Parasite earned $258 million on an $11 million budget. One in five South Koreans saw it in theaters. In the United States alone, Americans paid $53 million to watch the film entirely in Korean with English subtitles. It became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture, the first Korean film to win the Palme d’Or, and one of the most talked-about movies of the decade in any language.
According to Sen. Ted Cruz, nobody saw it.
Hours after the 98th Academy Awards wrapped on Sunday night, Cruz took to X with a post that racked up over 756,000 views before most of Hollywood had finished their after-parties. He listed every Best Picture winner from the past decade — Parasite, Nomadland, CODA, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer, and this year’s winner One Battle After Another — and offered his verdict.
“Oscars used to go to great movies, watched by millions,” Cruz wrote. “Movie-makers used to LIKE their customers. This past decade, other than Oppenheimer, nobody saw any of these movies, made to virtue signal to left-wing elites.”
He followed up by responding to the account @EndWokeness, which had posted the Academy’s diversity and inclusion standards for Best Picture eligibility. Cruz called it “utter insanity” and listed The Godfather, Casablanca, Schindler’s List, and Gladiator as classics that would no longer qualify. “None of these prior winners would qualify,” he wrote.
Two claims. Both checkable. Both dead wrong.
The films speak for themselves
Compare the last 10 best picture winners to the list below.
Oscars used to go to great movies, watched by millions. Movie-makers used to LIKE their customers.
This past decade, other than Oppenheimer, nobody saw any of these movies, made to virtue signal to left-wing elites. https://t.co/6jFou4BpRS pic.twitter.com/fz9lzKbuNw
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 16, 2026
Cruz gave Oppenheimer a pass — $976 million worldwide, third-highest-grossing R-rated film ever. No argument there.
But he didn’t extend the same courtesy to Everything Everywhere All at Once, which earned $143 million on a $25 million budget, became A24’s biggest release in the studio’s history, and spent 16 consecutive weekends in the domestic box office top ten. It swept seven Academy Awards. Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress — a moment that made millions of people feel seen for the first time on that stage.
Nobody saw that, apparently.
Nomadland and CODA were released during the peak of COVID, when the entire theatrical industry was on life support. One hit theaters and Hulu simultaneously, the other was an Apple TV+ release. Holding pandemic-era streaming releases to the box office standards of Titanic requires ignoring that most theaters were closed.
And the ceremony Cruz was reacting to? It had just handed Best Picture to One Battle After Another, a Paul Thomas Anderson film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The night’s other big story was Sinners — Ryan Coogler’s vampire epic that set a record with 16 Oscar nominations and won four, including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, who thanked the Black actors “who came before me” in his acceptance speech. Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman in history to win Best Cinematography. Warner Bros., the studio behind both films, also put out Superman, A Minecraft Movie, and Weapons in the same year.
These are not the marks of an industry ignoring its audience.
The classics that “wouldn’t qualify”
In order to compete at the Oscars for Best Picture, all films must meet the “diversity inclusion” quota.
Here are those rules. Yes, this is real. pic.twitter.com/2FQR5Kh4zx
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 16, 2026
Cruz’s second claim — that The Godfather and Casablanca couldn’t compete under today’s rules — sounds alarming until you look at what the rules actually say. The Academy requires Best Picture contenders to meet two out of four standards. The @EndWokeness post showed the on-screen casting criteria. It didn’t mention the other three.
Two of those standards have nothing to do with who’s on screen. They cover things like whether the studio runs internship programs for underrepresented groups and whether the marketing team reflects some diversity. Any major studio today checks those boxes through existing corporate programs.
Oppenheimer had an almost entirely white main cast. It qualified without issue.
If Paramount released The Godfather tomorrow, it would very likely qualify the same way — without changing a frame.
The comment section was predictable. The numbers weren’t.
Cruz’s posts pulled in over 685 comments in the first few hours. Half the replies cheered him on. The other half started posting receipts.
The idea that the Oscars have drifted from mainstream taste isn’t baseless — ceremony ratings have been sliding for years and some recent winners were smaller films. That’s a real conversation worth having.
But “nobody saw these movies” is a claim that only works if you don’t check. And “the classics wouldn’t qualify” only holds up if you stop reading after the first standard.
The films had their night. The numbers are already public. The rest is just comments.
