A lot of moments happened in the recent 94th Academy Awards whether it's the controversial altercation between Will Smith and Chris Rock in the middle of the ceremony or CODA's historical Best Picture win or Dune dominating the night with six wins. However, there are also the fan-voting categories that they introduced this year in order to possibly add engagement with the general audience as the Oscars has been struggling with its ratings for the past few years.
During the ceremony, Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead was crowned as the winner of the Oscars Fan Favorite Award, beating other films in the Top 5 such as Cinderella, Minamata, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Tick, Tick... Boom!. In another fan-voting category Oscars Cheer Moment, Zack Snyder's Justice League claimed the award for its "The Flash Enters the Speed Force" moment.
However, no trophies were given for these awards and they were only shown as a part of the presentation. There are were also no details released regarding how many votes did they received and their gap with the other contenders.
Given that the category is fan-voted, it's not surprising that the film earned the award since there are a lot of Zack Snyder fans online and they have been showing a lot of support during the voting period. Obviously, given that the voting was done online, there's going to be a lot of mass voting involved and it won't have a natural result. If it's based on the box office or social media analytics, Spider-Man: No Way Home would have easily taken the spot.
Also Read: Justice League Fans are Livid Following Snyder Cut's Oscar Snub
The Fan Favorite Award was an experiment that the Academy did this year as their attempt to get the attention of the general audience and hopefully attract them to check out the telecast. However, the responses to the results have been negative because of the obvious mass voting that happened and it doesn't truly reflect what movie fans loved last year. It would be interesting to see if they will repeat it again next year.