score, not even Original Song! This despite the fact that Reznor and Ross got a Golden Globe for this same score earlier this month. The nominees in the Score category are Emilia Pérez, Conclave, The Wild Robot, Wicked, and The Brutalist, which include a lot of fine compositions and many I do not remember at all. To quote the queen: “COME ON!!!!”

If we’re judging movie scores by how much their movie’s effect depends on them, this score should have skipped the nomination stage and gone straight to a win. I suspect that Oscars voters don’t care whether the general public adopts an original score as a listenable album in its own right. But if they do, I hope they know that multiple songs from Challengers (Original Score) have millions of streams on Spotify, and it has to be the only one of the little group of 2025 Original Score nominees and would-bes to generate its own memes. Don’t the academy members want movies to be popular?

I watched the movie again this morning (this was Challengers viewing No. 3 for me—compared to some people online, I’m still a rookie) to remind myself how the music worked in situ. The answer is still “great.” But I had to do that because this album has detached itself from its context and become a “You have to finish this blog post now” album, a “The gym is empty and you can pick what to put on the sound system” album, a “Play it in the car and tell your child a bowdlerized version of the plot of a movie she shouldn’t view for years” album. If anyone out there is getting all of that out of the score of Conclave, I’d like to meet them!

Maria

This marks another setback for the actress, who also missed out on a SAG Award nod after her exhaustive efforts to promote the Netflix film. Jolie, who won an Oscar 25 years ago, fully committed to the demanding role by learning opera singing and embarking on a rare and grueling press tour.

She made her first late-night TV appearance in over a decade on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" and appeared on multiple magazine covers to promote the film. Although she secured a Golden Globes nomination, the award ultimately went to Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres for "I'm Still Here."

Sources close to Jolie revealed her deep disappointment, telling Page Six: "Angelina will be devastated … look at all the press she did for the film — she wanted to get nominated. She did Jimmy Fallon, her first late-night show in over a decade. She even went to the Gotham Awards. She did all these magazine covers."

Another source noted that Jolie's Oscar snub may be related to the number of actors who received their first-ever nominations this year. They said that while social "politics" can influence awards season, the Academy's decision to honor several first-time nominees over established names like Jolie and Nicole Kidman, who was also overlooked for her role in "Babygirl," signals a broader industry trend.

Gladiator 2

Denzel Washington not getting an Oscar nomination for Gladiator II would repeat history, as he also didn't receive a nomination for Ridley Scott's 2007 film American Gangster. Washington is one of the most celebrated actors of all time. Denzel Washington's best movies include Malcolm X, Training Day, Fences, and The Tragedy of Macbeth, all of which earned him nominations for an Academy Award.

Washington's most recent performance was in Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to Scott's 2000 movie. Washington joining the cast of Gladiator II made perfect sense, as he and Scott had worked together on American Gangster.

17 years before starring in Gladiator II, Washington led the cast of American Gangster, which was also directed by Scott. In American Gangster, Washington plays Frank Lucas, a powerful drug dealer who rules the streets of 1970s New York.

Currently, the 2008 awards season is the only time Washington has been nominated for a Golden Globe but not an Oscar. However, it seems like Gladiator II could start a trend. Washington's American Gangster Oscar snub is currently an outlier, but if he doesn't get nominated for an Academy Award for Gladiator II, then it is clear that his collaborations with Scott simply do not lead to Oscar success.

Reviews for American Gangster were quite positive, and the film currently has an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes (via Rotten Tomatoes). Almost all reviews for American Gangster express how great Washington is in the movie.

The Last Showgirl

Anderson, who scored noms at the Golden Globes, Gotham and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her leading turn in Gia Coppola‘s drama about an aging Las Vegas dancer, was snubbed upon Thursday’s Oscar nominations announcement. However, Anderson said she was far from expecting a nod from the Academy and is satisfied with all the praise the film has received since releasing in December.

“No nomination for the Oscar, but I couldn’t even imagine that,” Anderson said of the snub. “I did get a SAG nomination, which is really exciting and…all of this is just unexpected and exciting.”

In a Jan. 10 interview with Variety, Anderson revealed that her former agent trashed “The Last Showgirl” script “within the hour” of receiving it and never called her regarding the project, forcing Coppola to track down Anderson through her son Brandon.

“I remember coming out of my garden, getting a message from Brandon and sitting at my computer and reading [the script]. And I thought, ‘This is it,’” Anderson recalled. “This is my opportunity to pour my entire life experience into something, a woman who is so well written, well rounded, flawed, interesting, complex. It was just a breathtaking piece of work. I’ve never had that feeling before.”