The 2025 Oscar nominations seem to prove that thelast two year’s crowdpleasing, all-encompassing shortlistswere a bit of a fluke. Amongst the snubs forChallengers, Denzel Washington, and massively outsized recognition of Emilia Pérez, this is a ceremony hard to get excited about.
As a result, you’re left thinking about the misses, not the hits. As well as Challengers and Washington, I’m wondering why Kneecap missed Best Original Song (especially when Emilia Pérez is there,twice), why Denis Villeneuve missed Best Director, why Nicole Kidman’s turn in Babygirl seems to have been forgotten. This year’s Oscars has also got me thinking about the biggest snub from last year, the only major miss of that ceremony, but one I feel is the most egregious of the past five, maybe ten years. And that has got me thinking ofYakuza (or Like a Dragon).
Efron’s Best Actor Snub Will Sting For A Long Time
Last year, the Oscar nominees for Best Actor were Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer, who won), Bradley Cooper (Maestro), Colman Domingo (Rustin), Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers), and Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction). The nominees are no slouches, though Murphy was always going to walk away with the deserved win. However, there is one name missing from the list: Zac Efron (The Iron Claw).
Efron’s performance in The Iron Claw as a wrestler who used to be a brother, and now he’s not a brother anymore is tragic, touching, and deeply nuanced. It had the sort of depth people frankly didn’t think he had in him, and that sort of thing usually helps potential nominees - just look at the previous winner, Brendan Fraser.
But Efron did not deserve to be there purely on ‘narrative’, as a formerDisneystar stuck in romcom slop, on the comeback trail after a facial injury andeating disorder. Efron deserved it simply because it was one of the best performances of the year.
Best Actor is always a heavyweight category (this year is the same, andhas no clear frontrunner), but Efron tombstones, piledrives, and clotheslines the field that year. Cooper raised eyebrows at the time that have not dropped since, Domingo does a great job but is working off a far less rounded script, and (a sentence I wouldn’t have believed a couple of years ago) Efron finds more texture in his performance than Wright. And Giamatti… he can stay. I like Giamatti.
The Iron Claw And Yakuza Are Built On Manly Kindness
What is most impressive about Efron’s role, and why it reminds me ofLike a Dragon, is the masculine tenderness on display. It is a difficult trick to ground your performance in a sense of male glory, of toughness and physical presence, while not only mining for emotional resonance, but framing the performance with kindness. We see other shades of masculinity in the cast, whether it be paired with harshness and distance (the father), or stubbornness, showmanship and self-loathing, or a failure to match its expectations (the three brothers).
Everyone in The Iron Claw is working at the top of their game, which helps raise Efron’s even further. But in being kind, empathetic, and tender, without ceding his masculinity, Efron has by far the most complex role to pull off. And it’s the sort of balancewe see Kazuma Kiryu and Ichiban Kasuga strikeacross the Like a Dragon series. Though both do it in their own way - Kiryu more stoic, Ichi wearing his heart on his sleeve - they are masculine figures of tenderness. Games so rarely strive for it, and it’s part of what makes Like a Dragon so special.
Awards, ultimately, do not matter. The performance Efron offers in The Iron Claw is still as magnificent and moving as it would have been with a gold statuette in his hand at the end of it. Likewise, the relative snub affordedLike a Dragon: Infinite WealthatThe Game Awards(itself the most the series has ever been recognised)does not diminish its power. It’s important not to forget that during award season - how you feel matters more than who wins. But I feel Efron should have been nominated, and this year only reminds me of that injustice. Still, I can look back and know that, like Kiryu and Ichi, The Iron Claw will always be there.
