Leading up to the 97th Academy Awards, I will be revisiting some of the most heavily-debated and controversial Oscar choices. Will the victors keep their crown or will a new winner emerge? Today, we look back at 2012's Best Actress contest.

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It was the year of Oscar decisions that everyone hated. Ben Affleck, snubbed for Best Director for Argo, the film about the operation to evacuate six hostages who escaped from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, was anointed long before the ceremony as an effective consolation prize. With all the controversy surrounding the film’s exclusion of the immense Canadian role, many decried the victory as a celebration of a film undeserving of its accolades, which included Best Picture.

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Anne Hathaway, whose run of cheesy and seemingly insincere acceptance speeches incurred the Internet’s wrath, sent eyes rolling when she was announced as Best Supporting Actress for Les Misérables, and they stayed that way through her opening line: “It came true.”

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Another controversial choice was Best Actress. Having starred in the year’s third-highest-grossing domestic release and earned public adoration worldwide, Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) seemed destined to claim the crown.

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People held out hope for a Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) win, but Lawrence’s victory at the SAG awards seemed to conclude the matter. Thanks to a last-minute mega push for Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), which won her the BAFTA, cinephiles had one more glimmer of optimism that starring in a big movie and being popular mattered less than merit. OnOscar night, such hopes were dashed: Lawrence won Best Actress.

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Now, 12 years later, it’s time to revisit this much-debated, lightning-rod Oscar race and see who deserved to come out on top. Should Lawrence have won, or did J-Law fever give her an underserved win? Without further adieu, the 2012 Best Actress redux.

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Emmanuelle Riva, Amour as Anne Laurent

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Leading up to the Oscars, arthouse devotees challenged what seemed like an inevitable Jennifer Lawrence victory. Their savior? Emmanuelle Riva, whose turn in Michael Haneke’s excruciating drama Amour was everything they needed to launch an assault on Academy predictability. It wasn’t flashy or typical; it was “physical” and “daring.”

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Riva’s performance is a complete nothing, even by the standards of other showings of its ilk. You’d think a woman who suffered a stroke at the end of her life would allow for incredible nuance, but Riva just sits and lays around doing absolutely nothing as director Michael Haneke’s inexplicable fanbase laps up the emptiness.

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Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook as Tiffany Maxwell

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It seemed fated that Lawrence would win. She was hot off the presses after her star-making turn in Winter’s Bone, then headlined one of the biggest domestic releases of the decade with The Hunger Games. Her endearing persona brought unprecedented public adoration, and by the time she showed up at TIFF with Silver Linings, she seemed unstoppable.

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Sadly, the link between her newfound superstardom and Oscar supremacy led many to question the legitimacy of her win. There’s the adage of the “right thing being done for the wrong reasons is still the wrong thing,” but there’s little room to apply it here. Lawrence shines as Tiffany, the young widow falling for a troubled man as she pieces her life back together. She takes a character that could easily fall into caricature, but Lawrence humanizes her with a vibrant subtlety few actresses can pull off.

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Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty as Maya

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Chastain’s case was interesting. Maya, a CIA analyst tracking Osama Bin Laden, is not well-written. We didn’t need fire and music, but Mark Boal’s screenplay is so intent on avoiding histrionics it forgets to characterize her at all. Chastain was, therefore, tasked with injecting subtle life into a very topical story, engaging us with the narrative and the woman at its center without veering too far into being overly-restrained or melodramatic. The movie lived and died on her account.

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The results? Mixed. She deserves a ton of credit for doing so much heavy lifting with such incredible skill, but something is missing even when factoring in the confines of a thinly imagined character.

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Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild as Hushpuppy

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It’s easy to dismiss kid nominations as novelty prizes, but the few times it’s happened, they’ve always been for worthy performances. Tatum O’Neal was great in Paper Moon, Anna Paquin was stellar in The Piano, Justin Henry was fantastic in Kramer vs. Kramer, and Quvenzhané Wallis knocked it out of the park in Beasts of the Southern Wild. The limitations of her age always meant she couldn’t lend the same emotional nuance as her older counterparts, but criticizing that would be akin to penalizing a woman for not being able to drive. Some things just can’t be done…

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All joking aside, Wallis gives a typical child performance in many ways, but she also offers a lot of self-assuredness and power as a young girl in the Louisiana bayou navigating her father’s terminal illness and the slow destruction of the only home she’s ever known.

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Naomi Watts, The Impossible as Maria Bennett

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Watts' performance isn't bad, but it’s a function of her being a limited actress in a role suited for one such performer. It only demands that she be terrified and weepy, and while she does both of those things well enough, and it’s not her fault that the character was written so thinly, she also never wows you and gets routinely upstaged by a young Tom Holland. It’s a good showing, but nothing special.

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And the Oscar goes to......

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Lawrence is the clear winner. In a more competitive year, she'd still be tough to beat. Not only does she take a character that could've derailed the movie and turn her into its breakout character, but she leaves a lasting impression that few winners of the category have in recent memory.