So this is one of those wins that wasn’t a surprise, but that everyone was generally on board for, right? Robert Downey, Jr. has won all the awards leading up to this one, he’s universally acknowledged to have been excellent in the role, so this win should have been one of the feel-good ones to kick things off. 

 

So why did it all seem so… sour? 

There’s an obvious answer to start with – Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes in his opening monologue that nodded to RDJ’s struggles with addiction. I absolutely understand being annoyed if you’re at the best point in your career, and someone brings up the worst possible point. 

So maybe that set the tone for later – because it clearly wasn’t the joke about having a rectangular penis… right?  I’ve watched these clips a number of times, and though we heard the jokes didn’t go over well in the theatre, we debated whether he was really that annoyed, or just playing along? Remember this is a man who is famously deadpan. Maybe it’s all a bit? 

 

But if it were, then why did the announcement of the win feel so … I don’t know, world-weary about the whole thing? Like, you won! You made it! And yet the speech was, while very on brand, also sort of… out of tune? Especially given a theatre-wide standing ovation? 

 

I don’t believe someone has to be all shucks-y or faux-shocked if they win, and again, I think everyone was expecting this and was happy about it! But like, thanking your terrible childhood – isn’t that also kind of acknowledging the thing you didn’t want Kimmel acknowledging? The “I needed this role more than it needed me” – it kind of feels odd coming from someone who was the anchor of the largest superhero franchise in recent memory. Not that money is everything, but $150 MILLION dollars for the last two Avengers movies alone – it’s certainly not nothing, right? In addition to which, those movies, and Tony Stark – they’re incredibly formative and beloved and significant for massive numbers of people. You really want to shit on them, like you were so down and out, with the entire world of movie fans watching? 

 

Again, he’s entitled to feel how he wants to about his career, and to pursue roles he wants and feel gratified by them. But THEN we get to the whole “I was a feral animal” motif, and how his wife Susan saved him, and – I’m just grossed out, a bit. 

 

Because not only is that a really played out motif, where men are for having demons and women are for fixing them and being saintly and happy for them – between that and the “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood” remark, aren’t you directly referencing the exact periods in your life you didn’t want Kimmel to reference? 

It just seemed like a lotttt of Poor Little Misunderstood Blockbuster Action Hero With A Sardonic Edge, and I don’t think it came off the way he thinks. Instead, it’s this year’s first lesson in No Matter What They Say, Actors Are Validated By Awards. And sometimes the ones who seem the coolest are the neediest of all. 

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