You know what they say – just to be nominated is honour enough. But they don’t really mean it. Everyone who’s in this thing wants to go home a winner. So who actually did?

Obviously, Oppenheimer was the big winner, collecting seven out of the 13 awards for which it was nominated, including the really big ones: best actor (Cillian Murphy), best director (Christopher Nolan), and best picture (which officially goes to the producers of the best film, in this case Nolan, his wife Emma Thomas and Charles Roven).

As with most of the other gongs given out at the 96th Academy Awards, there was little surprise in any of that.

In fact, if you’re looking for upsets, only Emma Stone’s win as best actress – the second for the 35-year-old, following her win in 2017 for La La Land – over Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon even gives the oddometer (you know, the dial that measures oddness) a nudge. Not that she wasn’t superb (she was), but in what had become more or less a two-horse race, the indicators seemed to favour Gladstone (who would have become the first ever indigenous American winner of an acting Oscar) ever so slightly.

Poor Things nabbing four awards made it the second most successful film of the night. Was Mark Ruffalo unlucky not to win best supporting actor? For sure, but how could anyone begrudge Robert Downey Jr in Oppenheimer? (And, as is so often the case, you could argue that his win was as much a career- and lifetime award as it was a nod for this particular performance. But hey, that didn’t help Nyad’s Annette Bening any, so it’s not a hard-and-fast rule that applies consistently or universally, so maybe it’s not a rule at all.)

Was Yorgos Lanthimos, one of the most innovative and thrilling and risk-taking directors around, robbed? Was Aussie Tony McNamara robbed for his brilliantly funny and inventive Poor Things screenplay? Probably, but also not. You can argue the toss as much as you like on these things, but I can’t think of another year in which the awards fell so much in line with how they were expected to go, or how I thought they should.

One point of divergence, perhaps, was best documentary. I will argue until the cows come home that Four Daughters is thematically and formally inventive, tells an incredibly powerful story, and should have won the prize. But I’ll also acknowledge that 20 Days in Mariupol is a piece of work that speaks to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine with incredible power and urgency, and its win makes sense as both statement and reward.

So, just to address the numbers, let’s wrap.

Oppenheimer: Seven wins from 13 clearly makes it the big winner.

Poor Things: Four from 11, including best actress and production design, is a very decent showing.

The Zone of Interest: Two wins (best international picture and best sound design) from five is a good result for an incredibly challenging film.

Maestro: Cursed by the perception that he simply wanted it too much, Bradley Cooper (nominated as producer, actor and writer for the biopic of conductor Leonard Bernstein) went home empty handed. The film won none of the seven awards for which it was nominated ,and is surely the second-biggest loser of the night.

Killers of the Flower Moon: And, perhaps surprisingly, the most overlooked film of the night belongs to Martin Scorsese. His Killers of the Flower Moon was up for 10 awards, and won precisely zero. At least he’s had plenty of practice at being overlooked: the 81-year-old director may be one of the most revered figures in the business, but he has been nominated 16 times as producer, director or writer, winning just once (for The Departed in 2006, as director).

And finally, the ceremony itself: Over in 3½ hours. That’s not much longer than some of the nominated movies (Killers of the Flower Moon runs for 3 hours and 26 minutes, Oppenheimer an even three hours). If for no other reason, Kimmel and co. deserve some sort of award for that.